Texturing landscapes to look good in full sun is tough!

Donnie

Looking good!

Honest opinion.......... The background part of it (the mountains,hills,water,clouds,sky) looks great. A- work. The trees in the foreground don't look right. They look plastic and not vey organic. I havn't played with the tree maker in Carrara 3 yet, are those from that? The trees just don't work for me... Just my 2 cents... kaom

I think what the trees need are better textures. They are just too bright for the rest of the scene. Looking good with everything else thus far...maybe some low intensity fog down by the river... Brian brian@vizualds.com http://www.vizualds.com

I think your textures on the background stuff is coming along fine. One of the weaknesses I think Carrara has are the clouds. If C could produce clouds like Terragen, well watch the heck out! It's obvious that softwares which can produce stunning landscapes have a real strong chance at excelling (Bryce, Terragen). The "wind" atmosphere in C which is currently there has lots of great features but really does fall short on some things. It would be nice to have a lot more control over most of that stuff. Terragen is coming out with a new version that generates really impressive volumetric clouds. They rock. Another thing that makes it tough for outdoor landscapes is making the texture look great close up AND far away. Another example of something that Terragen can tear up. While Terragen is strictly for landscapes, I'd love to see the same kinds of tools absorbed into C. It would realy boost the software. There are lots of technical issues surrounding such an endeaver due to C being a more formal, rigorous, mechanical code versus restricted to outdoor panaorams. I'm sure such difficulties could be overcome. I think you're on your way. I've found that re-texturing the plants generated by the plant engine in C can make great plants and you'll figure it out. -Kix

Thanks for the honest opinions everyone. I will see if I can work on the vegetation this weekend. Yeah, the plant generator itself is great, but the texturing needs to be further explored. I second the praise for Terragen. I have been using it since version 6.9 I believe. Actually, if Carrara could produce the skies Terragen can do now it would be great. I've seen the volumetric examples and they are impressive, but even Terragens' skies now are breathtaking. This is really more of a challenge to see if I can recreate something that is easy in dedicated landscape programs. I like a challenge. I will try to give it some more attention this weekend when I have some time. Donnie

Hey, I've been there. North out of Jackson Hole toward the Grand Tetons.

Do you need a reference shot? Click through to get a bigger version.

I find that when doing procedural shaders, it often helps to have a reference image. Instead of trying to create colors from memory, I load the image in Carrara and use the dropper off the color button to sample the colors from the image.

Good luck,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Eric: I would be interested in knowing how you get the colors of an image to show in the dropper off the color button ( I believe this is in the shader room). Do you load the image as a background, backdrop image? Is this somewhere in the preferences? When I do it , the colors that show up in the dropper off the color button are the same or similar to the ones that show up in the color mixer option of the color picker. Am I misunderstanding what you wrote? Thanks, FM

FM, Load the image in Carrara with a File|Open and change file type to image. So to sample shader colors, switch to the texture room, select File|Open, grab your image, on the color swatch, click the little black arrow at the bottom right corner, and slide your mouse over to the image. As you slide your mouse over the image, it will update the color swatch to spot where your mouse is hovering. I also use it to get accurate sky colors. In this case you need to go into Carrara's preferences and turn off the Dim Desktop for Dialogs option under UI Effects. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

I'll second azul's comment -- very useful indeed! I wonder how many other little black arrows and features there are lurking around in Carrara that I'm oblivious to! Oh, and I'd agree with what folks have been saying about Donnie's image above.... I've never played with Bryce or Terragen, but have often drooled over the images produced with those packages. Is it possible to use either of those packages to create a sky that you could map into Carrara's background feature? Or into a HUGE sphere you place around your landscape? In the occasional landscape I do, I've often used photographic skies for the backdrop, because you can't beat them. A mentor of mine in the special effects world once mentioned that if you can get the skies right, the rest of an effect shot will work. - Dex

Hi Dex, Yes it is possible to generate images in these programs and then map them to polygons (non shadow casting sphere). I have done this a lot in Lightwave, as Terragen creates much better skies than Lightwaves' native SkyTracer. Plus once the sky is rendered it eliminates that extra processing step of recalculating the sky for each frame, nice time saver. I made a typo in my above post. I have been using Terragen since version 0.6, not "6". Matt Fairclough (developer of Terragen) has said all along that it wont hit a whole number until it is completely ready. Terragen development was slowed somewhat the past few years. Matt took a job with Digital Domain. He was working with them and helped them for their in house projects as far as atmospheric rendering is concerned. Any work he would have done on Terragen while working for them might have been legally challenged so he slowed work on Terragen while he was working for them. I think that endeavour is over now and we all can expect some even greater things from Terragen real soon. Back to Carrara though. For a full modeling and animation program, Carrara has some pretty impressive sky and terrain options now. I dont know if Carrara will ever match Terragen as far as skies are concerned, or if anyone else will either. Matts algorythms for sky generation are hard to match, they are so beautiful and easy to get great looking results. I also use Vue, I find it lacking compared to Terragen with regard to skies. I havnt used Bryce in years, but from what I see posted in galleries, it too is no match for Terragens' atmospheres. Arete, who makes plugins for the higher end 3D apps, has a great plugin that does wonderful true volumetric skies, but again the cost of such plugin is nearly as much as Carrara, I havnt priced it lately. Perhaps Eovia will address the atmosphere creation at some point and add more features, but as it is, considering this is a full featured modeling and animation package it does a respectable job. For me, terrain and skies are secondary. My work does not call for them regularly, although I like to play with them for personal satisfaction. If my work depended on it I think the best solution is a combination of the aforementioned tools. Unfortunately no single program can hit on all cylinders, they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. So far I have found Carrara to provide a good balance of strengths and weaknesses, once again especially considering the price. Sorry for getting off topic there, just wanted to express my satisfaction so far with Carrara. Donnie