Alpine Experiments

[domdib]

I've been playing around some with Alpine fractals.They are rather tricky to tame, but I think I'm beginning to get somewhere. The snow is from Tangled-Universe's snow pack.

[Gannaingh]

You have the general shape there, though IMO I would suggest adding several smaller scale fractals to break up the smooth lines of the alpine fractal. Keep going, I always have liked mountain images but my computer is too slow to handle the alpine fractal easily, I want to see what you come up with!

[domdib]

I agree that in general Alpines are slow, but this one rendered at 2400x1800 in under 4 hours, on quite a slow Pentium Duo. Admittedly, Quality =0.5, but I'm not sure you need much more at this kind of range.

As for adding more power fractals, I might try it in a separate scene, but I kind of like the starkness that this mountain has. I only wish there were a simple way to remove the kind of sawtooth wave shapes that appear on some of the ridges.

[FrankB]

Dominic, the solution to that definitely lies in adding another powerfractal to the mix. The trick is in finding the right scales for the second fractal. It has to be big enough to break up the ridges, but let the overall eroded look survive. Possibly you may want to actually mix in a third fractal, at appx a third of the second fractal's scale - to begin with.
I have tried this before, it works pretty well.
One more hint: your additional fractals look better when they dominate the uppper half of the mountain, and fade out a bit after the bottom half. Give it a shot.

Cheers,
Frank

[FrankB]

Forgot to say: only with these additions to the terrain, the TU Snow pack can unfold it's real beauty. It needs variety in the terrain to shine. :-)

Frank

[domdib]

Thanks Frank. The Snow pack is looking pretty good to me already