Inspiration at 10 o' Clock...ish.

[PG]

After weeks of toiling with project after project for weeks and months trying to find something that I actually want to create I find myself in a bit of a rutt. There's loads of inspiration of things to create but so many have gotten so far past me that my attempts seem to meager in comparison. (I'm one of those harsh self critics who can't accept trailing the pack unfortunately)

I think I've narrowed my problem down to a problem that seems to crop up in almost every "newbie" post on the forum. A lack of control, we can create things that look very pretty but almost entirely at the behest of Terragens power. When people see my renders I feel almost enclined to say "it wasn't me" but then I do appreciate the amourous "oohs" and "aahs" of an extolerant crowd.

Let me give an example. I saw an amazing photo posted as part of an "inspiration" collection by someone on this forum of beautiful rolling hills and a road sweeping between them. I thought of a brilliant scene and I could see it in my mind but when it came to applying that in TG2 my mind was a vacuous pit of palimpsest.
What I'd really love, and think would be helpful to others in a similar situation, is to know the thought processes of those gifted scribes for turning vivid imagination into stunning technicolour.

_{for translation into english please request}

[Henry Blewer]

When I start a new terrain, I have thoughts about what techniques I want to use. This is so I learn new functions of the node structure, or apply something I've dissected from someone else's tgd file. I quick render the landscape from an aerial prospect looking for places which look interesting. Then I move the camera in.
After the camera has been placed, I decide what aspect ratio I use. Since I use the free version, it's always 800 x ? (between 300 and 600 pixels)
The terrain tells me how to shade (color) it. What looks more natural (alien sometimes)? The use of coloring and/ or strata helps determine the vegitation. Would water (longer render) look good? I normally add water.
Last comes the atmosphere. I do like cloudy, rainy days. These are much more difficult to light correctly. Even on clear days there are contrails or some high clouds.
Last comes lighting. Do the clouds get in the suns way, making the landscape too dark? If so, I add a distance shader to the density shader of the the offending cloud layer.

Summary: I sort of have an idea of what I want, but the terrain really determines the final image for me. It's more exploration than forcing the program to do something. There are landscape editors which will allow you to force a landscape. For me it takes the discovery part of the project away.

[FrankB]

Copying a photograph in tg2 is definitely the hardest part.
Some scenes allow you to make it in TG2 easily, some others are killers. Usually anything that is related to human influence is hard to do. Roads are a good example. On a flat terrain, yes. along the border of a mountain, no.
Choose your battles, would be my advice.

[PG]

Hmm. yeah, yeah maybe the thing I've lost is the fun of exploring. These days I tend to hit the random seed button till the camera is above the terrain and run with that I'll have some fun with that I think, I've also never really explored any of the features for terrain. I still have no idea what the distance shader really does to a terrain

[Henry Blewer]

I only use the distance shader for population control and clouds. With populations of grass, for example, the density has to be very high close to the camera. In the distance, less density is needed because it blends into the haze. The distance shader can also thin out a population until it merges into a color shader in the distance. This reduces render times.

[Volker Harun]

I do the same as njeneb, except for building the atmospheres before doing surfaces.
Else I would have to tweak the surfaces twice (at least very often).

[Henry Blewer]

Volker, so you make the atmosphere, then do the color? I have been tweaking the Global Illumination or Ambient Occlusion. Your way may be easier.

[Thelby]

What I'd really love, and think would be helpful to others in a similar situation, is to know the thought processes of those gifted scribes for turning vivid imagination into stunning technicolour.

_{for translation into english please request}

Thoughts,..................... What Thoughts? 

[tempaccount]

I usually start with putting together a heightmap in World Machine. It really gives a lot more control over your scene, and you can just "texture" it afterwards. Plus you can think what you want to make first.

Normally I go through a few refe photos as well, trying to decide the mood and lighting beforehand (of course it doesn't always end up like that).

Still perfecting my technique, but so far it's working out well enough. What I've recently been battling is blending of surface layers nicely and trying to get some well-saturated scenes - for some reason most of the time my colors come off a bit bland.

[FrankB]

... for some reason most of the time my colors come off a bit bland.

A common problem, but I figured - at least for myself - it was due to me wanting to have well lit detail everywhere. In photography, this isn't the case, so why should it in renders? It looks unrealistic and flat to our eyes, so the cure for me was to dare more contrast and increasing exposure (where it fits). Decide whether you want to optimize for sky or for terrain on daylight scenes, not both.

Frank

[tempaccount]

A common problem, but I figured - at least for myself - it was due to me wanting to have well lit detail everywhere. In photography, this isn't the case, so why should it in renders? It looks unrealistic and flat to our eyes, so the cure for me was to dare more contrast and increasing exposure (where it fits). Decide whether you want to optimize for sky or for terrain on daylight scenes, not both.

Frank

Ah, thanks for the insight - I've been suspecting the same, but never really could put my finger onto it :p

My latest scene is a bit low-light, so the dynamic was missing - it was tough to get little detail on the scene, while maintaining a sky that is not over-bright and the result was that there was no detail anywhere. I think I'll do some research on how to cast heavy shadows on a scene, so I can maintain some detail and contrast. And add the missing dynamic.

[Volker Harun]

In the rendersettings I usually push up contrast to 1 and lower the Gamma to 1.7 ... this is good for contrast and saturated colours.

[FrankB]

contrast at 1 is a little steep for most scenes.

Actually, 0.7 is my max, and only if the focus of the scene is on the sky. Clouds benefit greatly from increased contrast, whereas in scenes that focus on a lot of dense vegetation, you might want to decrease the contrast.

Regards,
Frank

[domdib]

This is interesting - I never thought of altering contrast in render.

Does anyone know what the soft clip setting does?

[Henry Blewer]

I sometimes run my renders through Corel Paint X2. The paint program lets me 'fix' issues if they occur. Usually I just resize.