> I think I have reached the final version of this image.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thomas

Oh yes, great image, nice foam and foreground this time ;)

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> I think I have reached the final version of this image.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thomas

Beautiful.  I am such a hack in comparison....

May I ask some technical questions?

The mountains in the distance (love the layers) -- How did you do that?  It
doesn't look like a simple heightfield; maybe a hightfield on another? (or a
heightfield turned sideways towards the viewer?)

The trees (or vegitation) on the mountain foothills -- they look more 3d than
textured on it.  Did you loop a trace() and place green objects there?  What
sort of objects?

Similar question about the far trees across the misty valley -- how detailed did
you make them to have them come out looking like that?  (Obviously, you don't
need to model them to the leaf level at this distance).

And the close grass -- I've tried to make it with a bunch of triangles.  They
were all the same color, though.  How do you get all the colors?  You don't
model them individually, do you?

Thanks!

Tom A.

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> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>> I think I have reached the final version of this image.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Thomas
>
> Beautiful.  I am such a hack in comparison....
>
> May I ask some technical questions?
>
> The mountains in the distance (love the layers) -- How did you do that?  It
> doesn't look like a simple heightfield; maybe a hightfield on another? (or a
> heightfield turned sideways towards the viewer?)
The author probably used some isosurface. Add to that some clever 
texturing. Add a bit of turbulance to break the regularity of the base 
pattern.

>
> The trees (or vegitation) on the mountain foothills -- they look more 3d than
> textured on it.  Did you loop a trace() and place green objects there?  What
> sort of objects?
Not textures nut actual objects, probably some mesh.
Mesh are very effecient: One mesh can be placed thousands of times and 
only reside in memory once. Add some random rotation, slight uneven 
scalling mean that only 2 or 3 meshes can make a very beleivable forest.

>
> Similar question about the far trees across the misty valley -- how detailed did
> you make them to have them come out looking like that?  (Obviously, you don't
> need to model them to the leaf level at this distance).
Those don't need much detail. Some low triangle count meshes can do the 
trick.
>
> And the close grass -- I've tried to make it with a bunch of triangles.  They
> were all the same color, though.  How do you get all the colors?  You don't
> model them individually, do you?
You can create grass patches as mesh proceduraly. Have a ground with 
varying colouring, apply some pattern to the grass colour, maybe use 
some short grass patches and some longer ones.

>
> Thanks!
>
> Tom A.
>

Alain

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On 31-7-2013 19:42, Tom A. wrote:
> Beautiful.  I am such a hack in comparison....
>
> May I ask some technical questions?

Of course.

>
> The mountains in the distance (love the layers) -- How did you do that?  It
> doesn't look like a simple heightfield; maybe a hightfield on another? (or a
> heightfield turned sideways towards the viewer?)

The mountains consist of one single height_field made in GeoControl. It 
is mirrored and copied a number of times to fill the panorama. The 
layers are produced by a texture using a slope/altitude pattern.

>
> The trees (or vegitation) on the mountain foothills -- they look more 3d than
> textured on it.  Did you loop a trace() and place green objects there?  What
> sort of objects?

The trees are one single POV-Tree object exported as mesh{}. There are 
200,000 of them from the far background to the middle foreground. They 
are traced on the combined heigh_fields and randomly rotated, scaled, 
and textured to different green hues. Obviously, I first saved a file 
with trace positions. You only have to do that once as it takes some 
time to calculate; then you only need to include the file and read the 
locations which is very fast.

>
> Similar question about the far trees across the misty valley -- how detailed did
> you make them to have them come out looking like that?  (Obviously, you don't
> need to model them to the leaf level at this distance).

Same tree, one single bunch of trees over the whole image ;-) As they 
are instanced from one single mesh there is very little memory needed.

>
> And the close grass -- I've tried to make it with a bunch of triangles.  They
> were all the same color, though.  How do you get all the colors?  You don't
> model them individually, do you?

Individual grass patches are originally Poser props. There are eight of 
them, textured and uv-mapped and exported as mesh2. Using the same 
technique as for the trees, they are randomly chosen, rotated, scaled on 
the foreground heigh_field. The latter has a basic slope pattern texture 
to put some green under and between the grass patches.

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 31-7-2013 19:42, Tom A. wrote:
> > Beautiful.  I am such a hack in comparison....
> >
> > May I ask some technical questions?
>
> Of course.
>
> >

>
> Thomas

Thank you Thomas and Alain

Tom A.

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