3D9B6139.4017B9DB@gmx.de...
> I also think that most CG landscapes you see are often of lower quality
> than indoor scenes, but i don't see much of a difference between hobbyist
> and professional work.

Professionals have access to hardware, software, shaders, texture libraries
etc. that hobbysts don't have, and they also have the training. If you've
seen the "Time machine" (not a very good movie so you may not have missed
much) there are some landscape morphing sequences that are quite impressive,
and all the vegetation was created with xfrog. I really don't think I could
do the same.
Water textures and surfaces is also an area where pros using specific
shaders and plug-ins really have an advantage over hobbyists (I'm talking
final images, not demos).

> To me it seems the key element is 'control' here.  Landscape elements,
> both the terrain as well as vegetation, clouds and other things have such
> a high complexity that creating them without significant algorithmic
> elements is nearly impossible.

Yes, this is really the point actually. Any natural element or object is
really hard to reproduce realistically and the closer it is to the camera
the more difficult it is to model. We can only have an "impressionistic"
approach with a lot of simplifications. In a classic landscape image, the
ground, for instance, is already a problem : how to maintain realism on the
parts closest to the viewer without overloading the parts in the background
with unecessary details, and still maintain the continuity between
foreground and background ? There are techniques for that, but your typical
height-field won't be very useful (gigantic ones would be necessary), so
it's isosurfaces (slow, with difficult control of feature placement) or some
clever tiling with plants or other objects to mask the discontinuities. And
some pattern repetition will be necessary etc. Silly as it seems, it's a
difficult issue when I work on landscapes.

G.


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