When looking at complex city-scapes and vistas of a futuristic nature, I noticed (finally) that ALL of them lack contours such as hills or mountains. In fact, it seems to me that what even Rochr lacks is a consideration of 3D in 3D vistas. Sure, we might have mountains in the backgound,something to block out the white horizon line, but more often than not, it's buildings and structures that are needed - NOT more terrain. This seems to be a common ommision made by even the giants of the CGI industry - even Coruscant was flat. Simcity should have taught us that we CAN build on sloping surfaces. Complex city-scapes have been built on a flat terrain for far too long. I believe we should by now be going the extra mile and building our futuristic city-scapes on mountains and hills, instead of leaving them flat from foreground to horizon. While I have no plans yet to produce anything of this nature I do think it's time to move this type of subject forward. Futuristic city-scapes are often awesome and the work needed to produce them immense, and I applaud those who have successfully tackled this subject. But let's move this one along. Of course, if you know of any work that has what I have suggested here - I'd love to see it! (Written to provoke comment, discussion and advance our ideas. No disrespect to ANY artist inferred or intended.) _____________________________________________________ Jeez, but we really need a spell-checker.

Huh ? Move along to what ? I am addle brained,.........I'm not sure I understand the question, err,........subject.

I've seen a few here and there, but I didn't think about them seriously enough to remember where I've seen them. Hobbit does them in his fantasy scenes with castles and villages. It's easy enough to do -- just have a terrain and "add" the structures. It's just not done regularly in science fiction, I guess -- probably because the assumption is that people in the future would likely flatten the building sites. But I know what you mean. I've played SimCity and loved building the cities on hilly terrain.

creating cities on non-flat terrain is possible using MojoWorld, with the MojoTree plugin, using 'mesh branches' elements to hold city-building meshes. one issue is that the placement of the trees is designed to be naturalistic and randomized, not rigidly in rows... there's a bit of a work-around for that, which requires access to the Pro UI to build function graphs to displace the child branches from the lying-down parent branches up or down to the surface of the planet itself.

Bryster, here's my 'povoked' comment :biggrin: I only understand half of what you're asking though, so if I get this wrong... The bit I 'do' understand is that you're hankering after something that's made-up of elements that give a better feeling of depth and space than elements that don't. That's down to a lot of things I think. Not just what's in the scene, but also the light and (in my opinion), perhaps the most important ... camera placement and angle. The bit I do 'not' understand is how Rochr lacks some consideration of it - lol A lot of his work (two particularily spring to mind), he creates a 'scape, and then sticks something right-up close so that no matter where your eye focuses first, there is a feeling of depth when you move your eye over to another part of the image. You're not only seeing in 3D, but 3-way as well! (Building - Valley - Building-and-Valley) Len. (If the check bounces this time Rochr - I want an original as payment)

Sci fi citys are so huge that the underlying world surface is obscured by the massive over building.....at least thats my understanding.The picture would need to be at street level almost just to see the contours of the roads. If they were small citys then they would/should have the shapes of the surrounding landforms.

Nope. What Bryster says is that all the cities are made on plains. No Rome or San Francisco. Or Zagreb, for that matter. As whether I know something like what you ask for, incidentally, I'm working on such a pic. Coming to a gallery near you, in a foreseeable future. But don't hold your breath. At the moment, I'm designing the sloping part in my head. When it ripens, it will go to the 3D.

I think I understand what Chris is saying. I believe the reason we do not see many Sci-Fi city vistas with hills and mountains is that the implication is made that the works of humankind (or alienkind) have surpassed the very works of nature as far as scale or vastness. Mountains and canyons still dwarf by comparison the greatest structures and buildings that humankind has made thus far into the early 21st century. What better way to show that a advanced civilization can control the entire resources and energy output of a planet, solar system, or even galaxy than to show that nature itself has been conquered. Thus there are no majestic mountains or valleys to conflict visually with the tremendously vast scale of the Sci-fi "dystopian" mega-city. Or, they might be great at building models and piss-poor at making landscapes!

I did an asteroid city once.. does that count?..;)

Yes indeedy! You and drawbridgeP are part of an exclusive club. I guess need to try to model Greg Bears' "Thistledown".

I understand where you are coming from Bryster. It is one of those things I mention to people everytime I see it. Why Flat? We have society asking for us to harmonize with the enviroment but all futurist cities seem to obliterate everything but the bedrock the buildings are placed on. Nature is a thing relogated to "OVER THERE." Hills and mountains in the background, and a lake or river in the foreground. The city is always built between them, always in isolation from the things that drew people to the area hundreds of years before. Every city, town, village on planet Earth is where it is for a reason. Resources, scenery, trade routes, always for a reason. But a lot of futuristic cities seem to be placed for a shot at BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS nomination at the Oscars.

I understand where Chris is coming from, but sometimes sci fi stuff doesn't translate well, I once carefully modelled Larry Nivens ringworld but it looked pants, I used the sizes as defined by Niven but I just couldn't persuade it to look good in a picture, I think it's plain and simple too big to fit in with how I imagined it!

Attached Link: Terrain City Tut

I'm sure I've seen a tut on that somewhere, I think you use terrains to make the cityscapes on, and thus the cities follow the contours of the terrain... but I can't for the life of me remember where I saw that...

I think it was Bryce though... thus the terrains.

Aha!  Try the link:

(Not sure if that was the one I was thinking of though)

Attached Link: Terrain City Test

And here's what Zhann came up with following that tut: see link

> Quote - I think I understand what Chris is saying. I believe the reason we do not see many Sci-Fi city vistas with hills and mountains is that the implication is made that the works of humankind (or alienkind) have surpassed the very works of nature as far as scale or vastness. Mountains and canyons still dwarf by comparison the greatest structures and buildings that humankind has made thus far into the early 21st century. What better way to show that a advanced civilization can control the entire resources and energy output of a planet, solar system, or even galaxy than to show that nature itself has been conquered. Thus there are no majestic mountains or valleys to conflict visually with the tremendously vast scale of the Sci-fi "dystopian" mega-city. Or, they might be great at building models and piss-poor at making landscapes!

I think I will quote Danamo word for word on this one.

As for that tutorial on using a terrains; you should multi-layer that for more definition and variety.

hmmm, I have one in my gallery that has about 12 terrains in it, just a small image and rather flat:

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=986334&Start=1&Artist=frndofyaweh&ByArtist=Yes

LOL, thank's, I'm honored, and a little stunned when someone outside of my family quotes me. When they quote me, well, it's usually when I am at a disadvantage.:a_wink: Terrific image BTW!! I hope people look past the subtlety and really look at the craft that went into this!

Cheers, Dan

Quote - Yes indeedy! You and drawbridgeP are part of an exclusive club. I guess need to try to model Greg Bears' "Thistledown".

What have I done this time?

ROFL, quoted twice in one thread! I'm going to mark this down on my calendar.

Sorry Phil, I guess I was as clear as black plexi on that one.  I've long admired your space station/ecosystem as shown in this pic- http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=677206&Start=127&Artist=drawbridgep&ByArtist=Yes. I've never attempted the like, and I haven't seen many examples of this particular sub-genre ,other than Pakled's "Asteroid City". Someday I may even attempt such a project myself. then I can join the "exclusive club",lol.

Quote - ROFL, quoted twice in one thread! I'm going to mark this down on my calendar.

Sorry Phil, I guess I was as clear as black plexi on that one.  I've long admired your space station/ecosystem as shown in this pic- http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=677206&Start=127&Artist=drawbridgep&ByArtist=Yes. I've never attempted the like, and I haven't seen many examples of this particular sub-genre ,other than Pakled's "Asteroid City". Someday I may even attempt such a project myself. then I can join the "exclusive club",lol.

Oh that!