I've always been fascinated with the hyper-real look of Terragen renders. It's rare one sees the same in Vue, and I always wondered why. If you've never seen any of Luc Bianco's Terragen renderings, then you're in for a treat.

I grabbed one of his better renders, and attempted to re-create in Vue. Here's his most wonderful rendering (I've resampled it down to 800 pixels wide to fit within forum guidelines).

As you can see, it really is stunning in it's sharpness and accuracy. While not quite there yet, I have been able to duplicate a bit of the same qualities in Vue using a Standard atmosphere, and rendered out at the same original size (1024 x768) then resampled exactly the same way down to 800 pixels wide. The difference is the below rendering, while not as great as Luc's, only took 7 minutes on my 2 year old Sony laptop (Core Duo 1.8Ghz, 1GB RAM).

I've played around with the textures, and will continue this experiment to see if I can improve upon them-- especially the grass texture which is so fine in the Terragen render.

Comments welcome, Chipp

You've done a terrific job.  That really looks like a Terragen render!

Nice comparison.... it would be good to know how long the Terragen render took.

The short answer to your question (why the difference in quality) is that Terragen's quality comes at a price of very long render times.

It is possible to get to the samimilar levels of quality in Vue, but then again, at the cost of longer render times.

It is not possible to get the same results in both software simply because the render engines are different.

Chipp, You've done a beautiful job replicating his image. I've brought up this subject before and was told by a few that Vue can create the same amount of detail as a Terragen Render, but I still hink the Terragen renders are more detailed. That said, I have only dabbled in Terragen, but with T2 to be relaeased on Dec. 15, I might give it another try, but I don't think it will ever be as fun to use as Vue. Do you think it's just in the textures or do the meshes have a higher polygon count too? Your image has a little fog or haze which pushes the distant hills further back, while the top one looks somewhat flatter without the fog. What if you turn the fog to "0" so the front terrains are more clear and add more haze to keep the distant land so it looks further back. Just a thought. Overall a Very Realistic image! :)

Quote - The short answer to your question (why the difference in quality) is that Terragen's quality comes at a price of very long render times.

Yep, Agiel, I do understand that point. But, I believe I can create a very close approximation to a 'Terragen' look using the right materials and the correct render settings. And that's what this 'excursion' is all about.

My guess is Terragen has a very sophisticated anti-aliasing routine which maintains the 'noise' in the texture, while still providing for an aliased look to the overall image. I'm trying different rendering settings to see how close I can get to that. The big problem is Vue's default aliasing schemes, pretty much kill any fine texture in a faraway object.

Another guess would be Terragen animations would 'snap,crackle and pop' all over the place because of this anti-aliasing. There are certainly trade-offs.

Quote - Do you think it's just in the textures or do the meshes have a higher polygon count too?

Yep, I think it's 'in the textures' and the 'render settings.' The polygon count I doubt is an issue as Vue can do procedural terrains, and Terragen 0.9 can't. Furthermore, IMO, the mode of creating a scene in Terragen (look around) effectively obfuscates the majority of the polys in a terrain.

Quote - Your image has a little fog or haze which pushes the distant hills further back, while the top one looks somewhat flatter without the fog. What if you turn the fog to "0" so the front terrains are more clear and add more haze to keep the distant land so it looks further back. Just a thought. Overall a Very Realistic image! :)

LMcLean, good find. Actually there is really no fog/haze effect on the terrain on the left. The mat for the rear terrain was so poor, I decided to move it back a bit and use a little fog to create a sense of distance. I'll try and fix than in upcoming renderings. Stay tuned ;-)

Well I have taken the other path because as old terragen did not allow import or support any vegetation it was always missing that worldly look Vue is so good at. With the advent of TG2TP we have been able to import .obj as well as a number of other formats I don't use, but Vue exports quite nice .3ds objects which also include the necessary alpha colour and bump maps as well so I have done some of those using Vue6INF PLE as I can really only afford free stuff[hence I don't have a TG license yet] and converted them to .obj in an app called POSERay that makes an .obj that TG2TP reads quite well. I think these 2 apps work quite well together as opposed to vs. each other.
Here are a couple of renders in TG2 with Vue objects imported as said.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1498989&member

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1495177&member

and this one featuring Vue Carex grass clump

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1430055&member

Terragen render's material is more good.

vue can get same effect,but it need yourself to do a complex material.

vue have no a good ready-made mountain material.

you need to pay for this  type of good material at some website.

Funny how Vue's fractals can be tweaked to every single parameter, but still can't look as good as TG's , which are the simplest around, and have only a couple of parameters to work on ( I'm talking about TG 0.9, not TG2TP) and the render times are not so high, I disagree on this. But as Bobby said, no vegetation in TG 0.9, and if you want to go the TG2 way, then you're in for a massive headeache, frustration, and long, long, long render times.
TG0.9 had cool plug ins for water, like shorelines and waves that Vue can do, but TG does it a lot faster. But the in new version these  plugins don't work anymore.
TG's renderer is fantastic, I agree, but when I see vegetation in the Terragen gallery, most of the times, I feel there is something wrong with the shading/anti aliasing/level of detail in the leaves, I dunno, but there is definitely something that isn't quite right with imported objects.

Here's another, IMO, better one. Still not quite TG, but getting there. I've improved the grass layers as well as some of the other layers. The terrain editor in Vue is tough to get a passable mountain. I took the Fog and Haze off of this one.

Quote - The short answer to your question (why the difference in quality) is that Terragen's quality comes at a price of very long render times.

A long render in Vue is measured in hours; in TG2TP in hundreds of hours...

Bye!!!

Terragen seems to have always had better noise reduction in their render engine - probably because they are using a second pass Fast Fourier type noise reduction transform as part of its rendering stack (I'm only guessing on this).  There are several inexpensive photoshop compatible noise reduction post processing tools which can produce exactly the same effect ( I use one called Neat Image).  Terragen can produce some very nice looking terrains, but it's a poor mans Vue IMHO because it doesn't have a high powered Veg solution or sophisticated atmospheric engine like Vue.  I've also heard that TG2 is exrcruciatingly slow.  Also, I wouldn't hold your breath on the Dec 15th release date.  They have been promising TG2 for the past 3 years.

The last rendering (above) took 3 minutes 20 seconds on a WinXP Intel Core 2 CPU 6600 with 2 GB's RAM. Have to say it HAD to be faster than the original Terragen one.

Here's Chipp's Vue Image with the Neat plugin noise reduction applied to remove some of the high frequency noise:

Wow, that's great Dave. What are your Neat settings for that? It really makes a HUGE difference!

One thing I noticed flipping back and forth between the TG image and the Vue image is that the water in the TG image appears to have less small noise in it's surface and lacks blurred reflection.  This gives the image a crisper look but is less realistic to my eye (although that may be because when I looked at the Mersey last Saturday it was choppy from the wind and messy from the heavy rain).

The other thing that strikes me is that I prefer your texture on the hills at lower altitude as it has more detail than the TG texture which is much of a muchness from top to bottom of the hills with only a small band of sand just at the water's edge.  The areas of grass on the TG texture seem larger to me and a slightly more vibrant green.  The vertical TG rock surfaces includes some sort of veins which may be in the model but I'm guessing it's the texture.  These give an appearance of fissures running up the rock's surface.

Quote - Wow, that's great Dave. What are your Neat settings for that? It really makes a HUGE difference!

I didn't save the settings, but I just clipped out the high frequency noises using the "Y" channel and adjusting it to taste.  The base image you created was already pretty clean to begin with.  By the way, I agree with Mark that your image is much more realistic than the the Terragen render. 

Hey Chipp,

I haven't posted here in ages, but I wanted to jump in because this really caught my eye.  The way you've nudged the Vue render is really interesting.  You mentioned turning off haze and fog, and improving the grass layers and I can really see the difference there.  How did you improve the grass layer?

I agree that the most conspicuos difference is the Terragen render has that glass-like  smoothness to... just about everything.  Vue has that in the atmostphere and you've gone a good way to getting this in Vue's grass material too.

Keep it up!  It looks great so far!

-Jim

material  still need to improve.
just go on.

Thanks all for the comments. One thing about TG is there never seems to be any indication of a model's scale. In all the renderings I've seen, that one thing stands out. Nothing to indicate just how far one is away from the objects being rendered. I believe this works to TG's advantage.

In Vue, the minute I add a tree or other scale defining object, the scene becomes totally different and loses some of it's intrique. I believe this is akin to 'viewer completion' in drawing, where lines are intentionally left off a drawing so that the viewer can complete the drawing, forcing the viewer to interact with it mentally, which for many creates a greater affinity for the drawing.

Perhaps TG does the same. Without scale, our mind tends to bounce around the scene, searching for something to indicate scale, but never finding anything. We are therefore more mentally involved in the image.

Or perhaps this is all just poppycock.

You're right, Chipp, there was no sense of scale in TG0.9, only the terrain size, which acted very differently from Vue. In Vue, whether the terrain is 256x256 or 4096, the terrain is the exact same size, it just has more definition.
In TG 0.9, a 4096 terrain  is 4 times larger than a 256 terrain, and of course has more definition.

Quote - How did you improve the grass layer?

Hi Jim,

Thanks for popping in. I used two layers to create the grass layer. The total terrain texture consists of 6 layers in order:

Surf Layer - a small very luminous fuzzy white (or very light) band at 3.5 meters absolute. This way I know to alway set my water plane at 3.5 and the texture will work, even if the terrain is tilted or resized. This layer will match the 3 material water layer I use so there's no distinct intersection between the terrain and the water. It is top because no matter what, I don't want to see the intersection.

Beach Layer - in this case a pebble-ized sand layer which comes up from the surf. It is second because it will overide any other grass or other layer which is coming down to the waters edge.

Cliff Layer - this is a ridged material which only appear on close to vertical surfaces and adds a stone like material with ridges.

Top Grass - a darker grass which 'fits within' the bottom grass and has an alpha layer.

Bottom Grass - mostly on horizontal or close to horizontal surfaces--doesn't extend to the top and has an alpha layer.

Base - a custom textured rock layer of my own which renders well enough by itself.

I use alpha channels and not transparency channels to create transparency in layers. I save transparency channels for use in Mixed Materials (which the water is).

HTH. Chipp

I think the vue render in comparision looks more CG & plastic. Terragen looks more realistic & like a photo.

I also asked myself how a free software (TG) can make the best (veggie free) landscapes available. I like the razor-sharp textures in TG; in your example Vue looks cheap compared to the TG render...but thankfully one can do so much more with Vue; the Neat-plugin works pretty well creating a sharper image.

I don't disagree, IMO, the Terragen one is still better. But of course, it's the one which I tried to duplicate, and not the other way around;-)

If I were to improve on the render I'd do the following:

1. Fix the water...the chopped procedural water of Terragen has always looked CG to me, and is a dead giveaway it's a TG render;

2. Add reflected light

3. Add fog and haze

4. For ultra-real, I'd have to add some vegetation. Another dead giveaway for the TG look is the lack of any scale defining element or vegetation.

I still feel Vue is only a couple killer mats away from creating renderings which equal Terragen. And I agree with Bruno, I've yet to see a Terragen2 render with 'veggies' which looks right.

Oh boy...another yummy thread..... Here's my contribution....**Using Terragen as a texture generator for Vue.
**
Ever since I first started with Bryce and Vue, I have used Terragen as my main texture generator for these apps. Except for a few photo driven mats, the majority of my earth mats use Terragen surfaces as their base.  There's just something about Terragen's fractal distribution of colors that really floats my boat.  I make a bunch of them in different color schemes...grays, browns, greens etc..and then use them either alone or as the base for more complex materials.

Here's how.....

Terragen:

1. No need to make a terrain, the surface will appear by default on the flat plane. Make a surface....I usually start rather dark and add several gradually lighter child layers of roughly the same hue. Or, make it freaky...up to you. Tweak your distributions to taste. Tweak your bump to taste as well.

2. Get rid of atmospheric haze and blue.

3. Take the sun up a bit more towards 12 0 clock to get rid of most of the extreme bump shadow. Or leave it ....up to you.

4. Place your camera where you want it and at what altitude you want it.

5. Now adjust the pitch to be -90 degrees...straight down.

6. Take your texture snapshot.  I use 800x800.

Post:

1. Make seamless in either Photoshop or other texture tool. 

2. Enhance to taste.

Vue:

Apply like any other image texture in Vue.

Now an added bonus:

Take your Terragen surface into PSP or Photoshop, and go Image/ Adjustments/ Threshold and turn that baby into black and white. Add gaussian blur to taste. 
Now you have a Terragen based distribution map for Vue material mixing.....

I'll post a sample or two when I get home from work.

M

damn that's a good idea - why didn't I think of that !!

I have done similar tricks with Terragen 0.9x for terrains in Imagine3D with the added benefit that if you want a terrain from terragen there's a plug in that saves them out as .lwo and is quite good tho very hi res. If I can locate one still on my drive I as well will try to post a sample....great exploratory thread folks.. ...

I'm pretty sure I've heard of the that trick before, Mark, and I think I got it from your website or somewhere else online? Do you remember posting it somewhere else? I really look forward to what you can do with it...

-Chipp

Another thing just struck me (I should stop looking).

The TG terrain is all one piece so has a more natural look as one formation flows into the next while there are definite breaks between the 3 terrains you've used Chipp.

Keep looking Mark! Yup, you're correct...Heck it's hard enough creating 1 decent terrain in Vue, much less a contiguous one with 3 or more! I really like TG's terrain in THAT image. Wish I could figure out how to create a similar one in Vue...(and help is appreciated!)

Attached Link: TGVue

And if you want a treat, visit Bill Munn's tutorial. He uses Bryce as his texture 'painting' tool for use in other apps.  Note how he uses terrain renders to texture an animal's horn...

http://www.billmunnsgallery.com/brycetut.html

Back to play some more now....:)

M

Don't forget about GeoControl at http://www.cajomi.de/GeoControl/geocontrol_gallery.htm

It can help with terrain making.

Fun stuff for sure.....

M

Chipp...why do you use the alpha channel with layers instead of the transparency? Is it just your preference or another reason? 

One thing I've noticed using layers and mixes during these recent discussions is that often they wind up in the same place and pretty much look the same in the hierarchy. It's hard to know, for me at this point, when to do a layer mat and when to do a mix and for what desired effects. (besides the cool environmental controls)  Maybe before these threads are done we'll have enough info to formulate some basic guidelines for their use....

Hey Mark,

Here's where my head is currently at (could change any minute mind you!)

IMHO, Layers are where it's at for most terrain stuff. The nice thing about alpha's is you can use the slider to control contribution if you like. Transparency does have the slider, but it's not as easy to control contribution, IMO. Also, it appears e-on uses the alpha approach as well.

The trick is to save your layers as seperate layer mats, then load them in (with their included environmental settings) when you need them. It makes sense, and is how other programs like Lightwave do it.

But, some mats need to be mixed materials. In particular the mats which allow for creating shorelines tend to want to be mixed materials as they don't work properly in the layers paradigm (has anyone figured out how to use the Foam layer in the Material Layers collection?).

Also, interesting enough is the fact I can't use transparency for the bottom  layer in  some of the mixed materials for some reason. I'm still researching..but think it might be a bug worth reporting.

Anyway, that's my current thinking. HTH.

-Chipp

The other reason that the Alpha channel is more effective than the transparency channel for layered materials is that you can boost the Alpha channel intensity beyond 100% (which is 0 on the Vue Alpha Boost Slider).  In some cases, I have used procedural noises to generate the Alpha for a particular layer.  Boosting the Alpha Value beyond 0 will intensify the coverage of the layer without having to adjust the alpha map or alpha noise.   The point is moot if you only want to restrict the Alpha intensity to values of 0 or below - in which case Alpha and Transparency are identical

Thanks guys for the expo......imprinting in the brain......

Been working on some procedural textures and mostly on trying to find a good fractal function which scales well both close up and in the distance. Here's a test of a not yet finished mountain material. The top image shows 3 terrains, one up close, and the other 2 in the distance. The bottom picture shows the relative scale of each terrain in the scene.

Chipp ... I like yours better! The Terragen image is too clean, and a bit unnatural as a result.

How did you achieve your water effect? I've tried to create this flat but gently disturbed water surface. The closest I've got is a normal infinite plane with an OpenOcean bump map.

If you have used Open Ocean, what settings have you used?

Thanks
Richard

Quote - Been working on some procedural textures and mostly on trying to find a good fractal function which scales well both close up and in the distance. Here's a test of a not yet finished mountain material. The top image shows 3 terrains, one up close, and the other 2 in the distance. The bottom picture shows the relative scale of each terrain in the scene. > Quote - When I viewed the first image I thought the terrain's were all relatively close in size, but then I saw the second image and there is a huge size difference, so if you are trying to find a good material which scales both close up and in the distance I think you have done a good job. So are you using the function Editor exclusively for this material or an image and the Function Editor? So what's the trick in making the material look good on different sized terrains? My terrain materials always need to be scaled appropriate to their terrain size.

Quote - The other reason that the Alpha channel is more effective than the transparency channel for layered materials is that you can boost the Alpha channel intensity beyond 100% (which is 0 on the Vue Alpha Boost Slider).  In some cases, I have used procedural noises to generate the Alpha for a particular layer.  Boosting the Alpha Value beyond 0 will intensify the coverage of the layer without having to adjust the alpha map or alpha noise.   The point is moot if you only want to restrict the Alpha intensity to values of 0 or below - in which case Alpha and Transparency are identical

One other thing I forgot to add about the differences between Alpha and Transparency is that use of the Alpha Channel can facilitate layer blending modes, although this is not yet implemented in Vue.  It is reasonable to assume that Alpha Layer Blending modes such as overlay, dodge, burn, screen, hard light, etc.  will be implemented in future Vue releases - just speculating. 

Joe Chip created this method of getting the continuous flow of terrain as mentioned in the earlier posts. He used a caustic wave map from the sea kit on the terrain to get that effect. I think he succeeds quite well. Since he showed me this I've been trying different wavemaps and grayscales.. Haven't made any good mountains yet...but I've got some killer sand dunes....

I must say the alpha and layers thing is way cool.....:)

Caustic wave map?  Do you mean from SeaVue?  That would be a hell of another reason for me to get it (not that I need more)

Hello

It is indeed a caustic wavemap from the SeaVue kit.
I sent Mark many examples of what can be achieved using my method.
I am using vue6esp and Mark is trialing the method in vue6inf................
Its just a matter of trying different settings in the terrain editor.
In the image monsoon posted above ;
256x256 terrain redered in final at 300 dpi and a Monsoon texture.
About 30 seconds to acheive the terrain effect.
I,m not good at imbedding images in posts but anyone wanting further examples , just mail me .

joechip

Wow Mark, that's looking good.

Below is my latest test. I've been playing around alot with both Terragen and Vue. In fact, I've carefully disected one of Terragen's great grass layers and have tried my best to reproduce it in Vue using layers and the fast perlin fractal. With some luck, I think I've got it.

Also, I've developed what I think to be a good workflow between Layers and Mixed Materials. Turns out I need both. Here's how I do it. I use Layers to create a sophisticated material...like the TerraGrass one I mentioned with 5 seperate layers. I create another set of layers for the beach, the vertical surfaces, the top, the sea foam and so on. When my layers are complete, I then create a massive Mixed Materials mat which uses bright colors for each 'segment' of the mountain. So, I'll have the mountain material which is comprised of the beach (lower mountain) and upper mountain, and the beach will be a mixed material comprised of the sand and the surf. The upper mountain is a mixed material of the top of the mountain the the middle of the mountain..and so forth and so on.

Once my Mixed Material Mountain is complete (with all garish colors in place), I can then apply it on a terrain or set of terrains, and adjust until the colors are tweaked the way I like them, typically by adjusting only the mixing ratio slider. Once there, I simple replace each of the simple mixed mats with a more complicated layer mat, like my TerraGrass. It all sound complicated, but works really well and is very easy to edit and tweak.

I'll be putting together a group of 'TerraMats' along with a description on how to use them shortly.

About the image below: The terrain was created in Terragen and exported as 16-bit RAW, converted to 16-bit Tif in Pshop and then imported into Vue. I then 'hunted' for a good view, a la Terragen does. I'm using a standard atmosphere and a single 'TerraMountain' texture created per above. I'm still using the same old Shasta water with a Simple Fractal-> Water Rough applied as a bump. I've my own shoreline which still needs work. Oh, and btw, other than a map in the shore water (from SeaVue), I don't use ANY other bitmaps...this whole thing is done with procedural mapping and fractals. I have 'discovered' a few nifty fractal functions along the way, which I hope to share soon.

I've still got some work to do on some of the other textures, but it's coming along nicely I believe.

That looks absolutely amazing.  I would love to see those MATs when you have them done.

Here's a few more from the same scene. All I've done is move the camera around to find another view...like taking snapshots on vacation! These are good for me to be able to figure out what mats need tweaking. The mountain terrain is a collection of 6 mixed materials and a total of 10 layers. It renders surprisingly fast. Each of these renders originate at 1600 pixels wide, then I reduce them by 50% in Pshop, Unsharp Mask and adjust levels and HSV (only slightly).

They take about 10 minutes a piece to render using my 4 node HyperVue network at home. That speed is something I'm sure the Terragen folks aren't used to ;-)

As you can see, I still need a bit more work on the mats. IMO, the close up of the grass and sandy area is pretty nice.

Whoa dude!!  That mountain mat is awesome!   That whole scene is awesome!

I've been relying on bitmaps for so long...I've tended to shy away from procedurals. But that's changing...I just got AsileFX's Advanced Material Creation and am studying.....

I like your process of creating the complex mats first via layers and then mixing the resultant 'simple' mats..... I'm still struggling with proper distribution with alpha channels and trying to get the right blend between layers.

Love that Shasta water....

This thread and LMclean's thread has been very informative and enlightening....

Checking out GeoControl...the upcoming release looks very promising for Vue.

Been playing with Joe Chip's method of making the mountain ranges and it seems there are mixing possibilities for the terrain editor as well......who woulda thunk it....mountains from waves lol.......lots of possibilities with throwing a procedural on top of a grayscale..and mixing more than one grayscale together in PS before hand....

Wish I didn't have to go to work...just wanna bang on my keyboard all day lol...

Those are very good.  I'm gonna have to buckle down and study the function editor one of these days

Wow, wow, wow Chipp........ok that's it....I'm callin' in sick......