TerraPak Hyper-Real Rendering Toolkit now available.

#1

Hey folks, just thought I’d mention we’ve finally gotten the TerraPak product available.

From the TerraPak website:

TerraPak™ is an easy-to-use, but advanced toolkit for users of Vue 6 and above. With TerraPak, and a few enlightened clicks, Vue quickly replicates the hyper-reality seen in many 3d landscape images and photos, including those from Terragen™.

For the immediate future, we’re also including over 20 mats from Monsoon. And for those interested in how it works, there’s a 35 page manual that goes along with the toolkit.

Special thanks to Peggy Walters and Wabe for help in testing!

#2

okey…so whats up with this pack?
it seems to me that this mainly consists of premade scenes textures,terrains,rocks and atmospheres and render settings?
What kind of other tools are in this pack? plugins?

I think most semipro user can whip up scenes like those displayed on the site pretty fast, and
equal quality and even more realistic thou…no offense…but really no need to use that to acheive that look…at least not for me.

Granted thou…it might be a bliss for those who don´t know exactly how or are short on time…but it would be nice to know if theres something in this package that I can´t do within
vue already?

phamarus

#3

You should check out this 4 page thread over at Rendo for more info on how this came about. Vue’s ability to create Hyper-Real rendering aka Terragen has been elusive for some time now.

By careful examination of the type of fractal Terragen uses, combined with the settings for materials and atmosphere, we were able to create a very similar look. In fact, dissecting some of the best TG mats was only part of the problem. How to create the same shaders in Vue is more difficult. There are 6 elements which need to be controlled:

Terrain, Texture, Atmosphere, Camera, Lighting, and the Render Settings. All are discussed with examples as well as template files. Plus, we’ve created a system which allows a user to actually visualize the interaction of materials before they are applied, which helps substantially in the creation of realistic texures.

Phamarus, I looked for your gallery images, but didn’t see any. Have you any experience with Hyper-Real landscape rendering? If so, I’d love to see some examples.

best, Chipp

#4

Never mind…

#5

No…I don´t have gallery or portfolio up…I will have it up later on…right now Im a bit busy
expanding on skills on lightwave.

I am not satisfied either with my own results as to get to
very hyper real…but the samples on the site aren´t that hyperreal…they are pretty good
in terms of matching the terragen look…and I am not here to state that I can get it Hyperreal
very few people can…and as for showing my work as for somekind of proof…well I have my focus on getting a nice gallery out instead on my own site when I feel It is as good as I wan´t it…And that might take some time.

as stated of you the textures and shaders in vue needs some serious tweaking to look more
terragenish…and Maybe you have done som good work on breaking the different elements apart.
Ultimatly how much work you put in…in terms of lighting…use of right procedurals…atmosphere setup, Render settings…and of course the texturing will of course result in more realistic look…
Your terrain and atmosphere in the samples look pretty good…they are crisp and I believe
that Radiosity or somekind of overcast lighting model is done…most people don´t use the radiosity model that much as what I have seen yet…and that alone gives an enourmous impact on how the terrain looks like…Maybe its because of rendertimes they don´t use it that much…

Terragen renders mostly consist of large procedural terrains with very good lighting.and nice camera angles focus.where
most vue landscaps consists of lots of vegetations and mostly Standard terrains bad texturing and a lighting model straight ahead that gives a washed out look.
It seems to me that the samples on your site don´t have the spectral atmosphere on it…
Thats not a bad thing thou…it gives faster renderings with radiosity but it takes away the impressions of hyper reality at the first glance,mostly because of the clouds…a straigh blue sky or fog could do it nicely to or a image map.

Phamarus

#6

Well its good to see Vue being streatched in this way but I fail to see the how “Hyper Real” renders you show on the site are even close to Terragens capability. The best Vue work I’ve seen so far was the comp work done on the Pirates movies but that is not the sort of thing that the average home enthusiast could produce. I’m not knocking Vue but the two programs work in diferant ways and produce very diferant results. You should take a look at some of the images being produced by the new version of Terragen over at Planetside and make a comparrison. I think you’ll agree that the term hyper real is not realy right when applied to the the images on the site your promoting.
cyphyr

#7

In the real world you don’t wait several days for one frame to render either. Sure they look great if you want to spend a life time waiting for it to render. That is one reason you do not see Terragen being used in a real working enviornment it is not ready for prime time.

Just like any program it is the person using it that makes the difference. Just my 2 cents.

Chipp has some good advise and some useful tools for the beginners.

#8

thats interesting reading…haven´t read it all thou.
The most striking to me and what wish would come more natural included with vue…is the
better shading texturing and the fractal terrains…that are more natural in terragen, all of this seams to be the discussion thou.

It´s not impossible to set it up like terragen…terragen does it more easier thou due to the initial setups and so on…but it will take rendertime mostly.
I would probably check World machine or geocontrol…if the time isn´t there to learn vues
procedurals properly.
pulling in world machines terrains in vue…and setting the same camera focus as those in terragen and high quality lighting…and some advanced texturing will probably give a nice(terragen render)

Ive noticed that Carrara studios terrain generator and texturing and atmosphere lighting matches the terragen renders more than vues.
another trick…if you have lightwave of course…rendering out high resolution images from
all the good procedurals in there can give some really nice results.

phamarus

#9

Yep, world machine is a good app to…

#10

Nope, not done with Radiosity. In fact this image below rendered in just over 3 minutes on my WinXP machine, standard Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB memory.

There are images with Spectral atmospheres in that Rendo thread as well. Here’s one.

Just wondering, do you use Vue much? Seems like you’re a Lightwave guy. I love Lightwave and have used it since V4, and know the company CEO and Lightwave president. They have a super product, too. But you can’t jump in and setup a scene like this one and render it out in a few minutes-- that’s more what Vue and TG does.

And you’re exactly right, it is about more than textures. Camera angles and terrains and lighting are all very important. Actually, Vue’s procedural terrains are pretty good, if you know how to use them. In TerraPak, there are a couple of terrain ‘recipes’ which walk you through creating a good terrain in Vue.

-Chipp

#11

[QUOTE=

Just wondering, do you use Vue much? Seems like you’re a Lightwave guy.

-Chipp[/QUOTE]

ahh…that depends on the weather…I guess:) no…really it is on and off constantly what I use.
the last image looks nicer…better lighting and such.
Vue terrains has their own characteristics just like terragen has it´s, but terragens has in my opinion a more natural landscape flow in it´s terrain…it´s more like a grand continent style look that is harder to acheive easy in vue…but of course it can be done most certainly.

yepp your right, setting up this kind of imagery doesnt go that fast in lightwave…but don´t rule lightwave out in terms of matching landscape imagery.
terrain work can be outstanding and texturing…and sasquatch makes grass that vue cant touch.
trees are more diffucult of course and will take a hell of lot more effort to get decent.
Sorry to see that the atmosphere plugin Ogo Taiki seems left in outer space somewhere…
that one could produce some nice atmospheres that could have matched vues…not in terms of speed thou…thats why it´s a shame nothing seems to happen on that one.

so if you are a user of lightwave aswell? Have you tried to just add a texture environment and render out some of lightwaves procedurals like hetero terrain,ridged multifractal…and tweak those untill they look like a decent terrain greyscale map…
Render out to 2048x2048 and load that image in vues terrain editor.
It might give you some more different types of terrain…it´s just a tip.

As I said…the last image you showed here is much nicer. the lighting is almost perfect…
Another terrain…and some more texture work would be nice and a high quality render
that goes on for halv an hour or so might do the trick:)but thats my taste.

I really think The vue developers should start thinking of adding some serious contender
procedurals in to the function editor I have always felt that it is lacking something there,it could be specific designed for cumulus clouds, cirrus feather clouds and procedurals specially designed for terrain creation, theres a lot to be done there.
By the way I just recently checked the terragen site…this guy is cool…haven´t seen him around before.
http://www.christiancouette.com/serie.php?id_album=7&stat=ok

check these clouds
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/v/tg2gallery/file_1403189.jpg.html

To bad that terragen is soo…slow.

Phamarus

#12

Yep, those clouds just Rock… I’ve played a bit with clouds in Vue, and I think I might come close with the right settings…dunno. There’s certainly a lot of exploring to do.

And Christian’s images are stunning as well. It really is about perspective and ‘setting up a scene.’

Don’t know if you caught it or not, but both images of mine above are from Terragen created terrains, output as RAW 16-bit and imported as 16-bit TIFF from Pshop. TG’s terrains are pretty good, but I’m thinking of working harder on just using DEM files-- if I can get the right resolution and all. Nothing beats real world.

Couple things about TG 0.9. First off, there’s never any indication of scale in the image. That’s not necessarily bad, and in fact does help create ‘hyper-realism’ but in some ways it’s a cheat. Also, they don’t do great AA but do some decent noise reduction. This results in a very crisp render which really looks nice-- but is difficult to animate OR add other objects to.

And TG2 has the same problem with AA and especially noise. Check out:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/v/tg2gallery/frank_basinski_valley_3.jpg.html

and

http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/v/tg2gallery/luc_bianco_sousbois.jpg.html

These two images are from the best TG artists out there, and they’re still poorly aliased. Not sure why. Anyway, Hyper-Real is an elusive target. When you see it, you know it. I’ve been lucky to have been working with some folks which are pretty good at rendering and I think TerraPak can help many people raise their own skills. I do agree, it’s really not for ILM or any professionals, although there are a few tips in there IMHO are pretty sweet.

best,
Chipp

#13

Thanks a lot Chipp! Here’s my first attempt with Terrapak…

Love the water!

#14

Hey Jason, that’s a great scene and POV. Nice job!

#15

Looking amazing! Very interesting product!
Not working in xStream? Or does it as long as you stay in xStream and not in the host app?

Thanks!

odo

#16

While I don’t have Xtreme, I don’t know any reason why it shouldn’t work in Xtreme.

#17

I’m off to buy then! I’ll report back when there’s trouble. :wink:

odo

Edit:

Ok bought my copy, installed terrapak and works like a charm so far! Thanks for making this available!

#18

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