Desert Landscapes, Cactus', Mountains.... question

[supernovavfx]

this is a bit generic... but my newest venture is in Palm Springs California...  Ironically I've never really done sand dunes... hills, mountains and more and 

 

if anyone HAS done things like that, or knows of some good pre made model sets for EI....  or just as good... great shaders and best ways to make terrain 

 

that has desert like maps or shaders or both...   Palm Trees as well as other Desert plant life, as fact files are also appreciated.... I think I know how id get those.

 

Ever since losing image to mesh years back.... I'm not aware of how to easily displace a mesh into a mountain or dunes etc....    

 

thanks,

 

     Scott

 

 

[S. Houtzager]

Hey Scott,

 

I have been messing around with that myself.  There is now EXRtoMesh which is a little more complicated.  There is a sample in the downloads of a orange kinda landscape. It is nice because you can set a preview resolution and camera resolution. But how to create from scratch or find an EXR file, I am not sure. I started playing around with Sculptris which is ZBrush's freebie but it is limited in the number of brushes and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such.  There is Vue which I have seen great stuff from but I have never messed with it.

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Scott,

The EXR file is created in Photoshop, it's a greyscale map with a bigger bits depth, (high dynamic range of blacks and whites)

Thanks

Tom

[S. Houtzager]

Ah there it is.  I had to make my Photoshop image 32 bit and then I can save it out as EXR file. Easy enough.

[supernovavfx]

 could you help Tomas, share how to make sand dunes in EI?  Is it a photoshop file and exr?  or is it just not easy to do with the tools we now have...  in which case

 

ill look into buying some terrains....   not every tool can do every thing....  so I'm not complaining.... just searching for some kind of work flow...   

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Scott!

 

Here our EXR sample project:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10021583/tutorials/EIAS9_Tutorials/EXR2Mesh.zip

 

Open the EXR Map on photoshop and change the color depth from 32 to 8 bits, you will see the real grayscale map.

 

DEM Maps from Australia:

http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/geographic-information/topographic-maps-data/digital-elevation-data

 

How to convert DEM Maps to EXR files using blender.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?294036-using-real-world-data-(DEM-files)-to-generate-3d-maps

 

A Displacement map done with EXR using Photoshop will be like, top areas “white” with low areas “Grey scale fading to dark”.

 

Another way Scott, you will need to sculpt in Zbrush for example.

 

Thanks

 

Tom

[Phungus]

......and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such.

Huh? Can you please elaborate on this?

[Buggsy]

Hey this is so cool! I'm glad this little gem was talked about. I'm doing an Environmental Science degree at the moment and I'll have access to a mountain of files (no pun intended) of my local region here in Australia.

 

Thanks Tomas and Scott

[S. Houtzager]

.....and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such.

 

What I was referring to was in Sculptris you have no tools that "push" into the mesh, they just pull the mesh out.  I created a decent mountain scene for EI using Sculptris.  I am looking for a better tool for doing that.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hncogbswi83prwu/ground2.png

[Phungus]

That was what I thought you where saying....which BTW is wrong :)   In Sculptris you hold CTRL to invert the brush, as opposed to ZBrush where you hold ALT. But you can also use the mask tool, press CTRL-D to mask your model, then paint your river or pond, and use the Grab tool with Global turned on to move the unmasked area. Whipped up a quick example to show you, masking on the left, plain Draw brush on the right with a dash of Flatten.... 

[Buggsy]

I did some tests with the project Tomas put up. Find following a couple of test renders.

 

The first one has no skylight or reverse illumination and the second one does have skylight and reverse illumination.

 

Render time for the first image was 12min and the second one was 19min.

 

Oh and I added an NX shader terrain material. With a regular texture map the rendering time comes down to about 2min, although it's not as nice as the NX Shader one (i haven't attached it here). There are some artefacts from NX shader displacement. I'll do one without NX shader, using only texture maps.

 

 

[Buggsy]

Ok, here's another one, this time texture maps, no NX Shader, reverse illumination and skylight. 3min 30sec rendering time (2.8GHz Intel Core iMac i7, 8GB RAM).

 

Michael

 

[S. Houtzager]

Giving this a try with Noise Factory. Did not take long to render, 2 minutes or so. Hey Mike are you using a color map along with a bump map?

 

[Buggsy]

Hi Steve,

 

Yes I'm using a combination of five textures with the idea of building base layers working through to top layers. The last texture being a cloud texture set to 'screen' to add the subtle variations in colour across the landscape, and a bump map for the pitting on the surface.

 

I'm doing another one with trees and a range rover model I bought a little while ago. I will post this if I can do a decent job of it.

 

Michael

[supernovavfx]

Michael that is great!   I am just starting an exciting new business arrangement with CBS and ABC television in Palm Springs California...   this will DEMAND that I start to gather resources and elements related to palm trees, deserts, mountains and 

 

etc etc....   its also an oasis for the rich and famous to vacation...    I just started a few days ago and will be creating a ton of animation for them using my favorite combination of Pro Animator for modeling and EI for rendering....  

[S. Houtzager]

Playing around with the clouds shader and screen and multiply.  Should use the reactive features in the shaders and control the color better.  Mike yours seems to react to the sun a little different.  Good luck with the gig Scott!

 

[Gigayoda]

Hey Scott,

 

I have been messing around with that myself.  There is now EXRtoMesh which is a little more complicated.  There is a sample in the downloads of a orange kinda landscape. It is nice because you can set a preview resolution and camera resolution. But how to create from scratch or find an EXR file, I am not sure. I started playing around with Sculptris which is ZBrush's freebie but it is limited in the number of brushes and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such.  There is Vue which I have seen great stuff from but I have never messed with it.

Regarding Sculptris I've used it quite a bit and to paint "inward" you hold option key. Sculptris is quite powerful option to cut into the object and shift to smooth off polygons. the more you zoom in the mesh can also be increased or decreased based on your brush settings and the more you zoom in the more details you can carve or add onto your model.

[S. Houtzager]

Interesting.  I am considering buying Earth Scuptor http://www.earthsculptor.com/index.htm as it has more tools than Sculptris it seems.  What are you using Sculptris for?

[Buggsy]

Ok, I couldn't resist playing around a little more with this EXR2mesh plug-in. Some bits aren't convincing, but it was a lot of fun. The Range Rover sport model I bought years ago has bad rear brake light geometry so I abandoned making them look right.

 

Good to know this plug-in is about. Next I want to explore creating my own EXR map in photoshop.

 

Steve, I adjusted my sun to give longer shadows, as you might be able to tell from my scenes, and I also have 0.0 specular light.

 

Rendering time was 2 hours.

 

Michael

 

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Michael!

 

Why 2 hours? too long..!

 

Thanks

 

Tom

[Buggsy]

I have used 'Displacement' in the NX Shader on the wave and there are some 7 million polygons without the displacement coming from NX Shader.

 

What sort of time should I expect to achieve?

 

Michael

[supernovavfx]

yeah... I'm needing to do 1080 p stuff and hundreds of frames...  so I'm going to need some good quality speed trade offs..

[Phungus]

Surprised noone has mentioned World Machine http://www.world-machine.com or World Creator (formerly Geo Control) http://www.cloddy.com/index.php/wc-product

[Buggsy]

Unfortunately neither of them are mac native.

 

World Machine says you can use Parallels or Wine http://www.world-machine.com/support.php?page=tech and World Creator is only Windows compatible http://www.cloddy.com/index.php/wc-purchase/getdemo.

 

Michael 

[Buggsy]

I have my first use of the EXR plug-in and I'm having some troubles making it work for me.

 

I have an object that I need to place on the EXR terrain but I need a flat surface to put it on.

 

I can open the EXR image in photoshop, change it to 8 Bit, modify the image by painting a single tone in the location I want to place the object, change it back to 32 Bit and save it out as an OpenEXR image. When I save it out though, it doesn't look the same and it doesn't behave the same way.

 

Also what the terrain looks like in the project window is different to what is actually rendered there fore making it even harder to place something on a flat surface. It's almost impossible to interact with the scene. Are there any solutions to this?

 

Any help making this work would be good.

 

Michael