Hi,

I have some mountains I created and set the far in the distance, I applied a standard landscape material, think potash snow.

Now it doesn't matter what material I use the results are awful even in final mode. I have included a link below, the scene is using a standard daytime atmosphere, there was a water plane, but I removed it as it made the mountains look like water !

http://imageheap.com/main/pic.php?u=223ZShsK&i=5174

Any tips or advice?

Thank you
Jon

Have you tried bumping the res for the texture up from the standard?  Anytime I do anything for a distant texture I increase it to 2048

Hi,

No, I haven't, to be honest, most of the things I do has no real distance in it. Will give that a go :)

Thanks
Jon

Hi,

Its actually a mixed texture, it is the built in landscape that comes with Vue, how do you increase the texture up from standard?

Thanks
Jon

When you create a terrain you double-click on it to go into the Terrain Editor.  Up at the top of the dialog window you'll see a lot of options including one that has /2 x2 and Resize options and under that is 256 x 256. 

That's the standard resolution for terrains.  Just click on the x2 button until you reach 2048 which will increase your resolution and give you better textures for distant and close-up.  256x256 is pretty grainy and lo-resolution.

Hi,

Of course, sorry, one of those silly days for me :)

Cheers
Jon

Hi,

I have 15 standard terrains in the distance, erm, Vue 5 can handle lots of polys right? I put the 6th terrain up to 2048x2048 and Vue crashed lol, it as at 29 million polys when that happened :)

Jon

You have 15 mountains in the distance?  Are you planning on doing this in landscape orientation?

Why not make 2 or 3 of the terrains larger and cut down on your polys?  You can vary the terrains by using the y-rotation so they don't all look the same but you'll have a lot fewer polys to deal with.  Then use the same material on each of the terrains.

If you look at some of the sample images on the content disk you'll see that they only use a few terrains for distance, even when trying to create a mountain range.

Keep in mind that when you "bump up" the "texture for the terrains" in the Terrain Editor, you're not actually bumping up the texture. You're doubling or tripling or quadrupling the amount of polygons in the terrain mesh. (Plus substantially increasing the file size for that mesh). This is not the solution for mountains that are the far distance! You can "bump up the texture" tho.' You just need to do that in the Material Editor, not in the Terrain Editor. Do you need help seeing how to multiple the texture file applied to this object (to do this)? If so, which version of Vue are we talking about?

Hi,

I think my problem is a little more serious than first thought. Click the link for a final render of just a water plane, 5 standard terrains at 2048x2048 and the potash snow being used. Atmosphere is Great Rocky Mountains.

Anyone know what the hell is causing that to happen?

http://imageheap.com/main/pic.php?u=223ZShsK&i=5175

Cheers
Jon

Hi,

I am using Vue 5 Esprit.

Thanks
Jon

Well, one of the materials (#1) in the two blended materials that make up "Potash Snow" is coming through too strongly. You probably need to edit the material and make the snow more predominant. You can change the Influence Of The Environment, or change the Distribution of Materials to make Material #1 less involved in the mix.

Ok, its not just Potash Snow, the Cooling rock and lava does it too :(

What are the best tweaks to make to the landscape? Also is their a better way to do distant mountains?

Thanks
Jon

Jonj1611, To make those mountains more realistic, you really should reduce the number of polygons (take the mesh size back down). I live in the mountains (here at 9,000 ft/3000 meters) here in Colorado. Distant mountains don't have such sharp edges. In fact, they are really pretty smooth in outline, if they're in the distance.

In general, for mountains, distant mountains should have far less detail in the mesh (the default setting for the Terrrain Editor is ok), and close mountains should have much more detail than the default Terrain Editor provides. Mountains in the background are really pretty smooth. If you want variation in the appearence, experiment with the Material Editor. Most mountains have vegetative cover on their bases, followed by a thin layer of rock with just a tiny bit of vegetation mixed in, and then followed by snow. So, you need to experiment with the Material Editor, and plan on mixing up at least three materials, all of which need to be sensitive to the altitude/elevation. An excellent way to do this is to go find a couple of photos of actual forest or plant vegetation, and use that photo for the base material. (It's very difficult to get real plant colors using a color brush.) I usually use a grey or blue granite rock photo also, in my mixes.) Incidentally, for lakes or ocean bodies under a mountain, its better to use the standard water material, or add just a tiny bit of noise to the Clear Water material. You really do want to cut down on the chaotic number of reflection faces as much as you can.

Cool,

Will try experimenting a bit more :)

Cheers
Jon

An excellent way to make your life easier, is to spend a little money on Monsoon's Earthernware materials for Vue. (You can find them on my web site at www.expandingwave.com, or at 3DCommune, I believe. (Not sure whether they're here at Renderosity or not.) Even though I make my own terrain mixes with the Texturemaker program (which Monsoon also used, I suspect), I often use his textures for quick-and-dirty scene-making. I got my money's worth out of Monsoon's landscape textures ages ago: its been a great investment!