Which side do you like more?

Do you use fog & haze and if so why?

Can I make the fog or haze appear in the distace only (on hills, mountains etc.) and keep my foreground objects clear of it?

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 19:34

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 19:35

If you want specific fog, I'd recommend using spheres mapped with volumetric materials - higher render time, but MUCH more control of what the fog looks like and where it is.

I always use 0,0.

I tend to use haze solely to fake the effect of distance - i.e. as I sit here looking out my window, I see no haze effects on anything within a couple of hundred meters, but the hills a few kilometers away definitely show that haze effect. So for that image you've got above where everything is pretty close to the camera, I'd probably skip the haze entirely or have it at the smallest setting.

I've seen haze used to good effect to help generate a the reduced visibility in rainy scenes and in underwater images.

For fog or ground fog I tend to use the method that elminster_ZK mentions using volumetric mats - makes it look a little more patchy and less homogenous and more interesting (in my opinion).

The haze only on distant objects you mention - I've done that in bryce using two renders - one with haze, one without, then using an object mask to help me cut/paste the un-hazed foreground onto the hazed background in post.

You could probably do it this same way in Vue (I haven't got that far yet in my Vue learning curve), or there may be other ways.

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 22:49

I use fog and haze as well as volumetric atmospheres quite a bit (OMG, the rendering times!). But I live in Florida and I'm used to that type of "thick" atmosphere. For patchy, special effects-type fog, I use spheres with volumetric materials for more control.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2326114

The volumetric sphere approach is more controllable, but thick fog this way has a habit of showing the sphere/primitive edge in the fog if you are not careful.

There was an interesting thread here a while back on the different effects you can achieve by just altering the Fall-off and Altitude settings.
See the link at the top.

I use haze a lot to simulate distance, like in real life, far away mountains are hazy. I use for for effects, like low fog on ground, but it's not always convincing, so I do like Lingrif and Zack: use flattened spheres with volumetric mats, or I create alpha planes in PS and place them in my scene, so they look like patches of fog, like volumetric spheres, but the render time is a lot quicker. To creates the planes in Photoshop, use the free "cumulus" plug in from Flaming Pear. You can also create volumetric clouds in Terragen, and render that, and use it as alpha planes in Vue, provided you render your clouds against a black sky. Terragen is free for non commercial use at www.planetside.co.uk

Low fog is not very effective because the top of it is so flat and unrealistic - hence the need for the techniques described above. I was experimenting with using thick haze and/or fog indoors for having strange mist in a creepy dungeon. It doesn't work very well, because fog/mist seems to have an inflexible 100% ambience. So where I had a corridor receding into darkness, the fog would be glowing brightly in the distance.

Yes, the fog settings need more flexibility, but I guess e-on didn't have the "creepy" effect in mind when they built it!

I basically scaled this scene to be very large, and then played around with Fog/Haze to get the effect you see.

Prior to using this effect, the scene was too clinical, but (imho) it adds a lot of atmosphere.

Kind regards

It just takes a little bit of experimentation, but the rewards can be well worth it imho.

I don't know if you'd class this as creepy, it's meant to be more of a spiritual image, but I hope you see what I mean: >8o)

Kind regards

Another trick that I used more when I used Bryce is to use BLACK haze. This creates a sense of palpable darkness to make things like cave scenes more menacing.

Thanks everyone, bruno021, "I create alpha planes in PS and place them in my scene, so they look like patches of fog, like volumetric spheres, but the render time is a lot quicker. To creates the planes in Photoshop, use the free "cumulus" plug in from Flaming Pear." I went to Flaming Pear but I didn't see the "cumulus" plug-in anywhere. Did they rename it or do you know where else I can get it? What exactly does this plug-in do it sounds so interesting? Also, I am interested in creating the alpha planes in Photoshop like you mentioned. I have made alpha planes before, but not for fog. Could you explain a little more on how to do this?

I searcheed the web for the cumulus plug in, but it's nowhere to be found anymore, maybe you could contact Flaming Pear and see if they can do something for you. My copy came on a freebie CD from an old Computer arts issue. But you can use Terragen to do it, it's free for non commercial use, and it can produce decent enough clouds to use in Vue. If you need a tutorial on how to do this in terragen, let me know.

Contact AgentSmith in the bryce forum. I think he has permission from them to distribute the plugin via email (assuming I'm thinking of the correct plugin).

bruno021, you said "I create alpha planes in PS and place them in my scene, so they look like patches of fog, like volumetric spheres, but the render time is a lot quicker. To creates the planes in Photoshop, use the free "cumulus" plug in from Flaming Pear." I would like to try this. Is it simply a matter of taking the airbrush and painting black clouds on a white background in Photoshop, then making an alpha mask of it ? Could you explain how one could go about making alpha planes in Photoshop for fog? I am interested in this so it might cut down on render times and I think it might look better than using a volumetric material and a sphere. Thanks

Hi LMcLean Open the Cerro Verde Tutorial scene (by Eran Dinur), and see how the very effective low-hanging mist / fog is made up from 14 alpha planes. Kind regards