Walking in the clouds

[riche]

Hi all,

Thought I'd get around to posting up some of my renders, please give feedback as I'm interested in improving them.

[schmeerlap]

Very good first upload. Great clouds. The only thing I'd say is to give the scene more contrast, by (a) decreasing the render gamma setting to 2 or less, and (b) by doing some kind of auto levels or auto contrast in an image editing app post Terragen.

John

[Henry Blewer]

I think I would add some high cirrus clouds to break up the sky. This will also make the light from the sun a little more general.
It's up to you, I add them nearly every render. It might be just a habit I have.

[riche]

I'll try what you've suggest, and post my results back, I have some other questions but they can wait till later

edit: I've applied the changes you've suggested and started a 1280x1024 (decent render), I'll post up the finished one once it's done
edit: Changed done, dropped the contrast to 1.8 and also dropped the gamma, added in high cloud to break up the blue sky.

feedback greatfully accepted.

[Kadri]

It is a good first image Riche .

If it was me i would lower the mountains in the background a little bit . But this is a subjective point of view .
If it is this what you wanted there is no problem.
But in this state and with this shaders  (size ) it feels to me as that the  magnitude of the mountains don't feel right .
By lowering the background mountains the one in the foreground will look more appropriate.

But as i said make what is in your mind and what feels right for you.

Cheers.

Kadri.

[Linda McCarthy]

I think the contrast and decreased gamma lend more definition and depth to the cumulus..and even sharpens the surface on the rock.  In my opinion, the cirrus are too heavy/dense and high.  All in all, nice work, Rich!  Linda

[Henry Blewer]

The cirrus clouds are too sharp edged. I go with an edge sharpness of 0.4 often here. I change the wispiness also, something above 0.85 (tweaks tab of the cloud shader).

It did spread the light around more. Try the contrast adjustment John suggested. All that would be left is populations if you want them. Of course, once you learn more, more tweaks become part of the standard lay out. Keep going, reading, and rendering.

This is coming along really nice.

[schmeerlap]

Forgive the liberty, Riche. I took a copy of your image into Photoshop > applied an Auto Colour adjustment to it (this worked better than either Auto Levels or Auto Contrast with this particular image as they both applied a brown colour cast to the image). And reduced the opacity of the change to 75%. I always take my TG images into Photoshop (image editor) to give them a wee bit more zippitydoodah.
Btw, here's an interesting thread for getting really good cirrus clouds.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5219.0

John

[Gannaingh]

The forground clouds are very realistic, although in the distance more cloud layers/greater variation could be used to break up cloud distribution. Nice work!

[riche]

Forgive the liberty, Riche. I took a copy of your image into Photoshop > applied an Auto Colour adjustment to it (this worked better than either Auto Levels or Auto Contrast with this particular image as they both applied a brown colour cast to the image). And reduced the opacity of the change to 75%. I always take my TG images into Photoshop (image editor) to give them a wee bit more zippitydoodah.
Btw, here's an interesting thread for getting really good cirrus clouds.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5219.0

John

I'm here to learn to render the images better, and you guy/gals have alot more knowledge of the inner workings of TG2 (which I'm still getting to grips with), so I'm just glad everyones been so welcoming and willing to share knowledge and tips.

[riche]

Increased the Cloud depth for added fluffyness, and then altered the contrast/brightness post render.

[domdib]

Those clouds are looking pretty realistic now.

[moodflow]

Clouds looking much better.  I'd add a bit more sample and see if that helps with the very minor graniness that's still there.  Otherwise, I'm really liking them.