Artisitc Merits

Sorry Petty. Out of curiosity though, what does the atmosphere setting indicate? Pressure, light, or something exclusive to the rendering program?

Rough test render- needs twice as many frame so make it smoother though and not had time yet to add sound effects, or the end of the animation I have planned for that matter.

Also what is interesting about this, well to me anyway, is that its the exact same landscape as the glen picture and video- I just stripped away all the models (ie the vegetation) to leave the surface and stone shaders, then I bunged something called a twist and shear shader onto the terrain- which does what it says, it twists and shears.
After that just added in the ship and planet models.
Render times were better as it being a rock in space no atmosphere to render- which is a huge saving, from about 13 minutes a frame to about 4.

Out of curiosity though, what does the atmosphere setting indicate? Pressure, light, or something exclusive to the rendering program?- Eldo

Well it uses samples. Or that's what they are called, I tried googling an explanation but its so much marsh gas to me- for practical purposes all you need to know is that the higher the sample setting the better quality- to a point, there's a trade off here- a rather big one.
Even side by side the eye would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a picture with a detail setting of 1 and a picture with a detail setting of 0.9 But the 1 setting version might take you half an hour longer to render.
There is an exponential trade off between increasing sample numbers and render times.
Its therefore about finding a balance and it depends what sort of picture you are doing.

If it has lots of God Rays, like the one I posted a page or so back, then atmosphere samples are crucial.

This is best illustrated with an example I just knocked up.

The following two renders are identical on every setting, bar one- the atmosphere setting.
In the first picture it is set at 16 samples (the setting the program loads as its default).
The second picture has an atmosphere sample of 164 (very high- most recommend not going above 148 but I find for god rays you need a little more).





As you can see in the first one, with the low sample rate there is a hell of a lot of 'noise' pixelation and roughness wherever the contrast is very high, where the 'god-rays' pass in front of the clouds, and at the cloud edge where the sun is.
Whereas its all much smoother and less grainy in the second one.

There are lots of different setting, clouds, atmosphere, ground detail ect and they all have this balance of finding what you need and trading off render times.
Its usually best to render at the default settings first and see where the problems are- if like above there is a lot of graininess in the atmosphere then its probably the atmos setting, but it might not be, the cloud settings might need tweaked.
So there's a fair bit of experimenting picture to picture to get a balance between quality and how long it takes.

Hope that sort of helps explain it.

That does sort of make sense to me. Thanks Petty!

The problem when doing it lies in that increasing a sample setting by say 0.5 might only give you a very small increase in quality but a substantially longer render time, with that time becoming ever increasing the higher the sample rate, with diminishing improvements in quality.
The trick is in working out the problem first. Which sample rate needs increasing. Is it the atmosphere or something else- having very tall, or deep, clouds increases the cloud samples automatically, as does making the cloud edges sharper- but then if there is an issues with the edges that might also be an anti-aliasing issue, a whole other setting all together from samples.
So it tends to take several renders to get to the finished one as problems are narrowed down and eliminated.

Thought I may as well make use of that sky I knocked up for the atmos explanation for you Eldo-

That looks awesome! Love the mountains in the back behind the "god beams".

Thanks- it did come out quite nice- trying to do something now with a quite different feel- but same sky. Seemed a nice demonstration of how you can alter aspects of a scene for a completely different look or feel.

Same sky different mood- 'Waiting for the Rain'

Don't suppose you could render up some real rain Downunder, Petty?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Thanks Azriel- thought know one had noticed it!

Couple of fan pictures I made in terragen-

Doctor Who-



Classic 50's meets musical Tripods on Horsell Common-

That last one is SO WOTWs, it looks too real, too scary ! Id pee myself if I saw that plodding about

I like the Dr Who pic !

Thanks Azriel- heres another War of the Worlds inspired picture-

Eeeeeeee You sure know how to dish out the willies

I like that

You sure know how to dish out the willies - Azriel

I have a box full of 'em!

Cheers Figg!

Mucking about with the strata shader-

I like that

Cheers Azriel- taking what I've learned from creating a 'natural' looking stratified canyon and giving it a Petty twist for a new picture.

Talking of twists.........

Proof you cant look evil in a kilt- they just make you so friendly and welcoming.

right here you go, the result of me arsing about with rock and strata shaders using my own unique 'oh thats gone horribly wrong but I like it!' methodology.