Need texture advice/assistance.

scott_4e0b772ae4

Creating landscapes for some work I'm doing. As you can see, the landscape looks better the further away from the camera it is. This of course looks a bit off when there are close figures that are in focus and detailed. This was setup and rendered in DS4.5.

The landscape is a solid mesh with textures applied.

Any thoughts on how to get the up close mesh areas to have more detail - short of hand painting it postwork.

I know of the polygon group editor and its ability to select faces, not sure if this could be used in some manner to increase my detail up close.

Any thoughts and advice would be great,
Thanks

Edit: The lines in the mesh are showing because of some issue with uber environment which i can't at the moment remember how to resolve - have it written down somewhere - of course the lines in the background are adding to the look of detail way back there.

scott_4e0b772ae4

So, the first image texture was around 6mb. The second image texture takes a HUGE jump up to nearly 90meg. Closer but still not quite what I'm looking for. I've also remove uber environment for the moment to remove the mesh lines - hence the different lighting as well.

Just...need...a little..more..detail...

mjc1016

I'd probably create a new group or two and assign them new material zones. That way you could use a more detailed texture, from the start.

Also dropping in things like rocks and vegetation tend to 'fill' in the missing details.

Zev0

Have you tried save for web feature in photoshop? You can reduce filesize by a lot and maintain good quality on you texture. Or just add in a bump or displacement map. They give good quality and are smaller than normal textures in terms of filesize because they dont have any colour information.

Cyn Art

I really like in the second picture that in the foreground the additional detail appears to look like "runoff" impressions on the ground.

I've got no solution, model wise in mind for your plight, but I'm thinking picture wise with a more severe difference like in the first pic when using your landscape, you might consider a more natural balance of foreground and background as a solution if nothing else works. Maybe the balance can come from a "haze" like that found in real life environments, where the lighter background would lose some detail, but look more believable hand-in-hand with the foreground.

For DS there's the "Atmospheric Effects Cameras for DAZ Studio", or maybe a highly transparent fog from the "Fog Deluxe" line might work if you have them and want to experiment with that look. I'm not into DS4 yet, so I don't know specifically if those work in it.

The only other thing I can think of that might propose a more balanced look is one of those skies that produces a sharper and lighter background i.e. those found in scenes where the clouds are creating shadows on the ground and the background is a lit area while the foreground is shadowed due to that, making ground reacting to sky as seen in true to life scenarios. That one is probably tricky, though. But if you have Bryce, it creates some beautiful skies and can be done to match your camera angle of the scene once you're set with that. I like to use Bryce often to create the skies and scenes to bring in as the background for renders in DS. You might even find that you can get that effect wholly using Bryce altogether to render the scene, where you'd probably get a true reacting scene from light and shadow in that program. Throwing in some slight God-rays in post with the DS render might clench the deal if you go with using a coordinating sky background in DS. Even some near transparent streaks simulating light in post that are less extreme might do.

Not much, but just a thought. Like I was saying, no help for the model itself, but simply some possible solutions when using it. That being said, if it works great in Bryce or Carrara and such, those could be the recommended programs for the model itself if you're intending to release it as a product. Using it in DS would simply be working outside the box, where many people like to do that.

Taoz

Zev0 said:

Have you tried save for web feature in photoshop?

You can do that in most graphics programs by increasing the compression level.

Zev0

True. I was just assuming he was using it since most people do.

scott_4e0b772ae4

I really appreciate all the input. Thank you all.

Here is a shot of the full landscape to give you a better idea of what I'm working with. I may be expecting too much in the way of close up detail considering the size of this thing. Have tried a couple of suggestions. The bump map kinda works but too pixellated. Displacement and normal maps really don't seem to want to work with this. The mesh is fairly low res considering size but the texture is very high res.
The fog camera is one of my favorites but have not figured out how to have clouds in the sky with the fog at the same time.

Still need to look into this "...create a new group or two and assign them new material zones." - polygon group editor

Edit: To me, the bump map almost works but at the same time creates areas that look like errors. (The second image shows the addition of a bump map and the fog camera).

Considering the massive size of this thing, I think the "save for web" option may increase the loss of those little details I'm looking for.

Edit 2: Cyan Art - "...if you’re intending to release it as a product." Hadn't even occurred to me. Would anyone want these landscapes? What's a good price? What would really be needed by people for this to be a good product? Right now I'm just building it for my own purposes of course, size (mesh and texture) isn't really too important as long as the results are what I need.

scott_4e0b772ae4

I may increase the mesh resolution just a bit more. 416,000 faces at the moment. Alternatively, the texture resolution could go up just a bit more. Finally, the faces are triangles - I will likely try to re-create the mesh in quads but not sure at the moment if that is possible with the software I'm using.

Have given up on the bump maps at the moment. And with the right lighting, may not need more close up texture. Here is another shot with fog camera, no bump, and uber environment re-established. The ground around her feet isn't too bad for lack of detail.

Edit: the figure needs a little more shadow to connect her to the ground. Also figured out how to get the sky back in while using the fog camera. (Render without a sky or sky dome and the vacant background simply is rendered as transparent - place sky and match color postwork.)

Cyn Art

muddpuddle said:

I really appreciate all the input. Thank you all.

. . . [snip, snip]

Edit 2: Cyan Art - "...if you’re intending to release it as a product." Hadn't even occurred to me. Would anyone want these landscapes? What's a good price? What would really be needed by people for this to be a good product? Right now I'm just building it for my own purposes of course, size (mesh and texture) isn't really too important as long as the results are what I need.

ur welcome.

:coolsmile: I think it's a fantastic landscape, and would probably get it the first chance I could. I work on a little clunker (that doesn't even have OpenGL, lol ), so the only thing I'd be disappointed in is if it's too heavy and caused crashing.

It might be as good as you're going to get it, actually, because I'd noticed in several ground products that the closest portion to the camera would be "flat". I think that's why most pics use a forefront cover (such as grass, props, etc.) or eliminate showing it altogether with the subjects resting almost on the bottom edge of the frame. But you'd need a more experienced opinion than mine to determine that. I really don't have the experience to know if you can go further for close-up detail.

As for putting it on a market and pricing, I know nothing about that stuff, but there's probably a nice vendor here that would be willing to discuss that with you if you decide you're interested in that kind of thing. (There are so many nice vendors here.) A lot of people use ShareCG to offer the product for free and also have an option for donations, but I don't use SGC enough to know if they customarily have items for a price. What I do know is that most items for sale or not have a read-me that gives permissions (or not) and some items are limited in how they're used. Cruising SGC might give you an idea of what you might want to consider if you go the "offer" route.

As for anything else, I know nothing about anything. I just think it's a great terrain and am impressed. :-P
I've made one, but unmapped and it shows no-where the skill you've used with this one! LoL

I really do like the look using the fog, btw. That second picture when I looked really felt tied together and seemed very believable! :lol:

scott_4e0b772ae4

Hey Cyn Art, thanks for the extra input. I have decided to make this into a product. More info can be found in the commercial thread though I'm still trying to figure out how to actually do it. There's a new render there as well showing an extra texture.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8131/

There's some basic information there as to the size of meshes and textures. The low res mesh is 50,625 quad faces. It is a huge terrain. The mid-range texture is about 5MB. Low texture is 192kb (but Low is the key word there).

Locked by a Moderator in favour of Commercial Thread here
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8131/

RAMWolff

Looks great. Have you tried overlaying a noise map over the textures?? What is the size of them? At 6 Mb they must be a good size.

Zev0

I was just gonna suggest that lol.. noise give much added detail.