I want to be a landscape artist.

I love the way Vue is flexible but,

it seems more and more to me that TerraGen² TP offers a render engine that is much much much more realistic in itself. I'm not a pro certainly not but in average  I see a lot better renders than I see in Vue. It's like TGTP has the "certain something" that Vue doesn't have that makes it's renders so incredibly realistically looking. I managed to get some photorealistic athmospheres but never even close to the atmospheres you see in TGTP.

I'm afraid TGTP is eating Vue up in terms of Landscape rendering. And i really want to focus on 1 program right now now!

What do you think?  Maybe I'm all riding illusions here...

Check out Terrapak by Chipp Walters.  He's done some amazing things with Vue materials. 
A couple of problems with TG2 (at the moment) - the render time is ridiculous.  Until they optimise the render engine it's a bit of a non starter unless you have a few days to dedicate to the render.
Last I looked, obj import is a bit crippled.  You can only import objects with 16 mat zones which does cause problems.

If you take some time to get to know Vue, you'll find it's possible to create some breathtaking landscapes.  Take a look at the E-On picture of the day for example.  Some of those are amazing.

Thank you FrankT.

"Until they optimise the render engine it's a bit of a non starter"

That's exactly what I thought aswell.

It doesn't even have a rendertime estimation.

I don't know why I should get Chipp Walter's Terrapak... I have good see mats, good landmats ( i guess ) but what i'd need would be some atmospheres that have realistic color depth. I don't know, I think many Landscape renders in the Vue Galleyr don't have the "certain something" that would make terrains look so realistic...

Attached Link: Take a look at These

[edit - take a look at the landscape section of the E-On picture of the day]

Quote - I don't know if your version of Vue supports it but take a look at Aerial perspective in the Sky Fog and Haze tab on the spectral atmosphere.  That will give you a distant haze effect.  The atmospheres in Vue are pretty complicated - best thing to do is to set up some sort of reference scene that renders reasonably fast then play around with all the settings.  You'll be amazed at what you come up with (and don't forget to save the good ones :) )

[edit - take a look at the landscape section of the E-On picture of the day]

Yes the gallery is pretty nice. Saw some familiar pics there.

The main reason I wouldn't want to get TerraPak is because I want to learn making complex material layers on my own. Buying or DLing pre-water is ok but I really want to make my own terrain and textures :-)

Are there some free photorealistic spectral athmospheres to download?

take a look at the Cornucopia site and in our own freebies - there are a few atmospheres here and a bunch of free stuff at Cornucopia.

Above all, don't get discouraged :) Vue is a very complex bit of software and takes a lot of figuring out to get the best from it

Quote - take a look at the Cornucopia site and in our own freebies - there are a few atmospheres here and a bunch of free stuff at Cornucopia.

Above all, don't get discouraged :) Vue is a very complex bit of software and takes a lot of figuring out to get the best from it

Yeah definatly.

I would love to use both Vue and Terragen but I feel that i need to focus on 1 right now, that wil probably be Vue, what i started with :-/

What i don't understand is from an image based lighting loading a HDRI picture and Vue asks me if it should set up the lighting to a proper image...after that the image looks...good!?

Thanks

What I'm planning on doing if possible is using TG2 to produce height maps or actual terrains for Vue - then I can use ecosystems etc on them.  I'm already using GeoControl for that and it seems to work pretty well.

When Vue sets up HDRI, bear in mind that for some reason it sets the haze and fog rather high but I use HDRI quite a bit - I bought a DVD from Dosch design who do some amazing HDRI stuff.  Make sure you get Spherical mapped ones though, Vue doesn't use light probe or cubic mapped ones.

Vue or TG... That's an old debate.
My opinion is that it all depends on what you want to do. If your focus is realistic rocky/water landscapes, TG is the way to go. If your focus is everything else, Vue is the way to go. Vue has a better integration with Poser, has ecosystems, has an incredibly powerful material editor, has wind on plants, has a plant editor, has a great lighting system, etc, etc. With Vue, you can make interior scenes as well as exterior scenes.

For the images that I want to create, I could never use TG. I also tried it when I started playing with CG, but quickly realized that I would be extremely limited in my choices. But that was for my images. It all depends on what you want to create, IMHO.
Vue isnt as perfect as TG in realism of rocky/water landscapes but, IMHO, that's a low price to pay for the vast possibilities that it offers.

Agree with Rutra :)

I also use Mojoworld, very overlooked but it can make some jaw dropping alien world stuff.

Vue blows them both utterly out of the water for makign SCENES though.

As for realistic renderers..I've got maxwell, and dream of that being Vue useable, lol !!

vue veruss Maxwell renders

The main difference between Vue and TG renders is that Vue ones look (by default) "dreamy fuzzy" while TG are "razor sharp".

You can get Vue to behave the TG way by giving the postprocessing stage the importance it has. In TG 0.x one renders at double resolution without much antialiasing (because you have no andvanced AA available ), downsamples appropriately and give the result a touch of sharpening. On TG forums/sites there are in depth discussions about these steps.

Then there is a thing to do to textures but I am not writing more about it because I learned this "thing" studying TerraPak documentation... it is a single sentence and I assure you that it is worth by itself the cost of the Pak.

On the other hand, try to make in TG a scene showing a countryside road with lots of different plant species in a dreamy painterly like setting or import many complex objects with lots of textures or doing a final render in less than a week, but here we are in beating-a-skeletonized-horse department...

Bye!!!

Quote - The main difference between Vue and TG renders is that Vue ones look (by default) "dreamy fuzzy" while TG are "razor sharp".

You can get Vue to behave the TG way by giving the postprocessing stage the importance it has. In TG 0.x one renders at double resolution without much antialiasing (because you have no andvanced AA available ), downsamples appropriately and give the result a touch of sharpening. On TG forums/sites there are in depth discussions about these steps.

Then there is a thing to do to textures but I am not writing more about it because I learned this "thing" studying TerraPak documentation... it is a single sentence and I assure you that it is worth by itself the cost of the Pak.

On the other hand, try to make in TG a scene showing a countryside road with lots of different plant species in a dreamy painterly like setting or import many complex objects with lots of textures or doing a final render in less than a week, but here we are in beating-a-skeletonized-horse department...

Bye!!!

I figured out there's options in the Object-AA Settings that i set to either Sharp or Crisp when I have a near texture that's supposed to be sharp.

Quote - What I'm planning on doing if possible is using TG2 to produce height maps or actual terrains for Vue

That'd make no sense.

You have GeoControl so the GC2 beta aswell which is a very good if not the best program for generating and importing terrain into vue.

Again I see no reason for Terrapak atm, I don't want Atms I don't want mats I want to know how to make em correctly

I also use GC2 with Vue. GC2 is a must-have companion for Vue, IMO, because Vue's default terrains are not very realistic.

Yes I agree  Geocontrol is great for terrains importied into Vue

Quote -
I figured out there's options in the Object-AA Settings that i set to either Sharp or Crisp when I have a near texture that's supposed to be sharp.

Nah... another thing... hidden in full sight...

Bye!!!

Quote - > Quote -

I figured out there's options in the Object-AA Settings that i set to either Sharp or Crisp when I have a near texture that's supposed to be sharp.

Nah... another thing... hidden in full sight...

Bye!!!

Is that the little secret? ;)

Where do i find that?

i'm still learning Vue6 Infinite but i find that when i use some simple tricks using clouds, haze, fog and light combinations and by adding Geo Control and Chipps TerraPak  you  can make some realistic scenes.
the basics are fairly easy to pick up but getting into the advance part takes a bit of time i'm finding but i find the more you experiment the faster it sinks in.

you can find some free tutorials at the geeksatplay website.

i'm not familiar with Terregen so i can't comment on it.

Quote - i'm still learning Vue6 Infinite but i find that when i use some simple tricks using clouds, haze, fog and light combinations and by adding Geo Control and Chipps TerraPak  you  can make some realistic scenes.
the basics are fairly easy to pick up but getting into the advance part takes a bit of time i'm finding but i find the more you experiment the faster it sinks in.

you can find some free tutorials at the geeksatplay website.

i'm not familiar with Terregen so i can't comment on it.

Just browse the Terragen section here on Renderosity.
Most pictures there are now from TerraGen2 Tech Preview

It looks and certainly is a generation ahead of Vue in it's technology, but heck it's problematic. It is reported to have render errors, yet no rendertime estimation and the worst no dualcore support.
Atleast till then I better keep my fingers off that, but it's probably going to replace Vue for  pure landscape rendering once it is a bit more towards "beta"

Your Lost River Pic has a good atmosphere I see :-)

Quote - Again I see no reason for Terrapak atm, I don't want Atms I don't want mats I want to know how to make em correctly

While TerraPak has a number of fine textures in it, you might want to take a peek at this thread. It's where the original discussion of Terragen vs Vue took place which generated the TerraPak product. TerraPak is more of a technique than a set of materials. It has a good size manual which takes you through, step-by-step, how to create complicated materials which can also create very realistic scenes.

I was pretty much, like you, concerned over the 'hyper-real' Terragen renders and why I couldn't get the same result in Vue. IMO, one of the problems with Terragen, is it doesn't render scenes with a lot of foliage near as well as Vue-- probably because they don't have EcoSystems which generate a unique instance of all plants.

I also have a collection of free tutorials at my website. The one on Fog and Haze might be helpful for you to look at, but it hasn't been updated to reflect the Spectral atmospheres. But, you should know, there have been a lot of fine rendering using just the standard atmosphere settings.

Another good product to look at is Bruno's atmosphere collections over at C3D. Good luck!

As pointed out above, every app has its pros and cons. Terragen has a highly realistic atmosphere model, especially for volume clouds, very good handling of water transparency and crisp antialising. It also has a very realistic model of material distribution on terrains.

Using TerraPak and especially understanding its tutorials are a good step towards more realistic results. I have also discovered that Geocontrol 2 could be essential : it creates realistic terrain shapes but also has a selection system that is a great improvement on the Vue one.
In Vue, you can select terrain areas with altitude, slope and orientation. Geocontrol adds roughness. You can also select areas affected by erosion filters. This really helps to place materials realistically in your scene.
Check out the image below. Notice that the rock texture is only applied to the "rough" areas, thus making it more realistic than if it had been selected with slope  only. This is a Geocontrol terrain and I used a selection based on roughness to handle material distribution.

I am still not sure that you can achieve the same realism with Vue as the images it produces have a more "illustration" that "photographic" touch, at least the ones I am able to make.
But I once discussed over landscape 3D app choice with Luc Bianco, who is a master Terragen user and he told me that Vue was one to watch as it was evolving very fast.

How do you set up the selection based on roughness Offrench?? I presume it is done in the function editor could you give a quick rundown??

How do you set up the selection based on roughness Offrench?? I presume it is done in the function editor could you give a quick rundown??

This selection is available only in Geocontrol. You then export it as a bitmap and use it in Vue in order to manage the use of different materials or ecosystems. This also works for Geocontrol rivers and erosion systems. I will make a tutorial explaining how to do this when I get Geocontrol 2 beta working again (the current edition has expired and no longer works for me).

Thanks will look forward to the tut.
Geocontrol is great but at the moment I am just creating random terrains and would love to have more control over both the creation and what to do with them once you get them into Vue 6I.

:biggrin:

To have control over the creation process in GC2, I think you should use isolines. That's what I use. I very rarely create just random terrains. Normally, I start with a blank flat terrain, draw some isolines with the general configuration of the terrain I want for the scene I have in mind, and apply some filters, which I also always configure to my taste. Usually, I create several layers of isolines with fine adjustments. It's a really fun process and with great control. If you look at the recent images of my gallery you'll see several examples of this process.

Yes the photorealisitc touch is what I'm missing in Vue. I really don't know how TerraGen ( 2 ) does it but it just looks more realistic from color. I hope that's just an up-to-the-artist thing when it comes to Vue. I see many sceneic pictures in the Vue gallery and most of them look good but the colors are anything but realistic.

In all respects of TerraPak and it's content, if there's a little secret on how to make the textures look more crisp and sharp even on distance, I think that should be public and freeware!

Simple TG2 picture? http://lucbianco.free.fr/2bgal/img/T2_2007/TGD602.jpg

I think Vue can definatly stand tall against TerraGen1 but Terragen2 ...

Has anyone of you guys made TerraGen challenging closeup groundtextures?

Quote - Yes the photorealisitc touch is what I'm missing in Vue. I really don't know how TerraGen ( 2 ) does it but it just looks more realistic from color. I hope that's just an up-to-the-artist thing when it comes to Vue. I see many sceneic pictures in the Vue gallery and most of them look good but the colors are anything but realistic.

To me the colors of the images below look very realistic.

Quote - In all respects of TerraPak and it's content, if there's a little secret on how to make the textures look more crisp and sharp even on distance, I think that should be public and freeware!

There is no one secret or 'magic button' which makes textures look better. There are a number of different techniques in TerraPak which are used to create a more realistic set of textures. Everyone has their own techniques on how to help create the illusion of reality. TG and TG2 keep their textures crisp by using a low-level of AA on their images, so they don't effectively anti-alias the textures, only the edges of objects. Which is why I'm not too fond of how scenes with many plants look like in TG2, as there's typically lots of noise in the plant textures.

Quote - Simple TG2 picture? http://lucbianco.free.fr/2bgal/img/T2_2007/TGD602.jpg

Exactly my point. The plants in that image are too similar in look and color, and too noisy. Plus, IMO,  the rocks are very weird. Last I heard, TG2 didn't support GI or AO or Radiosity, so they will certainly not be able to keep up with Vue when it comes to close-ups like that image.

Also, last I heard, TG2 couldn't render transparent water (like in the sailboat picture above), which is pretty much a deal killer for many of us.

Quote - I think Vue can definatly stand tall against TerraGen1 but Terragen2 ...

I beg to differ, but of course everyone's entitled to their opinion. TG2 and TG both have excellent atmospheric models and both are great at rendering scenes which have 'no apparent scale'. But as soon as you throw objects like plants in the scene, their lack of good AA and a decent lighting model (GI/GA/Radiosity) become a bit of an issue with me.

I do think they have a superb cloud model. Some of the clouds Terragen can create are stunning.

Quote - Has anyone of you guys made TerraGen challenging closeup groundtextures?

My grass texture in TerraPak was created by dissecting carefully the fractals used in TG's superb grass ground texture. It took awhile to match the fractals, because TG uses a different fractal than the one's available in Vue.

Thanks Chipp, I will reconsider :-)

I didn't know that TG2 couldn't handle transparent water, that'd be pretty much a killer!

Talk about the illusion of realism,

Picture of Mark Lawson combining Sea Vue with Terrapak, what a picture!! :O
http://www.cornucopia3d.com/galleries/displayimage.php?pos=-15188

I heard SeaVue requires a latest version of Vue, can someone confirm this? Unfortunately atm i can not update my version atm but will redo my op-system completly anyway.

Oh and Chip,

after using Crisp AA do you still have a sense of it being more blurry than TG renders?

Couple things.
Both TerraPak and SeaVue need Vue6 Esprit or better to work.

If Crisp AA doesn't work better, then try ZERO AA for a specific material. It will render much faster, too. You can turn off AA on a material by material basis in the Material editor (top right).

Sometimes zero AA helps things, sometimes it doesn't. Generally if you texture looks too blurry, you can use it. Never use it on animations.

Thx Chipp but one more thing about TerraPak,

the default rocks look really bad closeup, how is that with the materials that come with TerraPak? On distance they look very nice..On screenshots TG renders show very detailed closeup rocks.

Xpleet,

One of the major problems with the rocks is the geometry itself. Because it is expected that rocks are to be used in EcoSystems and viewed at a distance, there's not enough geometry to render the rocks correctly close up and smoothing artifacts become visible. These artifacts are part of the model and as such are transferred to the texture.

For some reason, I thought one could increase the number of polys on a rock, just like on plants, but I can't find any setting or reference to it. So, I imagine there's not an easy way to do this (anyone?). You might try turning smoothing OFF or set the smoothness to something like 180 degrees to 'help' the artifacts, but there will still be some. Also, you can use bump maps, and especially displacement maps to help offset the artifacts.

IMO, the other 'issue' with rocks, is the default rock textures have too broad a spectrum of colors. This thread here on Rendo talks about creating rocks in TG vs Vue. BTW, the TG renders are a total hack and are actually a composite of one rendering with water and one without, so that the water can appear to be transparent.

TerraPak does not include close-up rock materials, but you can certainly create your own and combine TerraPak materials using the techniques in the 35-page TerraPak e-book.

thank you very much chipp.

I generally use subdivision (in the edit object panel) in order to make rocks smoother.
I have a collection of even smoother rocks edited in Hexagon, but the Vue ones generally look more realistic as they retain some sharp edges.
Using object parametric mapping generally helps get rid of most of the texture stretching.

Here is a test made with my bitmap based textures. I used displacement mapping on the two foreground rocks. This gets more natural, less uniform bumps. Moreover, the rock at the left is an imported one and displacement makes it less smooth.

Chipp is there a Terrapak 2 on the way?:biggrin:

:biggrin:

I've definitely thought about it. Right now I'm working on a 'photoreal interiors technique' package. This one's taken some time, but the results are finally starting to show. Here's a sample rendering in Vue:

Nice !

This kind of rendering was thought to be very difficult to accomplish in Vue :) (we had a few threads about that).

Glad to see we are getting there. This one has the feel of Maxwell or Brazil renders...

Chipp, I think I should give you my credit card info now. That way, when  you're ready with each and every package you make, you can just charge me and send me a download link.

Sheesh.

I can't keep up my own education and VUE development with you and Monsoon keeping so far ahead!!!

That's a really good interior shot there Chipp, very realistic light & shadows.
Alot of quality can be produced within Vue with the right amount of skill & patience.

That's a great interior, the shadows are really clean - did it take long to render ?

That interior looks stunning! XLT work there.

Quote - That's a great interior, the shadows are really clean - did it take long to render ?

I don't remember the exact details, but I think it took some 4 hours or so to render at 1024 x 768 rez. One thing about it, is there are ZERO lights in that scene-- it's all ambient lighting being scattered via radiosity.

Zero lights ??? wow, colour me seriously impressed !

Just like TerraPak where I started by trying to emulate the best parts of a more simple yet beautiful renderer:Terragen, this new interior pak is being created by copying some of the best features of a simple renderer called Podium which works with SketchUp. The picture you see above is from a model which was found on the Podium forum, and rendered by another artist.

In this Podium render, you can see a bit more light bleeding than in the Vue one, and there's even a bit smoother gradation of the picture. But, there are a number of things Podium can't do that Vue can, so my goal was to try and squeeze the most from a Vue render to make it as photoreal as possible, without incurring impossible render times. I spent weeks creating spreadsheets of settings, documenting and collaborating with some of e-on's engineers to finally arrive at what I believe to be acceptable rendertimes and quality.

Now, I just need to 'pakagize' the whole thing, with a really good manual, examples and some freebie scenes to dissect. I was supposed to have this finished a  couple of weeks ago, but real world got in the way. Hopefully I can pick up this weekend and get something out very soon!

wooo! damn nice, Chipp! :)

Maxwell is an amazing renderer, but it's a PIA to work with in regards to cusotmizing materials, as it's so odd vs Vue.

Does the Sharp(less)ness of Vue renders still disappoint you as it does me?

It won't even come close to TG renders, ( even without AA!? ) It really kills a lot of detail Vue could produce i think. And photoshopping it ..well that'd only produce fake details that were not there. hmm

if you crank up the AA settings, you can get Vue as sharp as you want, the render times will go up though - I've always thought TG renders are too sharp.  The real world isn't that sharp (and no, I don't need glasses :biggrin: )

Quote - if you crank up the AA settings, you can get Vue as sharp as you want, the render times will go up though - I've always thought TG renders are too sharp.  The real world isn't that sharp (and no, I don't need glasses :biggrin: )

Well I do need glasses and I have some and i never use em tho, I don't know what the real world looks like lol.

But i know how TG renders look like and even on distance the detail is incredible.

I've discovered that for Vue sharp renders I can go pretty good with those settings:

Object AA - on Texture AA - off

Object AA:

min sub rays : 3
max sub rays : 3

systematic mode, CRISP type

it renders fairly quick! And without zooming in I see no pixelazion of objects. It looks pretty sharp and very CRISP.

Quote - > Quote - if you crank up the AA settings, you can get Vue as sharp as you want, the render times will go up though - I've always thought TG renders are too sharp.  The real world isn't that sharp (and no, I don't need glasses :biggrin: )

Well I do need glasses and I have some and i never use em tho, I don't know what the real world looks like lol.

But i know how TG renders look like and even on distance the detail is incredible.

I've discovered that for Vue sharp renders I can go pretty good with those settings:

Object AA - on Texture AA - off

Object AA:

min sub rays : 3
max sub rays : 3

systematic mode, CRISP type

it renders fairly quick! And without zooming in I see no pixelazion of objects. It looks pretty sharp and very CRISP.

thanks for that tip i been trying to figure that out for awhile.
i'll try a test render on something to see how it does.

Quote - > Quote - > Quote - if you crank up the AA settings, you can get Vue as sharp as you want, the render times will go up though - I've always thought TG renders are too sharp.  The real world isn't that sharp (and no, I don't need glasses :biggrin: )

Well I do need glasses and I have some and i never use em tho, I don't know what the real world looks like lol.

But i know how TG renders look like and even on distance the detail is incredible.

I've discovered that for Vue sharp renders I can go pretty good with those settings:

Object AA - on Texture AA - off

Object AA:

min sub rays : 3
max sub rays : 3

systematic mode, CRISP type

it renders fairly quick! And without zooming in I see no pixelazion of objects. It looks pretty sharp and very CRISP.

thanks for that tip i been trying to figure that out for awhile.
i'll try a test render on something to see how it does.

You're welcome, report me back and see if you can maybe get it even sharper.

Maybe putting minimal subrays to 1, making it even more sharp but not sure.

But max3 is definatly the sharpest one you can get without visible pixelization atleast not on my monitor.

Chipp those stones look AWESOME but Vue as a program really lacks the sharpness, stuff like your stones shouldn't look so washed out. Something's wrong here.

Another thing:

After a render you can test the sharpness by putting the after effect "Gain to +100" that way you can quickly detect how much detail you've produced in the picture.

It's really strange.

Even when i turn all anti aliasing off the edge of the mountain which is bordering into skyblue looks SMOOTH. As if anti aliasing was pure blurage in Vue...

When one has no little tree features to be smoothed out I think one should choose no AA at all.

Quote - When one has no little tree features to be smoothed out I think one should choose no AA at all.

Fact is, it depends. On lots of things. What other objects are in the scene affects significantly how good AA needs to be. Your formula, while maybe good for some TG type scenes, doesn't work well for scenes with foliage close up, or any other objects than mountains, fields and water for that matter.

Also, I've seen cases where a texture looks better anti-aliased as it's too bright and unreal if anti-aliased. So, the material composition also must be taken into consideration. It's a delicate balancing act for sure. Unlike simpler programs, like TG or Podium, with point and click rendering, setting up Vue correctly for photoreal results takes a bit of tinkering with.