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Safe Anchorage
About Truespace Archives
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.
Safe Anchorage // Image Gallery
Post by W!ZARD // Jul 5, 2007, 1:24am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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You are welcome Nez. I like to pass on what I've learned as much of that knowledge was passed onto me.
These techniques are things I've experimented with - If I can pass them on to others.... well it just feels right as so much knowledge has been shared with me in the past.:D
Yeah the shadowcatcher shader is a funny thing (funny peculiar rather than funny ha ha) - sometimes it seems to work beautifully and others it doesn't. :confused: This is where my trial and error learning falls down of course because there are probably things that I haven't thought of trying that work better!
I laughed when I saw your comment about 'gorging yourself on extended experimentation'. I know that feeling and it's so satisfying when you get a result that you like.
Yes the green tint on mt ZRender image was an experiment intended to give a slight greenish tint to the fog for that scene - I was after a lush almost swampy atmosphere.
Finally, you ask about getting the view to match. I often create the background scene in trueSpace, render it out then pop the result straight into the BG shader using ther same lighting and camera setup - this is a good way of dealing with high polycounts on older slower computers.
Another technique when using a BG image from another app or a photographic source; I use the bg shader as a reference and position my camera by lining up the tS ground grid with the implied ground of the BG image. It's a mistake that beginners often make where they don't line up the ground plane of the scene with the ground plane of the bg.
I always picture the classic image of a straight road or railway line (with the compulsory telephone poles) where all the lines converge at the horizon at what is called the vanishing point. By visualising this image against the bg image I can guestimate the apprpriate perspective angles and position my camera so the tS ground grid matches this. After that everything is pretty much lined up.
Hope this helps you too. |
Post by Nez // Jul 5, 2007, 5:13am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Cheers for that. It had occurred to me that if I was creating my background in TS that I could render that out as a 'matte' and bring it back in as a bg shader, but obviously that's not possible for mattes from Terragen (or Vue etc). Useful to know you're just 'eyeing it in' for those - that's what I've been trying to do with the Terragen background but obviously without any straight lines (and typically no horizon) it's a bit of a guesstimate. No real way to determine convergence or vanishing point (like your railway/road situation) and hence difficult to adjust the truspace camera 'lens' settings, if you know what I mean.
I guess one trick if you were using terragen (or similar I guess) would be to sort your viewpoint on your scene, render it out and then modify your terrain, forcing in some striaght lines in to the topography, ideally at several heights, whilst keeping the same camera position. You could then import this new version as your bg shader, determine your alignment/convergence from this and then substitute your 'real' bg shader back in afterwards... hmm, may have to try that! |
Post by W!ZARD // Jul 5, 2007, 8:20pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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If there is water in your Terragen picture that can provide a visual cue to where the perspective horizon and vanishing point are - you can just 'eyeball the tS ground grid so it looks like it's in the same place as the Terragen water plane.
Of course if there is no water in your terragen picture getting the perspective plane right is not so critical. In this case you can just imagine where the water plane might be to get a horizontal reference or even render a quick Terragen image from the same camera point with water in it to give you that visual reference - then just swap out the reference pic for the final bg picture as you've suggested.
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Post by Breech Block // Jun 27, 2008, 5:39pm
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Breech Block
Total Posts: 844
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Great thread Wizard. As Nez has already stated, tons of really useful info tips and tricks and all explained in a plain and simple manner to boot. A veritable gold mine. Thanks for sharing. |
Post by W!ZARD // Jun 27, 2008, 7:27pm
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Great thread Wizard. As Nez has already stated, tons of really useful info tips and tricks and all explained in a plain and simple manner to boot. A veritable gold mine. Thanks for sharing.
Glad you found it of some value Breech - nice to know people are still reading these older threads too. |
Post by Dragneye // Jun 27, 2008, 10:51pm
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Dragneye
Total Posts: 602
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Oh, we're still readin'. :-)
Thank you for the insights, and like Breech Block said, "all explained in a plain and simple manner" - REALLY helps puter-dumb guys like me :D |
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