Keeping in mind of course that it is not the software but the guy at the PC that makes the difference, I wonder if these results are even possible with Vue? I have been doing a few tests (image depicted above, not much work and texture as it almost is as it comes with Vue!) but I can't get even close.

Even if I get a semi-realistic landscape as a base, once I start ecopainting rocks etc. it immediately becomes totally fake. For example I do not even understand how MoppelundWilli makes the bottom left rocks (in other images they even have a sliding trail). They are not modelled one by one because as he says these are straight Terragen (although he mentions "overlays", but I don't understand what he means).

Any ideas please?

 That looks like it's using a procedural shader called Strata and Outcrops Shader so that's your first hint if Vue can procedurally produce those you've got a start spot. Next there's a lot of small scale noise bumpiness, likely a Power Fractal Shader, they do displacement and colour and are a basic texture start point...I'm sure there's a Vue procedural similar to that. There is evidence of the Fake Stone Shader on the lower levels and and the rock object [a procedural] may have been used . The fake stones could be done with a masked rock ecosystem...can you vary the size with in an ecosystem...I don't use them in my PLE version Vue so I dunno bout that. Texturing you'll have to get help from the Vue Wizards...there's  a bunch of really knowledgable folks here so you should be able to crack this nut....Good luck and I do hope what I've written helps.. ...

Search for GeoControl. IMHO it's worth it

Disclaimer: I bought both GeoControl 1 and 2. I wouldn't have if I didn't think it was worthwhile.

Yes, it is possible to make these scenes in Vue. I also own GeoControl and think it a wise investment/addition to Vue.

This artist has some stunning landscape work...my hats off to him, but i do not think it is 100% Terragen...maybe a bit of Photoshop, but who cares...they are fabulous landscapes none-the-less.

 As a person quite familiar with TG2 which is what I suspect was used for the linked image, I think I can say fairly certainly that it is in fact 100% TG2...just surprised he hasn't got around to the free veg at the terragen site yet but seems like an old terragen user just converting to the new version.. ...

For the linked image maybe 100% I simply meant not everything in his gallery is(; I am not a purist and firmly believe "Use whatever it takes to get from point A to point B" And his gallery is really nice:D

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1788732

I would say it is possible to get a similar look in Vue. As in most renders, lighting and materials are key points. The first thing that strikes me in your image as not similar to Terragen is your lighting. It seems to have soft shadows but Terragen renders normally have sharp shadows.
Another thing is the terrain material. Yours has little high frequency color variation, compared to Terragen's. In other words, your material doesn't have as many details as Terragen's.

Personally, I don't try to pursue a Terragen look in my renders. I think each app has its own look and I find a bit pointless to try to achieve in one the look of the other. I mean, if you want to do that, just use the other app. :-)

I just made one exception, the image linked above. Here I more or less tried to achieve a similar look. I wasn't 100% successful, but if you're interested I can tell you the details of the lighting and material I used.

 There's a new fractal called 'grainy fractal' in Vue 7 which can create the texture crispness one finds in Terragen renders.

Another note, about rocks in Vue.
The default Vue rocks are low poly and the material isn't particularly good either. That's probably why when you start eco-painting rocks they look fake. If you double click on a rock you can increase their poly count, which increases its realism (and render times...). You can also change the material to another one (I never use the default Vue rock material).

Another thing is that the rock ecosystem should be set to slightly bury the rocks in the ground. Normally, in real life, rocks aren't just on top of the ground, they're slighly buried. If you use the global ecosystem painter this isn't configurable and the rocks appear unrealistically above the terrain. So, to bury the rocks, you have to create and configure an ecosystem for the terrain itself. However, if you have an infinite terrain, you cannot use the painter of the terrain's ecosystem (function is not available).
If you configure a rock ecosystem, you must have in mind another thing: scale variations. By default, ecosystems are set to have maximum size variation of 1. In nature, the variations are much higher. However, if you set it to, let's say, 5, you have a problem than when you have a big rock, there's no small rocks nearby, which is not realistic. So, I normally create three (or more) rock ecosystems on the same terrain, with differente scales: one for big rocks, one for medium rocks and one for small rocks. Each one still has size variations, but smaller (say, 1) but the overall look is a much more diversified one.

Rutra
yeah that's what I sometimes do, same eco-item, but different scale ;)

Also you can add rocks by hand to bury them, and have "hero" rocks up close with displacement materials to add more realism.

Or you can make a copy of the terrain and lift that a little after you have populated the first one.

Thank you guys every post sounds helpful and I will try harder. As said that example is just a default terrain/material in Vue just to start. I only softened the sun shadows 20% because I don't like hard shadows.

What concerns me though is that I can't seem to find hyper-realistic renders of Vue anywhere! They all look like illustrations, while what I am trying to do is to make "photographs". To a lesser extent, this is also quite true of Terragen, except that guy's work (I don't think it's TG2 because the images are quite old).

I will give Geocontrol a thought. I visited the website but couldn't understand what that program really does. It is quite ironic that having the supposed most realistic scenery program on the market (Vue) one has to invest in another software - while the best landscapes I've seen have been done with a freeware-ish!

Quote - "It is quite ironic that having the supposed most realistic scenery program on the market (Vue) one has to invest in another software - while the best landscapes I've seen have been done with a freeware-ish!"

I completely disagree with this point of view. First, you are mixing two completely different things. The "best" is not necessarily the most photorealistic. "Best" should also measure the diversity, for example. Terragen has more photorealistic renders only in a very specific niche of landscapes. Terragen is only more photorealistic than Vue in what regards mountain-scapes and desert-like landscapes. Real landscapes are much more than this.

Try to make a jungle landscape in Terragen, for example, and compare with Vue. Vue is much better, in all aspects (including photorealism). Everything that has complex ecosystems of plants is more realistic in Vue.
Try to include in Terragen human constructions, like a city-scape or similar. Vue is better.
Try to make a rough ocean in Terragen and Vue and compare.
Try to make a stormy cloudscape in Vue and Terragen.
Etc, etc, etc.

I tell you quite frankly. After seeing 20 Terragen landscapes, I'm fed up and want to see something else, because everything seems repetitive after a while (mountains, deserts, etc). After seeing 20 Vue landscapes, I want to see more and more because the diversity never ends.

Quote - "What concerns me though is that I can't seem to find hyper-realistic renders of Vue anywhere! They all look like illustrations, while what I am trying to do is to make "photographs". "

Then use Terragen, not Vue. You should use whatever software is adequate for your needs. Why "fight" with Vue to get the results of Terragen if what you really want is Terragen?

Quote - "I only softened the sun shadows 20% because I don't like hard shadows."

Then, how come you like Terragen renders? Are there soft shadows there? I don't remember seeing a TG render with soft shadows. But maybe there are.

Quote - "I will give Geocontrol a thought. I visited the website but couldn't understand what that program really does"

It creates terrains. Nothing more, nothing less. And does it very well. You have infinite possibilities. You can define all types of erosions, rivers, lakes, etc. You can export a heightfield from GC to Vue and use it to define a terrain there.

And I have seen Indiana Jones and both Pirate movies used for Vue and I was nothing but impressed(; When will they start using Terragen for feature films ? Maybe they have, i dunno...but one thing abouve all else Vue has that Terragen 2 sorely lacks is getting anything decent in time.

Rutra, I like Terragen renders as a starting point, personally I wouldn't present my work as it comes out of Terragen, harsh and too strong for me. I agree with you that Terragen only does bare landscapes and doesn't even compare with Vue when adding vegetation, atmosphere or other items. That's the reason why I would like to use Vue rather than Terragen. It looks like Vue has all the tools, primitives or whatever you can call them, to make landscapes on the same league as Terragen/TG2, or better. Question is, is this true or not? I would love to see some stunning, bare and primordial landscapes made with Vue, rather than the usual "vue-vegetation", "vue-eco-painted" ones.

The terrain that I posted at the start of the thread is OK for me, so I believe I do not need Geocontrol. The problem is all in the details.

Quote - "I would love to see some stunning, bare and primordial landscapes made with Vue, rather than the usual "vue-vegetation", "vue-eco-painted" ones."

Actually, just by coincidence, one of the images in my "queue" could be made in such a way. So, I will accept your challenge and during the weekend I'll try to come out with something. :-)
I can't promise it'll be "stunning", though!... LOL :-)

Great you're officially challenged to be the first to make a Vue image that doesn't look made with Vue... that would be stunning enough ! :)

 Well this is indeed a worthwhile thread...I've garnered a bunch of info I did not know and as a side bar in another Vue thread I learned how to activate my Pioneer7 on my offline computer so if I can budget some time on it I will attack this problem my own self...fun times are back even with the over large logo...at least no watermarks for now.. ...

Here are some examples of my tries with "bare terrains" in Vue:

I must say that this kind of exercise is quite tricky. To try to get realistic results, I generally:

• Use Geocontrol terrains with exported material distribution maps. Material distribution is key to getting your terrain to look realistic (Terragen does this quite well).
• Use bitmap materials for some of the rocks (but I may try some of Monsoons procedural rocks materials)
• Use specific lighting (low sun, sidelighting or sun in front). This hides some of the less realistic looking areas while emphasising the shadows.

The one thing I still have not mastered is the use of rocks in these landscapes. Terragen uses elaborate displacement materials such as the ones you can see in this image (by Luc Bianco)

Using this type of material, you are able to get realistic looking rockslides on a near infinite surface. So far, I have not been able to duplicate this in Vue as my knowledge of the material editor is lacking. It is a problem for wide angle views such as the above one as you need to get a realistic foreground AND background.

Another thing I noticed with this kind of image (in Vue or Terragen). Most of the times, if you get a good looking bare landscape and add a couple of trees, it instantly looks less realistic.

If you want to mimic the natural chaos of nature, you need to cover your whole landscape with realistically distributed plants.

Here is an example of what I mean:

I used an Infinite ecosystem for this one, but I noticed that for for more "open" landscapes, you need to stretch your infinite ecosystems very far to get grass in the distance, otherwise you see the limit to which it is applied.

In order to get the most realistic landscape possible, you need to pay attention to everything: terrain shape, material distribution, lighting, ecosystem objects distribution. Quite a difficult task!

Quote -  As a person quite familiar with TG2 which is what I suspect was used for the linked image, I think I can say fairly certainly that it is in fact 100% TG2...just surprised he hasn't got around to the free veg at the terragen site yet but seems like an old terragen user just converting to the new version.. ...

Bobby look at the date this was uploaded: **February 24, 2005
**Unless he was a TG2 Tester, TG2 was not out 4 years ago and I may be wrong, but I don't think TG2 testing was going on then either, but I could be wrong on the account.
So, That would make this good ole Terragen Classic as I coined that term a little over 2 years ago. And that would mean that the bottom rocks are a photo overlay along with Probably a World Machine 1.25 terrain as GeoControl was about to launched at that time but was not yet either. It is just some fancy work done with a little app that some of got our start on in the free version and have learned allot about terraining from that app that has helped to shape our present and future. If you want to see some more Fantastic Terragen Classic Images I suggest you look at Markal's Gallery and be prepared to drop your jaw. **LINK to Markal's Place.
**

So it looks like so far three keypoints make a big difference: 1, tilted ultra wide lens with foreground close and sharp and 2, no plants because immediately it looks fake (it looks fake even if you add plants in the foreground to me) and 3, Geocontrol.

Point 1 with the only exception of MoppelundWilli work because he doesn't use a tilted ultra wide yet  is images are ultra realistic.

Speaking of Geocontrol, is version 2 really necessary or version 1 will do? 129 euro is quite a bit of money for me now. I am quite confused about this software, since many links in this thread show jaw dropping work NOT done with the help of Geocontrol.

Geocontrol 2 adds interesting features to the software:

• isolines that enable you to shape terrain the way you want
• new erosion systems
• exportable selections I use to drive material ventilations in Vue
• vector tools to make roads
• rivers and lakes

To get a quick view of what Geocontrol 2 can make, check out this demo video.
You can also download the terrain sample I make available in my Geocontrol 2 Vue tutorial.

All realistic landscape images are not done with a wide angle lens and close up foreground. The first three examples I have posted are more distant views.

And to be honest, I would add that the Terragen render engine also plays a role in the images realism. On this image (still by Luc Bianco) the lighting on the mountains is quite realistic.

World Machine2 Works Just Fine People and you can pretty well bet MoppelundWilli used
version 1.0 or 1.25 to create this scene AND it is a lot less expensive then GeoControl at $89 usd Plus there is a TOTALLY FREE Version that Never Runs out. If you have had any workings in the Vue Node Based Funtions Editer than you should find World Machine a Snap.

Yes but how do you add features like rocks, stones, dirt etc. .... Eco-paint doesn't work it looks fake.

drive an ecosystem with a distribution map basically

I have often looked at terragen and i do like some of the pics it produces, however, I do think you can get simaler results with vue - with some trial and error. How ever i agree with the many people who have asked why you'd want too!
Vue is amazing in that it can produce a huge diversity of landscapes, however IMHO all depends on the lighting and atmospheres, you can have created the most realistic land scape possible in vue and then find that the lighting does not work at all. However there are a huge number of rescorces avalble to help you here, and at geek at play, and of course the forums and gallerys at cornucopia.
Placement of rocks and plants etc is some times trickey, especialy rocks, unless they are mixed with other vegitation , they should always be buried in the surface, if you look at the average rocky landscape then try to dig one of those rocks up, youll probhably find that like the ice berg, up to two thirds of it are under the surface!!
But i would strongly suggest that you dont try to reproduce a terragen landscape in vue, you wont, its not terragen and does not have the same look, simple as that, and its really much more fun and far more productive to look at what vue does well and use those strengths such as the material editor and function editors which can get you practicly what ever you want with the right knowlege and some trial and error!!
Ive also played with geo controll and might well buy it!! Its a great way of creating your own custom terrain maps to import in to vue.

I fully agree with Martin Frost. I had also stated something similar.

Anyway, like promised, I worked a little bit on this. I must confess that I lost the patience half way and I know it's not photorealistic. It's too tedious to try to get photorealism and, in the end, it's really not my "thing", not my motivation for image creation. Hence, the loss of patience... :-)

Anyway, I still like the final result, regardlessly of being photorealistic or not. :-)

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1816961

Let me know your veredict... :-)

@Rutra

Good job! [strike]The castle is maybe too much [/strike].. but a like it very much!

How dit you get the erosion?  ( The snow)  to fill up the cliffs so well?

Is it in the material? or a second terrain?  Or Both?
Just curious, I have tried that before, but did not manage very wel!!

Quote - "The castle is maybe too much."

Yes, you are totally right. The image would look more realistic without the castle but it's against my nature to make just an empty mountain... :-)
I changed the color of the castle now, I think it integrates better with the surroundings.

Quote - "How dit you get the erosion?"

That's one GeoControl2 terrain. The erosion is a mix of "thin flows deep" and "thin flows sediment" (both with strength 50, starting point 5). I used the selectors of both erosions as a material distribution map in Vue.

Quote - Quote - "The castle is maybe too much."

Yes, you are totally right. The image would look more realistic without the castle but it's against my nature to make just an empty mountain... :-)
I changed the color of the castle now, I think it integrates better with the surroundings.

Quote - "How dit you get the erosion?"

That's one GeoControl2 terrain. The erosion is a mix of "thin flows deep" and "thin flows sediment" (both with strength 50, starting point 5). I used the selectors of both erosions as a material distribution map in Vue.

Tnx!  And you are right, always follow youre nature!

 Mopelundwilli's image is actually a composite, the central plateau and sky being Terragen 0.9.xx and the surrounding rocks being taken from photographs. 

Eco-painting works beautifully - and with the the right lighting/atmo, it can look very realistic.  You really need to experiment with this a bit more and then perhaps you may become a believer.

Here's a simple eco added to the scene from my earlier post along with one of Bruno's Spectral 2 Clouds.  I think it looks pretty convincing to me

 As we've discussed in previous threads, there are a number of things which make Terragen's images look the way they look.

1. No perceived sense of scale. Because of the nature of the rendering engine, and the lack of other objects in a scene (until TG2), there is no sense of scale in an image. In fact, with TG2, now that one can put in a tree or forest, the realism is certainly less with 'other' objects inserted than before. With no sense of scale, there is lessto 'throw the eye off' that an image is not real. This picture demonstrates the effect:

1. Terragen's superior fractals. Terragen has a super grainy fractal which works great for stills, but wreaks havoc when trying to do an animation. Of course, with TG's rendertimes and lack (to my knowledge) of a network renderer, few an actually can do any animation. With the two new fractals David mention above, Vue 7 can now do the same. If I wasn't bogged down in work right now, I feel positive I could create very similar results to Terragen renders.

On a side note, Vue's fractal terrains aren't as good as GeoControl. Many times you can get nice results from importing a TG terrain directly into Vue. Not hard to do-- search this forum and you'll quickly find the recipe.

As a matter of fact Mopplewil's images (cant remember that name, anyway him) stand out from any other Terragen image I've ever seen, not only for the mood but because they do not look like the average Terragen image. I do not believe they are composites by the way.

In more generic terms the question was, can Vue generate totally realistic images without the children-illustrations look that is characteristic of the program.

I was hoping that someone could dig into the terrains function editor because this is obviously the key to quality fractals and hyper realistic look. I am no programmer but I have spent a few hours with it. One thing one can do, as you can see from the very basic example: image #1 is just a default terrain with a default texture. Image #2 is exactly the same with added a B&W dirt map jpg into the Altitude production function, i.e. the texture has not been changed, the function generating the terrain has. Obviously, depending on the dirt map picture, one should be able to embed in the terrain cracks, stones etc. with more realism than a simple texture, because they are actually in relief and cast shadows.

This is just one idea, after reading ten pages of the manual. I would encourage those interested in realistic images to explore these possibilities. I still feel that Vue has the potential to make images even more realistic than Terragen and without the help of third-party software.

 dburdick what preset did you use to create that terrain? thats stunning

Quote - I believe that I started the thread with the wrong words. I was asking if it was possible with Vue to make images like Mopplewilli's, which "happen" to be made with Terragen, not that I was looking for the Terragen "look".

Then the title of this thread should have been how to make more realistic terrains with Vue.  Sorry, I misunderstood your question.

Quote - In more generic terms the question was, can Vue generate totally realistic images without the children-illustrations look that is characteristic of the program.

Vue can indeed produce very vivid, "non-childlike", realism.  The keys IMO are getting the lighting/atmo set up properly and using decent materials/textures.  There are numerous examples in the Vue galleries here of terrain renders which are very realistic.  Take a look at some of Chipps stuff or Ken Was's posts.

Quote -  dburdick what preset did you use to create that terrain? thats stunning

It's just the basic Vue Terrain Fractal node mixed with a Simple Fractal Node.  The Simple Fractal Node uses the Round Samples noise to produce the rounded rocks while the Terrain Fractal node adds the nice rough "Terragen-Like" bumps to the rocks.  Just play around with these two nodes and I guarantee you'll come up many cool looking formations.

 Zone8: Actually, it was a composite, I remember the thread in the Terragen forum that discussed the matter. Besides, Terragen 0.9.xx could not add the rocks that you see in the foreground and was limited to a single terrain governed by a height map, which made overhangs (required for boulders) impossible.

Using compositing may still be the best way to achieve realism and the technique is routinely used by many of the best matte artists in the world. Both Terragen and Vue are cabable of some very realistic results but in order to get the absolute best from either will usually require huge amounts of time spent tweaking and rendering. If the ultimate in realism is required, why not use the resources that nature provides - you can't get more real than that 

Because with real photos I can't get anything like this :)

Still not 100% photographic but I believe 5-10 years from now we will be there, so I'd rather learn now.

Still not 100% photographic but I believe 5-10 years from now we will be there, so I'd rather learn now.

You can also create your own rocks in Vue using displacement materials. This is very exciting, since it allows for different kinds of rocks and minerals.

Working with materials in Vue is really an important aspect of making realistic terrains. For instance, a couple of months ago I discovered using slope constraints with filters in a bumpy and colored material to get a great looking layered plateau with soft rock layers and hard rock layers of different colors. Have to play around with that some more now that I have a bit more time.

Also, for the terrain chapter in our book we had the goal to create something great looking using terrains only that could be explained in a single tutorial. I think we've accomplished that. Our opening chapter image was pure Vue as well and features dramatic, stark mountains with snow in them that are incredible.

Resolution in terrains (and plants) count and can often be the reason for less satisfactory results.

AmiC, I tried displacement materials but the slowdown was unbearable! 

Could you please point me to your book, I am quite new to Vue and didn't know there was a book.

Last question what are slope constraints...? :)

Hey Zone8,

Sorry about the displacement materials slowing down.

The book isn't out yet, but look for it in May. However, Geekatplay has a series of tutorials called Discovering Vue which I recorded.

And last, :), slope constraints can be found in at least three places. In the Advanced Material Editor, If you're using a Mixed material you will have an Influence of environment tab. In the middle of that tab is the Influence of slope. That isn't exactly a constraint, but it works with slope and is part of what makes mixed materials useful. Layered materials, where you haven't selected mixed type, but you are adding layers, will give you an Environment tab. This has an actual Slope constraint group. The values on the Slope range slider go from -1 to 1. 1 is a flat surface. So is -1, but that is upside down (As, for instance, on the underside of a sphere) and 0 = vertical; straight up and down. Anyway, so you see you can set it so a material layer only appears at around a 45 degree angle (as with scree - the small rocks that break off a vertical rock wall and pile up at the bottom). Altitude constraint can also help with this too. As you can probably see, you can control the material through slope better with layers than using mixed materials.

Anyway, the third place this slope influence appears is in the Influence of environment tab in the Filter editor for materials. This lets you have a filter that, for instance, works very strongly if there is a slope. Here, you can't change what values are influencing it. The influencing values are -1 and 1. This means that with a strong influence, things are more likely to appear on flat places than vertical. So you can make some kind of color or bumpiness appearing through a function and filter be stronger in flat areas than sloped areas.

Hope that helps.

Ami

Thank you Ami that was a nice and useful explanation. I will be the first to get that book :)

I was actually trying to get features in a terrain not textured but actually "carved" in the terrain, but I have encountered problems. Imagine a dune (procedural of course), I want to create cracks in it. In the Altitude production function, I have a simple fractal generating the dune, and a noise node set on Cellular->Drought.

Both feed a Blender combiner node that goes into the Altitude.

This way I have nice cracks all over the dune, but I want the cracks to only appear at the bottom of the dune and not at the top.

I thought the best way to do that was to extract the blender ratio parameter and connect it to an Altitude input, following the examples on pages 340 and 404/405 of the manual. Unfortunately it doesn't work and the cracks keep appearing all over the dune. Adding a Brigthness-contrast filter helps a bit but I still get cracks at the top. If anyone has any idea that would be welcome.

This is a really quick, off the top of my head reply. Try adding a filter node that would constrain the altitude values before the blender. (not talking about the altitude constraint in the influence of environment tab of the filter editor, but the filter itself bringing any value above a certain height down to a lower value so nothing appears above your set height)

But functions are really visual. If that sounds wierd or doesn't work, can you give me a screenshot of the function you made?

Thanks.

With my original idea - in basic form on the right - I get nothing (cracks appear everywhere, or nowhere). Yet this came basically from following the manual, i.e. just linking the blender ratio between noise and terrain to the altitude. It should have worked (?).

If you have a different solution to the one on the left you're very welcome to post it :)

I believe that these extra steps in getting a more realistic terrain are worth the effort and will pay in realism, rather then going through materials with the more usual bump or displacement maps.