TerraDome3 NOT a rumor anymore! Live in store! Whoot!!!

Oso3D

This started as PhoneHome, but simplified it a little.

3DL, uses the free shader I mentioned previously. At first I was thinking 'OMG this shader is slowing things down so much!' Yeah. It made a 5 minute render go to 9 minutes. OH NOOOO.

I then used AoA Atmospheric distance camera to do some post work for distance/atmosphere effects. (I put the HDRI on a skydome. It's... not ideal, because lack of dynamic range means the sun, seen in frame, would look stupid)

 

 

Oso3D

Another 3DL render using the second 3DL shader I wrote.

Terrain is Azone from TerraDome3, with TerraDome3 texture images applied through a 2 layer 'mix based on Normals' shader I wrote. Backdrop is a HDRI from TD3 that I pasted in in Post (skydomes just sucked up a bunch of render time with no real benefit), then I used AoA Atmospheric Depth camera to get a depth mask to play with in post.
I ended up using the depth mask as a mask for a layer of 'light brown', overlaid that on the scene.

 

RGcincy

timmins.william said:

Another 3DL render using the second 3DL shader I wrote.

 

Glad to see all the 3DL renders you've been posting! Even though many have moved on to Iray, I find both renderers are useful depending upon what you are trying to do. Displacement and AoA's distant/ambient lights and cameras are two of many reasons to keep using 3DL.

firewarden

Those are awesome, Will. Thanks for the experimentation on behalf of us 3DLers. :)

SimonJM

timmins.william said:

Regarding 3DL and TD3, here's an example of stuff I think you just can't DO in Iray, at least not with typical hardware; displacement adding wonderful detail all over the place.

This is Azone, Bzone, and then a simple pane for the sand ground, textures are all from one of the Badlands TD3 shaders and put on Ubersurface, to get normals. Although, frankly, I'm not even sure I needed to use it over Daz basic shader; I'm just in the habit of converting.

Yes, the sand is tiled a bit poorly, but that's just the issue with tiles. (I think one of the ground/dirt shaders I have does some funky large/fine displacement tricks, so I should try that)

So, for completeness:

Azone, TD3 Badlands 'rock' shader converted to 3DL and Bump put into Displacement and increased to -50/+50, tweaked a bit for proper glossiness (20% glossiness, 20% specular strength, medium gray specular color). Tile 30x30.

Bzone, same, but displacement is -25/+25 and Tile 60x60 (increasing apparent range)

600m radius sphere for sky with one of the TD3 HDR skies.

Plane set to... 256 segments? Then subd. Critically, I then had it smooth/collide with the Azone. I should see what happens if I do the reverse... hmm.

AoA atmospheric fog camera

Gray wolf. Stomp stomp clap clap AROOOOO

Edit:

Oh, should probably mention lighting: AoA distant light + AoA ambient light at 25%. (I've stopped using UE2 lights; the slight improvement in realism isn't worth renders taking 5x as long, IMO)

Pretty damned impressive - so glad I'm not (in token nod to another thread) ignoring you .. ;)

Oso3D

I'll note, for the sake of comparisons, that that image took about 2 hours to render (although at least 45 minutes was being stupid and rendering the depth mask at the same double size as the image, which is dumb because I could have rendered it at 1/2 size and taken 1/4 as long because I was going to shrink the original image ANYWAY).

Large 3DL images can... be not swift, and that's not even with UE2 (which I advise avoiding always).

 

davedawriter

Hey Will, did you learn how to build your own shaders through experimentation, or did you find a tutorial that helped you?  I bought Dreamlight's surfaces tutorial, but I couldn't get through the shader portions, which were done by somebody else who didn't record the audio very well.  I've been playing around with the Stone Shader, Rock Shader, and Cliff Face Shader packs applied to TD3.  They're pretty good on their own, and I can always bring in three different A zones and mix and match textures and sculpts, but I can't help but think I ought to be able to create a shader that combines two or three different rock textures, using opacity maps to allow textures to overlay and peek through.  Stonemason does something like that with his Winter Terrains set, and the Tiler Shader set uses a similar principle.  Tiler Shader still uses two separate meshes, though, anchored under a null, with opacity maps for masking.  Stonemason's shader is much better, but it seems like it would be pretty complicated to reverse-engineer.

Of course I could just render three different sets of textures and blend them in Photoshop, but I have a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about this shader thing.  You seem to be a shader guy.  Do you mind sharing your thoughts?

 

scorpio

davedawriter said:

Hey Will, did you learn how to build your own shaders through experimentation, or did you find a tutorial that helped you?  I bought Dreamlight's surfaces tutorial, but I couldn't get through the shader portions, which were done by somebody else who didn't record the audio very well.  I've been playing around with the Stone Shader, Rock Shader, and Cliff Face Shader packs applied to TD3.  They're pretty good on their own, and I can always bring in three different A zones and mix and match textures and sculpts, but I can't help but think I ought to be able to create a shader that combines two or three different rock textures, using opacity maps to allow textures to overlay and peek through.  Stonemason does something like that with his Winter Terrains set, and the Tiler Shader set uses a similar principle.  Tiler Shader still uses two separate meshes, though, anchored under a null, with opacity maps for masking.  Stonemason's shader is much better, but it seems like it would be pretty complicated to reverse-engineer.

Of course I could just render three different sets of textures and blend them in Photoshop, but I have a little bit of a bee in my bonnet about this shader thing.  You seem to be a shader guy.  Do you mind sharing your thoughts?

 

Uber surface 2 http://www.daz3d.com/ubersurface2-layered-shader-for-daz-studio, has a second layer; its been a while scince i messed with it but from what I can remember you should be able to do something like that.

davedawriter

Thanks, Scorpio!  I'll look into that.

Oso3D

Through experimentation. DS seems allergic to documentation. ;)

Two free 3DL shaders are available in my freebie thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/106626/will-timmins-procedural-shaders#latest

Just those alone can get a bunch done that you might enjoy; the first is good for geoshells 'laid over' another surface, the second is a simple two layer mix.

 

 

nicstt

timmins.william said:

Ooo. Getting good, fast results using Shades of Life, without obvious tiling.

This render took 1 minute, 17 seconds.

Bam.

(1 AoA distant light, 1 AoA ambient light, Ocean Wide skydome)

I think it was one of http://www.daz3d.com/shades-of-life-nature shader presets (may have been one of the other Shades of Life, I have three)

Wow, that is amazing.

IceDragonArt

I did this on my laptop which isn't nearly as good as the pc as far as memory etc.  It took about 5 hours to finish.  One thing I noticed is that I had to be very careful with the angle if I was using one of the HDRI's provided as they all had a straight brown desert like area at the bottom. So for stuff like this where I needed to be up high looking down, it was very difficult to hide  that brown line. Not really a big deal as I have plenty of HDRI's to use and I basically just slapped a water shader on this one and it worked perfectly.  Its not an issue for 95% of angles, it just the ones that expose the bottom of the HDRI's.  Of course, it could just be me doing something wrong....

BlueIrene

I've seen the brown lower half of the sky exposed at some angles too. I think it's because the terrain/sea isn't infinite and so we have to stick something there to end our line of vision. I love that image! It's got a kind of 'fantastical' feel about it, but I could quite easily imagine people living there and going about normal day-to-day business too.

Oso3D

I would bet a lot of money that the folks working on TerraDome3 didn't expect a render like this...

(Terradome3, Hand knits, Ultrascatter, VWD come together woot)

 

Haslor

 

timmins.william said:

I would bet a lot of money that the folks working on TerraDome3 didn't expect a render like this...

(Terradome3, Hand knits, Ultrascatter, VWD come together woot)

 

And this would be called:

Patchwork Quilt Dome?

Argile Sock Dome?

Stitch and Pearl Dome?

Looks great though

Knittingmommy

Oh, wow, Will, that is so VERY cool!!!  :)

MelanieL

Looks like a hand-stitch craft job, Will - nice work!

Oso3D

Melanie: I succumbed and picked up http://www.daz3d.com/hand-knits-shader-presets-and-merchant-resource

I was inspired by 'yarn robot' and thought... ooo.

 

Oso3D

The big problem was the flippin trees, actually. While displacement is 'better in 3dl,' you can also run into... problems I'm not sure why. I really wanted to give the trees more displaced texture, but it kept glitching weirdly near the trunk. Ah well.
 Bump works really well in 3DL, too. Heh.

I'm also considering using terradome shader and then plugging in knit patterns. So the land is a combination of, oh, quilt and lace. Or something. ;)

 

MelanieL

Yep, Will I saw your post about those shaders in the commencial thread - I'm still downloading it! (Not the best connection here) but eventually I hope to try a few weird and wonderful things with them too

Oso3D

Need to show more closeups of yarnboy.

Haslor

Wasn't there a cartoon back in the sixties or seventies which had quilted ground or somethign like that?

 

BlueIrene

Ice Dragon Art said:

One thing I noticed is that I had to be very careful with the angle if I was using one of the HDRI's provided as they all had a straight brown desert like area at the bottom. So for stuff like this where I needed to be up high looking down, it was very difficult to hide  that brown line.

You've dropped a stitch, Will ;)

Back to the bottom half of the provided HDRIs being exposed and showing brown desert, I've noticed that the set of HDRIs released for Terradome today show grass, with trees along the horizon line instead. The ones I've tried, anyway. Which is great unless you want ocean as far as the eye can see :)

IceDragonArt

Astracadia said:

I've seen the brown lower half of the sky exposed at some angles too. I think it's because the terrain/sea isn't infinite and so we have to stick something there to end our line of vision. I love that image! It's got a kind of 'fantastical' feel about it, but I could quite easily imagine people living there and going about normal day-to-day business too.

I will be doing this with people and different angles as well, I am slowly (very slowly lol) building a story world.  TerraDome3 just made this project a 100 time easier!

IceDragonArt

timmins.william said:

I would bet a lot of money that the folks working on TerraDome3 didn't expect a render like this...

(Terradome3, Hand knits, Ultrascatter, VWD come together woot)

 

This is very cool!

 

Fishtales

Try using the Dome Orientation settings under Environment. I think 'y' with a positive number of 10 might do it.

ewcarman6169598

Dragon Hiding

There were so many options with the TerraDome. I finally settled on this. This took approx. 13 hours to render as Iray on my machine, which is decent but not top of the line. I did have a bunch of fireflies to clean up in post, but that was the only issue I ran into.

Got to play more with this. Not sure I could ever top Yarn World. 

firewarden

ewcarman, very nice! Made me smile, too. :)

Knittingmommy

ewcarman said:

Dragon Hiding

There were so many options with the TerraDome. I finally settled on this. This took approx. 13 hours to render as Iray on my machine, which is decent but not top of the line. I did have a bunch of fireflies to clean up in post, but that was the only issue I ran into.

Got to play more with this. Not sure I could ever top Yarn World. 

Still, pretty cute image!  Love that he thinks he's hiding!  :)

 

MelanieL

Astracadia said:

Ice Dragon Art said:

One thing I noticed is that I had to be very careful with the angle if I was using one of the HDRI's provided as they all had a straight brown desert like area at the bottom. So for stuff like this where I needed to be up high looking down, it was very difficult to hide  that brown line.

You've dropped a stitch, Will ;)

Back to the bottom half of the provided HDRIs being exposed and showing brown desert, I've noticed that the set of HDRIs released for Terradome today show grass, with trees along the horizon line instead. The ones I've tried, anyway. Which is great unless you want ocean as far as the eye can see :)

Ah, that's useful to know, Astracadia - I was looking closely at that new HDRI set but a bit frustrated that you couldn't see what was behind the Terradome snowy mountains. Hmm, maybe I can live with low trees...?