Hi,

Ok,  I have looked at some tutorials but none really answer what I need. 

I am trying to create a vast scene in Vue 7 Complete, one full of trees, problem is my trees either look to small, which means they just look silly, or too big which means that vast scene looks like a small scene with a few trees in it.

I have seen people produce vast terrains with beautiful full trees, any tips or hints on how to achieve that?

Thanks for any help
Jon

I think the key point here is to always use real world scale for everything. Trees and other plants, mountains, bump map of water planes, ground details like pebbles, material scale in general, etc. If you do that systematically with everything in your scene, the scale will look right. If you don't that with some of the elements, your mind will tell you something is wrong, even though you might not be able to understand at a conscious level what it is.

Having haze and/or fog in your scene also helps a lot to achieve a good sense of scale.

Thanks for advice mate, been struggling with this, with no vegetation the scene looks vast, with vegetation it looks rubbish to be honest.

Jon

It also depends on the trees you choose. Some trees are rubbish themselves... :-)

Post some screenshots here, this might help to give some hints.

You really need to sense the scale of the scene. I've done scenes with inf terrains and dynamic ecosystems, and the trees looked small, but they were at the right scale for such vast scene. My advice would be to use some kind of ruler, like a cube fopr example, and a tree.
For example a vue cube is 6mx6mx6m, add a tree and check relative scales, and see if this tree's height is normal. The plum tree, for example is sometimes way too small in world units, and has huge embedded size variations. Once you have the right trees, you can populate. The default scale for ecosystems is 0.5, which is not right for large scale scenes. Up it to 1.000 ad you should have a believable population.

Atmospheric haze could be a factor: if your scene covers many km, even with a very clear atmosphere haze would be well visible.

Take also care to add to the scene at least one familiar object with well known dimensions (may be a tiny human figure) to give the brain hints on how to scale the image.

Bye!!!

Hi,

Yeah I think the scaling might be the thing kicking me here, I will recheck everything, also I will get some screenshots up, its in an early stage so you will have to forgive the untextured mountain and horizon etc :) 

Jon

 Something like the links below is what I am trying to achieve, I must admit, scale has always been my problem.

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/?page=11&Index=3477

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/?page=11&Index=3406

Jon
PS : Working on those screenshots

You said that you still have untextured mountains and horizon. That's a "scale killer", so to speak. Texture is normally very important to achieve a sense of scale. You shouldn't be trying to adjust scale with untextured objects, IMO.

Thanks for the tip, will add a texture.

Jon

Typically a good vista type scene has both a foreground and background. Some also have a middle ground. Both images you show have foreground which help set scale.

While possible to do using one terrain, I'd suggest using two-- one for the foreground and one for the background. And if you're not going to ecoSystem populate them, then consider using proc terrains as they will be much crisper in detail.

Nice advice :)

I am just re-doing the scene to make the screenshots, unfortunately I didn't save my scene and when I reset a material then clicked render, Vue crashed. 

A lesson learned in saving often!

Jon

To get the vast scene look you may also want to play with increasing the value of Aerial Perspective.

Hmm Aerial Perspective, I didn't think of that, I will try a setting of 2 or 3 when and if this render finishes :)

Jon

Hi,

Ok, well here is image 1, no trees

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/jonj16111/MountainRiver.jpg

Image 2, with trees.

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/jonj16111/MountainRiver2.jpg

Jon

Hard to tell...I would say the trees are too small, but only based on the sandy material on the shoreline. For a river, I would assume the "sandy" material wouldbe thin before grass jumps in. In your render, the sandy shore looks too big compared to the trees. But it's only my perception. How wide is your river? It lloks very wide here, compared to the trees. Now if a tree is about 6 meters tall, it seems here it would take about 3 trees to bridge the two shores, which would make about 18meters. A very wide river.

Your river does seem wide, like Bruno said, but there are really wide rivers in nature, much wider than 18 meters, so I wouldn't say your river is necessarily wrong.

There's nothing like looking at the real thing. Did you do that? If I'm after realism, I always do a research before. I look at reality around me and I look at lots of photos. I found these ones:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephengg/2972470054/sizes/l/ 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apailthorp/17838631/sizes/l/ 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gee_bee/2791463628/sizes/o/

Comparing these photos with your images, I'd say:
a) Your image has very little haze. Either increase the haze percentage or increase the aerial perspective.
b) The grass and river margin are too smooth and uniform, with no details. Details are important to give the notion of scale and realism. There should be bushes, areas without grass, etc.
c) Your trees end too soon. There's no background, only foreground and midground. To give a sense of scale, the trees should fade away in the distance.

Not regarding scale but rather realism only:

1. Your margin doesn't seem natural. If it's sand, it should be flatter. If it's rock, it seems too smooth. Anyway, I didn't find any reference where a winding river with so many tight turns runs through a vertical rock wall so close to water. I guess that's not very common. In the images I found, the trees always grow closer to the water.
2. The water is too transparent
3. There's not enough variety in the trees.

Just my two cents. :-)

Also, having items to show scale helps :)
birds, fallen trees, animals, anything the eye can relate to and apply scale.

Also, up close, use "heroic" trees, single trees with their polygon count increased if necessary, to look good.

usually, real forests as opposed to plantations, will have bare areas, due to fire, specific tree species that poison off others, or stony ground etc.
You can also see areas, like say where a stream runs, that have different trees or bushes due to more water.

The variety helps break it up, and helps scaling, IMHO.

:)

Have all a look at Yanick Dusseault web site (http://www.dusso.com/).

He is a well renowned matte painter, e.g. have a look at the gallery were he shows his work of the Episode III of Star Wars (yes, that is the kind of job he lands ).

The image which shows the star port on Naboo (http://www.dusso.com/pages/EP3/sac.html) is a perfect example of scale; one would have no doubt thinking that it is a multi-km wide scene.

Bye!!!

Hi,

Thanks for all the great comments the scene I made was something I quickly knocked up(lol as you can tell).

Going to take all the comments on board and completely redo the scene, will also check out that website alex.

Thanks :)
Jon

Hi,

Ok, I can go a bit more indepth was my comments, was half asleep when I wrote the last one.

Bruno

Yes the river is really wide, in fact according to the size of the terrain it is probably a quarter of a kilometer wide, far too wide I guess. Trees I used was the Scots Pine and Balsam Popular, both trees are around 25m to 50m tall.

Rutra

No, I didn't check any real world images, I should have done, but was just trying to knock something up, thanks for the tip, will make sure I check real images first. All your points are correct, I will try more variation and better materials/textures. The water was the standard water that comes with Vue, will try a different one.

Silverblade

Thanks mate, will try to include some of the those features and some more variation

Alex

I checked out the gallery,world class images, will take a good look at them! 

Thanks for all your help, it helps keep Renderosity what it is - Fab! 

The image I made was an ultra fast knock up of my previous image, it had a simple ecosystem and not much else, I will try to work on the comments provided and show an update later in the day/week.

Thanks all
Jon

I should add I think Lighting is a big drawback of mine, sometimes I can get it right other times I struggle with it, has anyone checked out that Quadspinner tutorial? And is it worth buying? I have been thinking about it for a while, and its kind of pricey for a tutorial so just wondered if it was worth its weight in err well, worth it :) 

Cheers
Jon

I did two simular river paintings

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

The main ingredient i used is what Rutra also said, use real world measurements, that helps.
Als as already commented use props or things in he front to let the brain work out the perspective,

Feel free to ask any questions.