Need Some Help With SPD Snowy Mountain

[wesware]

Looks like you lost your phong tag???

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Humm, well there is a phong tag on the polygon, though it's not in a hypernubs like i usually put them in. Not sure if that would make any difference though. I have increased the sub-divisions in the displacement map to 10 but it's taking ages to render it.

[wesware]

Yeah... might just need more subdivs.
Could it be a lighting issue? Using soft shadows or hard?

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Am just using one Omni light. I have reduced the sub - divisions back to 4 in the materials displacement. And now put it in a hypernurbs. It's taking it's time again.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Here is the spd material for the mountain. Just dropit on a plane object. Sub D the p[lane about 2 times.

If anyone can figure whats wrong then that would be great :)

[wesware]

Hey Dude,

turned off the "Normal" channel and got rid of the faceting...
It's blows it out a bit but that could be fixed.

What's the purpose of noise in the normal channel?

[JoelOtron]

try significantly increasing your shadow bias on your omni.

Also--try switching the material from UV to some other projection.

[Per-Anders]

You've put a Blistered Turbulence noise in the Normal Channel for some reason, this is making the normals go all over the shop and is causing the effect. The normal channel is for normal maps only, it doesn't work like a bump map, just putting noise in there does not add detail it just destroys the normals for the polygons, if you want to make use of the Normal Channel using procedurals you have to understand how Normal Maps work.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

I actually don't know what the normal function was there for, (not even sure what a normal map is) I have not really done much project work in R10 since i got it 6 months ago. I guess i need to read the stuff about the materials.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Cheers for the help,here is an update. Needs more detail i think though.

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=61766&d=1198785622

[wesware]

Hey Man,

It's lookin' pretty good. Do a search for "fresh powder" or other skiing terms for some good reference. I feel like the scale is too big in your image... a snowboarder or whatever would have to be fairly small in this pict IMHO.

You might do better hand modelling the terrain... one well placed dark rock overhang with some snow built up on the top with that wind blown edge look would really set this thing off and help with scale.

Nice work! I know this type of thing is hard.... you need really good reference.

[JoelOtron]

Apart from the blocky surface, I really liked the first image you posted. This new one however is beginning to look less like snow and more like some kind of fabric----like silk.


Wesware made some good suggestions there.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Thanks for the tips guys, I totally agree with what your saying, I like the more detailed texture of the original too. Thing about the SPD technique though is that it's difficult to see what your actually creating as you change the settings. Takes quite alot of time to get right and getting an accurate representation. My Pc Spec is an Athlon 3500 2.3 Ghz single core wth 3 Gigs of DDR400 Ram Win XP Home.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

This was a version from the original image , i think it must have been a close up part of the scene which avoided the pixel part, funny thing though is that I have left the 'Normals' selected in the materials.

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=61770&d=1198805955

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Hey Man,

It's lookin' pretty good. Do a search for "fresh powder" or other skiing terms for some good reference. I feel like the scale is too big in your image... a snowboarder or whatever would have to be fairly small in this pict IMHO.

You might do better hand modelling the terrain... one well placed dark rock overhang with some snow built up on the top with that wind blown edge look would really set this thing off and help with scale.

Nice work! I know this type of thing is hard.... you need really good reference.


Thanks for the ideas, I am actually going to use Terragen for a mountain in the background to gve as you say scale, and composite the bacground elements in Photoshop Cs2.

When I have completed all the elements in the poster and put them together I will post it up here for crtique.

This is the other poster I have ready for submission as part of my HND Advanced Vector Graphics class.

This is all hand drawn in vector apart from the cloud bitmaps http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=61527&d=1197255682

Swatch watch vector

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=60057&d=1190235954

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