Op 31-8-2023 om 00:51 schreef Samuel B.:
> Hi,
> 
> A landscape sketch. The hills are height fields, and the plants are a single
> mesh made in Blender, duplicated a number of times. The scene was rendered with
> UberPOV using no_cache radiosity and scattering media. Total rendering time in
> POV-Ray was 7 minutes, 31 seconds. Denoising and vignette are care of Blender,
> and the final gamma and contrast were adjusted in IrfanView.
> Excellent, Sam. I very much like the mood of the scene and the plants 
are great.


> I'm fairly happy with the plants, but the land objects really need some work...
> I want overhangs and high detail, but not the render times associated with
> isosurfaces... So, I guess the other best option would be sculpted meshes ':/
>
Indeed. I am also interested in sculpting meshes. Not sure at present 
how to go about that: it would need to allow for erosion along natural 
sedimentary planes and layers for instance. It is something I have had 
the intention of doing for a long time but never got time to get my 
hands dirty in earnest till now...

-- 
Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:

> Indeed. I am also interested in sculpting meshes. Not sure at present
> how to go about that: it would need to allow for erosion along natural
> sedimentary planes and layers for instance. It is something I have had
> the intention of doing for a long time but never got time to get my
> hands dirty in earnest till now...
>
> --
> Thomas

Hi Thomas,

It occurred to me that you might be able to do something like this with that
vine-growing macro.  Have the "vines" grow along the terrain, and then translate
all of the mesh vertices straight down to the bottom of the "vine" and thereby
create a path of erosion.

Maybe change some of the vine-growing rules to instead of being random, seek the
lowest direction to "flow".

- BW

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"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "Samuel B." <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > A landscape sketch. [...]
>
> Nice work. Lighting, plants, and hills look very natural. I agree it's hard to
> get the look of undercuts with a height field. Maybe just some mid-range rocks
> or rougher terrain at the base of the hills?

Thanks Mike. Yeah, placing rocks would be a good idea, but this scene isn't set
up correctly to make it easy.

> >> So, I guess the other best option would be sculpted meshes ':/
>
> There's some 'Megascans' style libraries out there - some free. Quixel has some
> great models with even greater poly counts. :)

Thanks for the link. I tried Quixel a while back, but I was annoyed by the
always-online nature of the program and promptly uninstalled it. But looking
back: of course it needs to be online to download things! So, I might give it
another shot in the future.

> If you do sculpt some topo/rock forms in Blender, I'd be interested in your
> process. I haven't modeling natural forms in Blender other than blobs.

I learned a neat Blender sculpting trick this year: use the flatten tool, and in
its advanced settings, check one or both boxes for the original normal and
plane. These will allow you to sculpt hard edges. It's not perfect, but it does
make sculpting rock forms much easier. And of course, make sure to use dyntopo.

> I assume rendering time grow as triangles increase?  It's been a while sense
> I've work with mesh in POV.
> Mike.

Yeah, render times go up with higher triangle counts. But you can always try
decimating the mesh or using the simplify sculpting tool.

Sam

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"Samuel B." <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > If you do sculpt some topo/rock forms in Blender, I'd be interested in your
> > process. [...]
>
> I learned a neat Blender sculpting trick this year: use the flatten tool [...]

This just in: the scrape tool works much better if you want to avoid building up
beyond the original plane. In other words, it's more like using a chisel or
sanding block. And definitely still play with the original normal and plane
settings to make the best use of it.

Sam

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Op 31-8-2023 om 00:51 schreef Samuel B.:
> > Hi,
> >
> > A landscape sketch. [...]
>
> Excellent, Sam. I very much like the mood of the scene and the plants
> are great.

Thanks Thomas. It's inspired by this image somebody posted once using Midjourney
ai:
https://i.ibb.co/DRqSGKD/Organic-Proof8059-Midjourney-Jedi-TOTL-Magazine-Triumph-of-the-Light.jpg

I want to recreate the overall feeling of the thick atmosphere, fuzzy plants
and, if possible, a similar futuristic structure.

> > I'm fairly happy with the plants, but the land objects really need some work...
> > I want overhangs and high detail, but not the render times associated with
> > isosurfaces... So, I guess the other best option would be sculpted meshes ':/
> >
> Indeed. I am also interested in sculpting meshes. Not sure at present
> how to go about that: it would need to allow for erosion along natural
> sedimentary planes and layers for instance. It is something I have had
> the intention of doing for a long time but never got time to get my
> hands dirty in earnest till now...
>
> --
> Thomas

Well, as far as sculpting goes, Blender is one option. It's free, but the
learning curve is steep. There's also ZBrush (paid), Sculptris (paid? free? I
think I still have an installer for an old free version I could share), Nomad
for Android (paid), and... I don't know what else.

As far as programs specializing in landscapes, you already know about World
Machine. There's also Gaea, which seems very interesting. And Terragen, of
course. And also Gaia, which doesn't seem to do geology as well as Gaea but is
more of an all-in-one program letting you place plants and structures, I think.
Overall, Gaea seems the best choice at the moment, but I haven't made an
extensive search.

Gaea: https://quadspinner.com/

Sam

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Op 31/08/2023 om 23:12 schreef Bald Eagle:
> It occurred to me that you might be able to do something like this with that
> vine-growing macro.  Have the "vines" grow along the terrain, and then translate
> all of the mesh vertices straight down to the bottom of the "vine" and thereby
> create a path of erosion.
> 
> Maybe change some of the vine-growing rules to instead of being random, seek the
> lowest direction to "flow".
> 

Hmm... worth a try indeed. Thanks for the suggestion!

-- 
Thomas

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Op 1-9-2023 om 01:23 schreef Samuel B.:
> Thanks Thomas. It's inspired by this image somebody posted once using Midjourney
> ai:
>
https://i.ibb.co/DRqSGKD/Organic-Proof8059-Midjourney-Jedi-TOTL-Magazine-Triumph-of-the-Light.jpg
> 
> I want to recreate the overall feeling of the thick atmosphere, fuzzy plants
> and, if possible, a similar futuristic structure.
>
You certainly achieved to recreate the mood.

> 
> Well, as far as sculpting goes, Blender is one option. It's free, but the
> learning curve is steep. There's also ZBrush (paid), Sculptris (paid? free? I
> think I still have an installer for an old free version I could share), Nomad
> for Android (paid), and... I don't know what else.
> 
I must have an ancient Sculptris installer somewhere under the dust of 
my archives. I shall have a look. Blender is still (and since many many 
years) on my ToDo list :-/  Silo, which I have, may do something 
interesting but it is not specialised in that direction. However, I 
should have a more thorough look when I get the time.

> As far as programs specializing in landscapes, you already know about World
> Machine. There's also Gaea, which seems very interesting. And Terragen, of
> course. And also Gaia, which doesn't seem to do geology as well as Gaea but is
> more of an all-in-one program letting you place plants and structures, I think.
> Overall, Gaea seems the best choice at the moment, but I haven't made an
> extensive search.
> 
> Gaea: https://quadspinner.com/
> 
I find Terragen a bit disappointing (at least, the ancient version I 
possess); I shall have look at Gaea.

-- 
Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Op 1-9-2023 om 01:23 schreef Samuel B.:
> > Thanks Thomas. It's inspired by this image [...]:
> >
https://i.ibb.co/DRqSGKD/Organic-Proof8059-Midjourney-Jedi-TOTL-Magazine-Triumph-of-the-Light.jpg
> > [...]
> >
> You certainly achieved to recreate the mood.

Yeah, I got close. The sky isn't as warm. And somehow the denoiser failed a bit,
probably due to the noisy proximity pattern I used and fed into the albedo slot.
(Things look a lot smoother on tests where I leave it out.)

> > Well, as far as sculpting goes [...several suggestions]
> >
> I must have an ancient Sculptris installer somewhere under the dust of
> my archives. I shall have a look.

Probably the same one I have. Use it only if you must, I say. It's hard to get
acceptable results with it, especially when trying to make rocks and such.

> Blender is still (and since many many years) on my ToDo list :-/ [...]

Yeah, I guess it all depends on how useful it'd be for your work. My previous
experience with anything close to it was LightWave 3D (v7) and Blender has, in
all respects, become so much better than that.

> I find Terragen a bit disappointing (at least, the ancient version I
> possess);

My biggest issue with Terragen was that everything took a lot time to compute
and render. Maybe the newer versions (if any) are better?

> I shall have look at Gaea.
>
> --
> Thomas

Gaea really does seem like the best one for simulating real-world geology (or an
approximation of it, anyway), but I'm pretty sure to get anything useful from it
you have to pay for a full(er) version.

Sam

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Op 02/09/2023 om 00:03 schreef Samuel B.:

> Gaea really does seem like the best one for simulating real-world geology (or an
> approximation of it, anyway), but I'm pretty sure to get anything useful from it
> you have to pay for a full(er) version.
> 
Yeah, that is what I noticed immediately indeed :-/

I guess I shall stick with my own familiar combination of
- Leveller (my oldest);
- Bryce (a free copy, sometimes interestingas basics);
- GeoControl (old but my best one);
- Terrabrush (well...);
- World Machine (I love that one);
- Wilbur (simple and surprising);

and any combination of their terrains together.

-- 
Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Op 31/08/2023 om 23:12 schreef Bald Eagle:

> > Maybe change some of the vine-growing rules to instead of being random, seek the
> > lowest direction to "flow".
> >
>
> Hmm... worth a try indeed. Thanks for the suggestion!
>
> --
> Thomas

So, I've come across the "A*" path-finding algorithm a few times in the past
year or so - I think that if you used the heights of all of the possible path
"pixels" to score your optimal path, then you could use that as the vine-growth
rule.

If your mesh had an associated texture applied to it, then the different
strata/soil types would have a different hardness / percolation / erosivity, and
you could use that to control the radius of the "vine" - eroding more strongly
in soft soils, and hardly at all over rock.
Then you might have places where the soft soil was the lowest path (initially),
but then lower strata were harder, and another equivalent soft soil erosion path
was along a deeper soft soil patch, which would then dominate the erosion
pattern.

Perhaps add an elliptical parameter to erode the sides of a long-standing
erosion path to simulate collapse of the walls and filling of the erosion path
with silt and aggregate.

Red Blob Games has a good write-up on this,
https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html

and Daniel Shiffman at NYU / The Coding Train did a 3-part series on
implementing this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKYlikFAV4k

Just some extra thoughts.

- BW

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