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Windy Island
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These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Windy Island // Work in Progress
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 13, 2006, 11:59pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Have you ever thought - I could use a bunch of my earlier models and bung them all into a scene and render it and it won't take long at all? And then found that the quick and easy image you were aiming for took six months to finish? Well, that's what happened here - and it's STILL not finished!! :confused: :confused:
I hope to add more trees, a wharf and some streetlights and some very light fog for atmospheric effect. I'm running into memory problems though so it's going to be interesting to see how it finally turns out.
Everything modelled by me except the ship (next to the lighthouse) and the whitish half-timbered building which are freebies from 3dcommune (IIRC) and will eventually be replaced by original models.
Also I'd like to add some sort of volumetric clouds over the far hills - this is something I've struggled with for ages (unsuccessfully) so if anyone has any suggestions on how to get good looking volumetric clouds please let me know!:D
Any suggestions or criticisms are most welcome - what do you think I should do to improve and complete this picture? (I should add that I'm using tS6.6 at the moment until such time as I can afford to upgrade my hardware to something that will run tS7) |
Post by Shike // Jun 14, 2006, 1:04am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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Ah, looks like a great place to live...the name "Windy Island" might discourage potential house-buyers though ;-)
Volumetric fog you say...that would look nice. In the early days I dabbled a little with pyrocluster..but rather quickly gave up since it takes toooooooooo looooooooong for my limited patience.
You should be able to get rather nice results with cloud textured planes and alphamapping...(I've only used that for controllable ground fog and water-deptheffect, so I'm not sure if it would work for you.)
Comments:
I like this image, especially the precense of the....eh, is it called "blimp" in english ? (the flying thing) It gives the scene something extra, fantasy-technology is something I really like ! :)
Crits:
Were going to say distance fog...but you've already thought about that...;)
..but, not sure if it's an illusion, but does the mountains have a specularity? :confused:
Keep it up ! :D |
Post by TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb // Jun 14, 2006, 3:21am
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TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb
Total Posts: 858
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Beautiful look and feel there W!zard. If you hadn't said tS I'd swear it was a traditional media pic (paint, pencil, etc). Instantly makes me think of a story book.
FWIW, I really like the cloud texture background, you probably don't need volumetric clouds which will cut down your render time. Just my opinion though.
Looking forward to seeing more. |
Post by Chester Desmond // Jun 14, 2006, 4:22am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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A nice looking image so far, the lighting and water are very good.. you can tell it is mid-afternoon. The hills look a little shiny or too smooth though.
Regarding your memory problems, is it mostly during scene manipulation etc or during the render? |
Post by MadMouse // Jun 14, 2006, 9:06am
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MadMouse
Total Posts: 1069
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AH Mr. Wizard is posting piccys again great!!!
I like this one Stephen. its like looking a a bunch of old friends. I've always liked your blimp and lighthouse. I have to agree with Chester about the hills. Too shiny and to flat but it is a WIP so you may have plans already. Do we get treated to a night scene to???
Steve |
Post by GraySho // Jun 15, 2006, 3:58am
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GraySho
Total Posts: 695
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Good to see another wipic from you wiz :) This is getting somewhere. You asked for critics, so here they are.
The texture of the island needs some work. The green looks strange (reminds me of tiberium) and the snow should not cover the steep slopes. The water has something that bugs me. Maybe it's too much reflection or bumpiness or both. Are the settings the same as in your other island picture? That was nice water...if so, maybe the lighting is too bright. The lighting could also be reason why the terrain looks flat, a bit more contrast should help. The trees...plant them on flat terrain rather than steep one. For this POV you can plant low poly trees, so you don't run into memory problems.
That's it for now. Keep on working on this and do your magic :D |
Post by behzad // Jun 15, 2006, 11:42am
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behzad
Total Posts: 173
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I always liked your style. Nice work. |
Post by Délé // Jun 15, 2006, 1:31pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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It's nice to see another wip from you Wizard! It's always fun to watch. Looks pretty good so far, I look forward to some updates. :) |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 15, 2006, 11:03pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Ah thank you all for the comments and suggestions - most appreciated and just what I needed as I was sort of loosing heart with this one a little.
Shike: Thanks Lars - you may be onto a useable solution with your alphamapped cloud plane suggestion. The trees leaves are alphamapped hemispheres and don't render well with tS standard fog.
The "Blimp" is actually a dirigible. Dirigibles have a rigid frame supporting the gas bags and blimps don't. This dirigible is a variation on my first ever large scale model and I've used it in lots of earlier images.
TWWOTW: Thanks Katherine - I'm glad you mentioned the storybook look as the image is ultimately intended for use somewhere in my long term storybook project.
Chester: Hi there, the memory problems are when rendering. I've got quite a lot of different textures not to mention a lot of geometry in there. The first image above took something like 8 hours to render - the reflections and transparency of the water takes a lot of calculations. My machine is also really a little underpowered for images like this.
Madmouse: the idea of a night scene has crossed my mind - either that or a sunset or sunrise. I'm not planning on attempting that though as this location doesn't really feature in the big story and I have other pictures to create.
Graysho: Cheers for the comments. (What is Tiberium?) I'm a bit troubled that you mentioned snow - there's not supposed to be any snow - what you are seeing is gray rock. The texture and heightfield were originally built with terragen so the distribution of grass and rock should be reasonably accurate to the slope and so on. The water - it's similar to the water in some of the castle and Junk pictures - the same basic arrangement of planes and texture, just different settings.
The trees are on the steeper slopes on purpose - the idea is that the trees only grow where it's too steep for sheep and goats to get to them.
For those of you who mentioned the terrain texture - for some reason I overlooked adding any bump which may explain the specular look. The weekend is coming up - hopefully I can make some adjustments and additions and render up another version.
Big thanks to all who commented and suggested alterations. It's always appreciated.:D |
Post by Steinie // Jun 16, 2006, 1:14am
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Steinie
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Tiberium is an alien substance in the game "Command and Conquer"
http://www.cnc-source.com/index.php?page=content/ren/rentiberium
I thought the white stuff was snow too. |
Post by spacekdet // Jun 16, 2006, 10:54am
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spacekdet
Total Posts: 1360
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Something is bothering me about the location of the lighthouse.
They're usually situated as high an elevation as possible so the light is visible further out.
Smaller 'range lights' guide you into the harbor, after the lighthouse on the headland brings you in close. The tower seems short for a 'spark plug' type of lighthouse. I realize it's sort of the focus of the image right now so moving it may not be something you'd want to do.- maybe make it taller?
This has been my two cents. |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 18, 2006, 2:45am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Something is bothering me about the location of the lighthouse.
They're usually situated as high an elevation as possible so the light is visible further out.
Smaller 'range lights' guide you into the harbor, after the lighthouse on the headland brings you in close. The tower seems short for a 'spark plug' type of lighthouse. I realize it's sort of the focus of the image right now so moving it may not be something you'd want to do.- maybe make it taller?
This has been my two cents.
Hmmn - an excellent point Spacekdet! The lighthouse that this one is modeled on is actually quite high on a headland. I've actually done a whole series of lighthouse pics with this model located pretty much at sea level as you see it here. I'll never look at them in the same way again thanks to your comment!!
I'm not going to move it at this stage as rendering this image is a very time consuming process. If I try to render the entire scene in one go I run into memory problems. I got around them by rendering the scene in two halves and joining them up later in a graphics program.
Steinie and Graysho - I've tweaked the landscape texture somewhat and hopefully have removed the suggestion of snow - the whitish patches near the shore are supposed to be sand - the gray stuff is a slate-type rock.
Anyway, here is the result of my latest adjustments. Any further feedback appreciated. |
Post by GraySho // Jun 18, 2006, 3:21am
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GraySho
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The water looks much better now, the scale of the bump map must have been it. The island is better as well, but it seems to be quite low in resolution. I found a good way to use the terragen surfacing method to create overlay masks, I think I will put up a howto-tutorial. Maybe it can help on your project. |
Post by Shike // Jun 18, 2006, 3:39am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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The new texture looks great ! A warmer feeling to it. And I also like the new boat by the lighthouse! :)
Have to admit...I checked out the word "Dirigibles" in the dictionary because I almost thought you made that word up (never heard it before)...but nope, there it was. :D I will probably never remember such a name though.. blimp is easier ;) |
Post by MadMouse // Jun 18, 2006, 7:24am
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MadMouse
Total Posts: 1069
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Big improvements been made here bud. I'm liking it even more now. The one suggestion I would make is the scene could use some atmosphere haze. maybe you could do this using TS6's fog foreground effect on sometime I render a Z depth map using a plug-in like Zrender and then use this as a mask on a blue layer over the top of you image in your favourite paint prog. You need to play around with the masks contrast to get the right balance but when it works it works!
HTH ATB oh and FFO:)
Steve |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 20, 2006, 1:20am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Big improvements been made here bud. I'm liking it even more now. The one suggestion I would make is the scene could use some atmosphere haze. maybe you could do this using TS6's fog foreground effect on sometime I render a Z depth map using a plug-in like Zrender and then use this as a mask on a blue layer over the top of you image in your favourite paint prog. You need to play around with the masks contrast to get the right balance but when it works it works!
HTH ATB oh and FFO:)
Steve
Thanks Mr Mouse. I'm not sure I'll be doing too much more to this one though. It was a hassle to render as I had to do it in two halves or run into memory problems. I did try the fog effect but it didn't go at all well with my alpha mapped trees. Zrender is a possibility though.
Shike: Dirigible is such a good word! Blimp can't compare IMHO - 3 syllables are always better than 1 for a polysyllabophile like me!!:D :D
Graysho - you are right about the island texture looking a little lo-res. I'm not sure what if anything I can do about that. The texture is 2048x2048 pixels so it's already medium large. The thought of going back to terragen and rendering a bigger version is feeling like too much hard work at the moment. I'm interested to see your overlay mask technique. |
Post by splinters // Jun 20, 2006, 2:49am
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splinters
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I like it...:D
Would like to visit as well. |
Post by SteveBe // Jun 23, 2006, 8:50pm
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SteveBe
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Nice image W!ZARD!:) |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 25, 2006, 12:08am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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I like it...:D
Would like to visit as well.
You have to catch the 10:30 dirigible from Inthandonia which arrives mid afternoon if the wind is in the right direction!! ;) . Failing that you can also get there via a two day journey by Dragon Ship from Edisnova Island but you need to book in advance :D
Nice image W!ZARD! Cheers Steve - glad you like it |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 25, 2006, 1:18am
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Matski007
Total Posts: 539
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looking good there, but i reckon the sea needs some work, can see the repeating bump map, not that i could do any better lol, im terrible with water effects. Also im finding it hard to get a sense of scale in the image, it all almost looks like a miniature, you need something in the forground to give a sense of depth, e.g. your looking through a window or the edge of a boat with a few bits of detail, helps make something look more believable, rather than a floating camera in the middle of knowhere, apart from that it looks really awesome |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 25, 2006, 6:10am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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looking good there, but i reckon the sea needs some work, can see the repeating bump map, not that i could do any better lol, im terrible with water effects. Also im finding it hard to get a sense of scale in the image, it all almost looks like a miniature, you need something in the forground to give a sense of depth, e.g. your looking through a window or the edge of a boat with a few bits of detail, helps make something look more believable, rather than a floating camera in the middle of knowhere, apart from that it looks really awesome
Sorry mate but there's no bump map on the sea - it's a procedural texture and has a random cloud pattern imposed to simulate the pattern of wind on the water - therefore any bumpmap repetitions you see are in your own mind.
Your other point is excellent though. I thought the houses and ships and the truck gave a sense of scale but your suggestion of looking through a window is splendid idea - I'll certainly give it some serious consideration. Thanks very much. |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 26, 2006, 1:55am
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Matski007
Total Posts: 539
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my point about scale was that like the ship in the air, could, as far as the observer is concerned, it could be really far away and really massive lol, also i think there needs to be better lighting, what i notice is that you have created like a utopia an unrealsticically perfect world if you know what i mean, but adding things like darker lighting and maybe rain, perhaps rougher sea spmetimes gives more character to the scene, or maybe you could have it set at sunrise with the sun just peeping over the island or horizon which would create some very nice shadows |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 26, 2006, 2:29am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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my point about scale was that like the ship in the air, could, as far as the observer is concerned, it could be really far away and really massive lol, also i think there needs to be better lighting, what i notice is that you have created like a utopia an unrealsticically perfect world if you know what i mean, but adding things like darker lighting and maybe rain, perhaps rougher sea spmetimes gives more character to the scene, or maybe you could have it set at sunrise with the sun just peeping over the island or horizon which would create some very nice shadows
Ah OK. Yes you are right about the airship/dirigible - it has nothing to give it scale. Originally I had the 'sun' positioned so it threw a shadow on the landscape. This gave a visual clue as to where the airship is and how big it is but I didn't like the overall effect of that look. Also there was going to be a hint of mist in the air to create a sense of depth - the dirigible would be quite clear but the background wound be slightly misty.
I'm glad you mentioned the utopian perfection - this was exactly the idea I was trying to convey - a psuedo-real magical world where the weather is always fine and everyone is nice to each other. The sunset idea has merit but I'm specifically after a sunny afternoonish feel. The lighting is much simpler than I usually use due to the ongoing memory problems I've been having. I've got some new ideas though so keep checking in.... I can't quite bring myself to leave this picture as it is so it must want me to work on it some more - if you know what I mean!!:D |
Post by Shike // Jun 26, 2006, 2:51am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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I've got some new ideas though so keep checking in.... I can't quite bring myself to leave this picture as it is so it must want me to work on it some more - if you know what I mean!!:D [/FONT]
Excellent ! :D I was worried that the memoryproblem might get to you, but please keep it up. This thread is a great inspiration...and I get to learn new strange words ;) |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 26, 2006, 3:53am
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Matski007
Total Posts: 539
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if its utopian your looking for, i reckon it would look really cool to have a slight glow to everything, and maybe a rainbow almost like some kind of fantasy drug hallucination lol, make it feel really fantastical |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 28, 2006, 1:36am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Excellent ! :D I was worried that the memoryproblem might get to you, but please keep it up. This thread is a great inspiration...and I get to learn new strange words ;)
Sad to say the memory problem has been a severely limiting factor - hence no updates at the moment I'm afraid. I've not given up though.
if its utopian your looking for, i reckon it would look really cool to have a slight glow to everything, and maybe a rainbow almost like some kind of fantasy drug hallucination lol, make it feel really fantastical
Nice idea but I don't want to go too over-the-top. I'm aiming for a cross between real and fantasy - something that echoes the real world but has a distinct utopian feel. I'm aiming more for 'magical' than anything else. I saw enough fantasy drug hallucinations back in the '80's and I want to avoid making things to trippy - the scenes are intended for a graphic novel-type thing that needs to be suitable for kids and adults - so no nudity, excessive violence or overtly druggy stuff. But thanks for the suggestion - I appreciate the input. |
Post by Matski007 // Jun 28, 2006, 1:51am
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Matski007
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lol i dont mean that druggy! heh i meant like enhanced colours, like how kids see cartoons and stuff anywayafter all fairytales like Alice in Wonderland were based on hallucinations by the writer, beside the point heh, i meant a sort of over exposure type thing in post processing, a little like what ive done in my Sunny Hill Picture (Although its crap heh) |
Post by Alien // Jun 28, 2006, 7:20am
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Alien
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Sad to say the memory problem has been a severely limiting factor - hence no updates at the moment I'm afraid. I've not given up though.
Is memory only a limiting factor when rendering, or at other times too? If it's just when rendering, how small can you compress the scene file, textures, etc? I mean in terms of whether you can get it small enough to send via dial-up. If you can, you've got my email addy. :) |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 29, 2006, 10:43pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Is memory only a limiting factor when rendering, or at other times too? If it's just when rendering, how small can you compress the scene file, textures, etc? I mean in terms of whether you can get it small enough to send via dial-up. If you can, you've got my email addy. :)
Cheers mate - yeah the problem is when rendering - and it's probably due to the number of textures I've got considering that I've bunged in stuff from a whole slew of other old scenes. Theres probably quite a lot I could do simply by using much smaller textures but I'm trying another work around which is rendering OK so far on my other machine as I type. Thanks for the offer though and I'll certainly keep it in mind as an option. The weekend has just started and I'm planning on getting a bit of tSing done. |
Post by W!ZARD // Jul 1, 2006, 6:47am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Well I finally got the result I was looking for and you can see it and comment on it here (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?p=11346#post11346) if you haven't already seen it.
Thanks for the helpful suggestions folks - I've tried to take most of them on board thus the finished job has a different POV and some atmosphereic effect plus a few characters included to try and address the question of scale.
So if you've not seen it please check it out and let me know what you think about how I did.
Cheers
WZRD ;) |
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