Mountains, Trees, and FOG!!!!

[ericsh6]

Well,

I must apologize in advance for the trees in the foreground but the ones in the back are looking good thanks to HASH. If someone knows how to make the trees in the foreground look better please let me know. I built a tree in A:M, rendered it to a 320x240 TGA file with alpha channel, cropped it in GIMP, and then added the image to hair and slapped it on the mountain.

HASH has more work to do though because fog on hair doesn't work in multipass, and I need multipass to get descent render times for animations. Plus, I think there is some other weird render problems in V12 but I am still amazed at what can be done.

 

 

 

 

[martin]

I need multipass to get descent render times for animations

Multipass is SLOWER than the ABuffer.

[ericsh6]

I must learn more about ABuffer. A good topic for some evening forum research.

[KenH]

The background looks great. Is that using the same image as the foreground?

Please report any problems to AM:Reports!

[John Keates]

Mulitpass is faster if you only use 1 or two passes - in most situations.

[ericsh6]

Yes, I use the same tree image everywhere - I only have one hair material applied.

[markeh]

I need multipass to get descent render times for animations

 

Hey, did you mean you need multipass to get rid of aliasing in your animations (as opposed to saving on render time)?

 

I see the light now.....I mean the fog. Yes indeed I was never able to get fog to show up on hair (my tree hair) on my own projects in previous versions. Ah the time for realistic landscapes is coming to fruition.

 

Could you post a pic with multipass to see the behavior? Was just curious.

[NancyGormezano]

If someone knows how to make the trees in the foreground look better please let me know.

 

 

I think the image is quite nice. My only complaint with the foreground is that there's not enough variation in the tree imagery & density. What you do is dependant on wheither this is for a fly-thru? or is it just for a still?

 

Either way - try using multiple emitters and varying size properties (length, thickness percentages), as well as density - can also vary "toning of the emitters" by letting a decal (on the terrain) drive the diffuse color. Maybe even adding kink. Play with all the properties that allow for variation.

 

If it's just for a still - how about adding some 3D trees in the foreground?

[ericsh6]

markeh,

This 640x480 image took 13 minutes to render on a P4 3.2 GHz machine and I am used to about 4 minutes with 4 pass multipass. However, with this picture I turned on "cast shadows" on the hair and use zBuffer shadows on my klieg light which I think looks very good and I find that ABuffer render is faster than multipass and of course better quality.

 

 

I will experiment with varying properties, add some 3D trees in the foreground, and animate a flyby and post when done.