Woodland pond

Kevin F · November 03, 2009, 02:21:31 PM

Here's a new one that I've been working on for a while (version6!). Not had much to do with vegetation really despite being on here from day 1.
Actually I've been busy with a "symmetrie" entry for Terragen Masters contest http://www.terragen-masters.de/home.html?newlang=english of late so it's good to get back to a "normal" scene.

I'm quite happy with this one really.
C&C welcome

Gannaingh · November 03, 2009, 02:27:17 PM

Very nice! I really like the pond

Would you wind sharing your render settings?

Kevin F · November 03, 2009, 03:42:02 PM

Quote from: darthvader1 on November 03, 2009, 02:27:17 PM
Very nice! I really like the pond Would you wind sharing your render settings?

settings:
Detail 0.675
AA 9
GI 2,3
supersample prepass - yes
Pixel filter - Catmull-Rom
No AA Bloom
No Detail Blending
Displacement filter - 1
Microvertex Jittering - yes
Detail Jittering - yes
Ray traced shadows - yes
Atmosphere quality - 50

Mandrake · November 03, 2009, 04:32:46 PM

Very nice, love the spacing on everything. I was waiting for a dragonfly to buzz by.

matrix2003 · November 03, 2009, 05:37:38 PM

WoW ! Reminds me of Florida. Outcrops of tall pines and tropical stuff in between. Nice job!
- Bill .

littlecannon · November 04, 2009, 12:25:23 PM

Loving the depth through the trees and the pond is lovely... My only gripe is with the fish, they seem to look like fast swimming river fish (Salmon or Trout). I think shoals of smaller fish may look more fitting. This is personal opinion and if you're happy with them as they are, then cool.
Cheers,
Simon.

Zairyn Arsyn · November 04, 2009, 12:54:07 PM

Quote from: matrix2003 on November 03, 2009, 05:37:38 PM
WoW ! Reminds me of Florida. Outcrops of tall pines and tropical stuff in between. Nice job!
- Bill .

me thinks the same, & he's right, its very much like florida

looks good, i could easly imagine where in florida I would see something like this.

Kevin F · November 04, 2009, 05:52:14 PM

Thanks for all the positive comments guys. I've never been to Florida so I can't say it's based on experience, but if you say so I'll believe ya!
I did have a number of problems while rendering this scene though. All to do with missing tiles in the final render. I had to crop at least 4 areas together to get the final image. Some parts were repeatedly failing to render the tall pines (thanks to Walli for the pines) but I suppose we'll not get a fix for this 'till the next version. Whenever that will be? Not a lot of talk about that is there? Bearing in mind that it's been over six months since TG2 was released, you'd think an update would be available, or at least the promise of one and the fixes since the last version (no dates of course!).
Still maybe a Christmas present?

otakar · November 04, 2009, 06:50:30 PM

Oh there is active development. Just check out some of the alpha version renders

This is a very interesting render, both from the camera perspective as well as composition. Some less than straight growing water plants would break up that rigidity, otherwise maybe the odd insect as suggested

I love looking at this...

Kevin F · November 05, 2009, 08:34:34 AM

Quote from: otakar on November 04, 2009, 06:50:30 PM
Oh there is active development. Just check out some of the alpha version renders

Where? and what alpha version are you talking about?
as far as I know the alpha went public April 2008
the Beta Nov 2008, and in April 2009 TG2 was released.
Since then nothing.

FrankB · November 05, 2009, 08:45:02 AM

Njeneb meand you should check out renders of the past 3-4 months from Walli, Seth, TU, Dune (just recently), Volker, Ryan, ... these are all testers of future versions. Under NDA there's not much to say, but look at these renders, they have a few stories to tell

Frank

otakar · November 05, 2009, 09:42:14 AM

Kevin, check out this image/thread, also this one is going to give you a little info. Yes, it's taking them a while to release it, but what else is new?

Kevin F · November 05, 2009, 06:20:33 PM

Quote from: otakar on November 05, 2009, 09:42:14 AM
Kevin, check out this image/thread, also this one is going to give you a little info. Yes, it's taking them a while to release it, but what else is new?

Thanks for that. I had seen these but don't see an answer to the problem of tiles not rendering completely.
Question to Planetside (on the off chance they might read this post) - has this been fixed for the next release?

Oshyan · November 05, 2009, 11:43:58 PM

Tile rendering issues are usually memory-related. Memory management has not been significantly changed in the upcoming version. The recommended fix remains the same - optimize your scene for memory efficiency (keep population sizes to only what they need to be, avoid large textures if possible), try reducing cache size, and if possible upgrade your memory and use a 64 bit OS. Our focus for addressing this is on moving to 64 bit, so being on a 64 bit OS will mean you're well placed to take advantage of the increased memory addressing once that version is available.

- Oshyan

Kevin F · November 06, 2009, 03:23:08 AM

Thanks for that Oshyan, the fixes you recommend obviously will help, but I'll have to wait a while for any upgrade to my system.

Interestingly, I returned to this scene to add a few extra objects i.e. a frog on a lillypad for example and found that if I positioned the frog on a lillypad and limited the crop area to just the lillypad and a little extra around it, then tiles within this small area would not render properly at all. If I increased the area to say half the width of the image then with no other changes, it rendered fully. This was reproducible.
Going back to the original tile problems I had, I noticed that it was always the same areas (tiles) that would not render fully until changes to populations etc.were made. Again these were reproducible for a given set of variables.