I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've been working on a Martian scene for some time now. I discovered after a laborious two week render. Yes two weeks. (The problem of not having Bryce optimized for the newer Mac OS.)  I decided I didn’t like the Mars texture I used.

I have tried to create a better more realistic texture, to no avail. For some reason my Mars doesn’t look Mars enough . It looks too earth desert. I know I got the sky right, because Google Mars say so. So now I am coming to the Group Mind for help. Help!

I have been to all the texture site I know and don’t seem to find what I am looking for. Can someone send me a link, or texture please.

What are you looking for? A close-up terrain texture? Or a satellite orbit view down to the surface with a few impact craters?

There might be some at www.msss.com

(the build the cameras in orbit and on Mars)

-Philip
thebest3d.com - beyond digital painting

Close up texture. I have excellent photos of Mars. That's the problem. I downloaded Google Earth  which has Mars loaded in it as well. That's what got me all jazzed about doing a martin scene.  After I started working on the scene I went back to Mars to see if I was getting right. That's when I started to notice my problem.

So long story short. I'm looking for a good land texture.

Maybe it'd help to see your current render and current texture settings? That might give some ideas for improvement. Also, 2 weeks sounds like an awful long time for a landscape style render, even if bryce isnt optimized for the latest Mac OS...

Perhaps its a good idea to figure out why your scene is rendering so slowly, and work on speeding it up. That way it'll be much easier to do test renders for material settings and such.

Are you using very high AA settings or any premium effects? If so, are they really neccesary and do they make things look better? Any unneccesarily complicated volumetrics maybe?

You could also choose to remove particularly slow rendering parts from the scene while workin on the groud texture, so they wont slow down your test renders so much.

As for the texture itself, I think probably its a good idea to try and match the colors at first, and to keep it relatively clean and smooth, at least in the foreground. And then add subtle bumps and discolorations from there. Then things like rocks can be added with bryce rocks differnt textures. For regions further away from the camera you could then make a separate texture, wich incorporates more of the rocks colors and such.

Get the hell off my planet!!!!!
Jeez! Will it never end!

Lol at Chris..nah..people will land there as long as they think there is life! They love your planet....

rjay... have you tried NASA? i know we can get some really blue marble (earth) earth textures.. etc... there may be some of Mars.. no harm in checking.. or http://hubblesite.org/gallery/

I was gonna say have Bryster step outside and take a coupla snaps...;)
Another thing to mind is the lighting...no blue skies, sorta pink. That could help with the textures...

Quote - Close up texture. I have excellent photos of Mars. That's the problem. I downloaded Google Earth  which has Mars loaded in it as well. That's what got me all jazzed about doing a martin scene.  After I started working on the scene I went back to Mars to see if I was getting right. That's when I started to notice my problem.

So long story short. I'm looking for a good land texture.

Check the NASA sites on Mars exploration, especially Phoenix and other landers which are scooping the ground and digging for ice or water traces.

A walk on the beach might show you a few rock & sand combinations too - got a digital camera?

:-)

-Philip
thebest3d.com - beyond digital painting

I'm not sure what you may be visualizing.  When I think Mars I see reds.  Here is a texture I made from layering Apophysis flames.  You are welcome to the 2d image.  The image is about 900x750 pixels.  If you like it I will try to render a larger texture image (if I can duplicate the flame settings).

I want to start out by saying I was thinking of calling the work " I think he lives over there"

Thanks for the input guys. I know you wouldn't let me down.
Rayez, Yes I was rendering in AA Premium. I was using the "Depth of Field" and "True Ambiance". Also the image size is large. This all accounts for my long render time.

The image looked okay when I rendered in the lower settings and smaller size. And after I took the time to do the bigger image that's when I decided I didn't like it. So here I am.

I decided after I posted here that I would turn off those features and rework to image a bit. I know it would be best to post the image here. I don't like to show before it's done. But I'll do it any way.

So what do you all think?

This was my first pass. The one that took a year and a day to do.

I need to add that I'm reworking this as I write this.

Rjay, it’s looking quite good. I like the ground texture…very reminiscent of the Mars images I’ve seen. I see your problem in the intermediate hills…they’re too smooth and doesn’t share the ground texture color or roughness from which they are derived. I have several suggestions. You can reuse the same texture you used on the ground but with more frequency added to it and rotated so as to make it appear dissimilar from the ground texture.

Another suggestion would be to use the texture you already have on the hills but tweak it to darken and match the color of the ground in the material editor. This being done you can then bring the individual hill terrains into the terrain editor and roughen it up by adding basic noise and erode (not eroded). If it’s not rough enough for you can disable anti aliasing on the hills. The far off mountain range can remain the way it is except that I think they should be a darker rust color…not as light as they now are (my opinion).

As a sidebar, it might also speed things up if you created your depth of field separately in an image editor instead of having Bryce putts around with it. Also sometimes fiddling with Bryce’s fine tuning too much has this adverse effect. That’s it for my 2 cents worth.

Oh yeah, maybe you can leave Bryster a little memento of your visit there and put a crushed, rusting Coca Cola can half buried in the foreground not too far from your sig. That’ll give him something to do other than picking his nose all day.

 

Attached Link: http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00423/mars2_682_423046a.jpg

 I think the scene you've got now allows very well to do the DOF effect with some postwork in photoshop, it'd really cut down your render times that way. Also, have you tried rendering without TA? the shadows look very dark and black so i suspect the TA doesnt really make much visual difference right now. I like the texture on the ground, thou maybe the rocks could have a little bit of a different color from the sand, like on many mars photographs.

The hills are too smooth as others said, probably you could try adding some amounts of noise and variation in the texture to simulate a more rocky and rough surface.

Also, in the terrain editor theres a terrain fractal that cretaes a kinda wave appearence.. ridged perlin or somethin similar, you could attempt to fade something like that in a little bit to get the subtly sweeping varieties of shape as seen on some martian photos (like the one at the link attached) that might break up the shapes on the near ground a little, as well as the hill on the left thats still somewhat in focus

By the way, the strength of the DOF effect does make the astronauts and their car look like miniatures...

Rayraz,

I agree with everything you said. In fact I came to the same conclusions and I've put a lot of them into effect. No DOF or TA . I went back and played with the texture editor. I think I came up with a better Martian texture. If it looks good I'll send it to anyone who may want it. That way you all can keep tweaking it, in hope of turning it into a even better texture.

*Oh yeah, maybe you can leave Bryster a little memento of your visit there

• I got momentos all over the place, thankyou.
  BTW......the Martian word for 'momento' is 'Scrap'.

Quote - Rayraz,

I agree with everything you said. In fact I came to the same conclusions and I've put a lot of them into effect. No DOF or TA . I went back and played with the texture editor. I think I came up with a better Martian texture. If it looks good I'll send it to anyone who may want it. That way you all can keep tweaking it, in hope of turning it into a even better texture.

Sounds great! Lookin forward to the result :-)