In another thread, Powertec tossed down this gauntlet.
[quote]Think anyone can get Vue to pull this one off?![/quote]

Here's the original rendering, and a wonderful one at that by DandeIO in the Terragen gallery. I've taken his original and resized it to 640 x 480 so as to keep things the correct size. Hope no one minds.

I have to say it is a superb rendering. For starters, Rids says:

[quote]the rock materials are not the problem, its getting the water to look as realistic - this looks a lot easier than it really is.[/quote]

OK, so I'm not going to concentrate on the rock...yet. Here's the first 2 passes in Vue:

I'm not yet satisfied with the water texture.

Here's another...I like this one more. Has a tiny bit of water turbulence around rocks poking up. Also, less transparent in the distance.

I think your water looks a little shallower

Quote - I think your water looks a little shallower

It is just a geometrical difference. For everything else, I do not see significant differences among TG2 and Vue6 renders (look like a GC version of the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test ;-) ).

Bye!!!! 

Might be down to reflectivity as well. The TG water seems a lot less reflective. And dirtier too.

I think the TG water is a bit more reflective-- check out how sharp and dark the reflection of the stone at the top of the image. I don't know about dirtier, but there is much more blur going on below the water line.

It does look browner

The rocks are eluding me...

It's just me but I do prefer the first one of your Vue pictures well above the TG one. It almost looks like a photograph.

Well from my point of view as a fanatic TG2TP user I must bring this up. At this time TG2TP does not have transparent water.....maybe by year's end I'm hopin', so that water was, in my opinion done post and not in TG2TP. I do believe it was postef in the Planetside Forum in a thread about faking transparency so great work all on the water...better than I can do inTG2TP the 'mo. How's that for T.S.I.  heh heh heh  .. ...

Interesting, Bobby, no transparent water in TG2 yet? Didn't know this.

Another great thread to keep watching! 

Personally I also like the Vue renders more then the Terragen one. Might just come down to persaonal taste.

I agree with some of the above statements - I like your view renders (like Agiel, I prefer the first one of yours) better than the TG2 one.

The TG2 one looks "rendered" - dunno how to explain it better than that, but it looks kinda fake to me. I realize many people really like that look, but not me.
-Lew ;-)

Attached Link: Water transparency test .tgd

To begin with, we create our riverbed, texture it accordingly and then add our water and set the levels, roughness etc...
Once we've got to this point we will then DISABLE the waterplane and render the image 'dry'. A lower detail setting will suffice for this(.5 is good I find).
Once this image is rendered we save it as 'subsurface.bmp'. Now, go to your water nodes group and create a new 'imagemap shader'(select 'subsurface.bmp' as the image, AND a new 'merge shader', the merge shader is the key to  the transparency.
When we have both new shaders set in the water group we place the watershader into 'input A' of the merge shader and then the imagemap shader into 'input B', the output from the merge shader will now go to the input of your lake/waterplane. You will instantly see the transparency in the 3D preview window, the merge shader 'Mix to A' slider is now the fake transparency modifier. Sliding it left will make your subsurface image less visible, sliding it right will make it more visible.

What the merge shader does is actualy blends both the waterplane and the subsurface image together for the final render. No post proccessing is required.
I'll attach a quick basic water transparency example .tgd for anyone wanting to check out the settings if they wish.

For the record, and not to blow my own trumpet too much, I think my T2 version is still far more convincing and realistic looking than any of the Vue examples posted above, as yet...

After the 'dry' render is done, re-enable the waterplane for your final.

Also, the imagemap shader must be set to 'through camera'.

Brilliant...somehow I missed this concise explanation over at Planetside Forum if you posteg it there. Soon as I get done my text job for today I'm a gonna try this...thanks millions man.. ...

I didn't post this at PS, as it isn't my method. Sonshine777 discovered it and showed me the basic method.

I should also say that 'input b' does not exist on the merge shader as I've said above. It's called 'shader A', my apologies.

I should also say that texturing in T2 isn't quite as easy as it is in Vue. There are no preset rock samples to pick and choose from.

The rocks in this are shaded with the following:  1 surface layer / 7 different powerfractal shaders and / 1 reflective shader . That's a fair bit more work than picking a texture from a list, as in Vue...

dandelO, few just pick up a meterial for their Vue rocks....ready made rock mats don't look too good.

dandeIO,

Thanks for the explanation..it's very helpful. I think a big difference between my renders and yours is the actual rock texture. Mine is a standard (from the list) texture that ships with Vue. Yours is, IMO, much nicer. I should try and create that same rock texture, then we can compare apples to apples -- or rocks to rocks ;-)

Thanks much for pitching in! Just curious, why are the rocks such funny shapes? Is it something in TG2 or are they modelled elsewhere? Vue's rocks are also shaped weird as they are generated automatically by Vue.

dandeIO, after reading your explanation and studying your picture further, some mysteries are explained to me. The biggest one is the very dark reflection of the rocks at the top of the image. I had a difficult time understanding how you would get a mirror like reflection AND transparency in the same render, as that is not natural. Typically, a dark reflection allow one to see through the water, but if you are rendering a TG2 pass w/out transparency, then you would get only the reflection.

Thanks for clearing that up. It was a real 'sticking point' for me trying to recreate the render.

Thanks again. Chipp

Quote:
''Thanks much for pitching in! Just curious, why are the rocks such funny shapes?
Is it something in TG2 or are they modelled elsewhere? Vue's rocks are also shaped weird as they are generated automatically by Vue.''

I have just figured this out, as one of the rocks was really bothering me too.
The main rock look is pretty close I'd say, to the rocks I'd see in my local river, the River Tay in Perth, Scotland.
They are suitably cracked/shattered looking and I'm quite happy with the texturing. The only one posing a problem to me is the large one at the top-right hand side, above the largest stone.

You'll notice that there seems to be an overhanging portion at the top half of this rock. Now, I've torn this scene apart looking for the cause of this anomaly over and over again, and now I think I've finaly found the cause of it.
The reason for this overhanging section is because of the rocks directly BENEATH the largest stones layer.
What I'd done was to have small stones to the bottom, then a layer of larger ones on top of that, followed by larger stones atop that, and finaly, the biggest ones to the very top. The odd looking overhang is because of the 'stone tallness' of the 3rd layer(the second largest) of the fake stones shaders.
The large rock in question has actualy been laid across a taller stone than itself so that the one underneath is 'poking through' the top of the big one, the 'pancake effect' of the taller, lower stone is creating the apparent overhanging section.
Because I used the same set of 7 powerfractal shaders to texture all 4 layers of stones, the rock with the overhang looks as if it is one piece(the shaders have basicaly merged the edges of the 2 stones together so that the seams of each of the intersecting rocks are nearly imperceptable as 2 seperate stones).

To re-render this whole scene just for that one portion that I'm unhappy with seems like a little too much work, especially when this is already my 3rd full render of this scene,(six renders total, including subsurfaces) I may fix the rocks and then do a cropped render of that one odd looking stone to fix the final image with because, when I change the 3rd rock layer to fix just that one stone, ALL the other stones in that layer will be different too and will mean another 2 complete re-renders are required... To Hell with THAT again! At least for the moment... ;)

Thankyou very much for bringing my image into these forums, it is a great compliment when I see the line...
*Quote : "Think anyone can get Vue to pull this one off?!"
*A very great compliment indeed! :)

Ok, if the TG water is post, then that would account for the deepness and reflectivity (accurate refractive index is difficult to reproduce in post). In Vue you can get different effects of deepness and reflection by adjusting the Refractive Index, which can produce unrealistic levels of reflection and transparency (as far as water is concerned).

Now, this is where I find most people struggle...because a picture shows rocks, fish and scenes with water, it doesn't always mean the water is actually water...depending on the refractive index and transparency amount you give it, it could be closer to diamond...or thin glass, for example....but because you see elements that suggest a lake/pond/expance of water the brain disregardes unatural details such as the natural refractive index/transparency and will always be drawn to the scene as a whole.

dandeIO,

How long and at what resolution does it take to render your scene? I suppose you have to do 2 renders, so how long is each? Thanks!

Chip, the subsurface image for this version took around 1+1/4 hours, the final render was about 8. Ridiculous for an image of this size of course, but it is T2 and quite slow at rendering at the moment. Not to mention my computers limited capabilities.
The render resolution was 800x600 as I only have the free version of the tech preview.

The final render was at:
detail level = 0.7.
anti-aliasing = 3.
GI = 1/6.
Atmospheric samples = 64.

dandeIO,
Thanks for the info. Just curious, what are your machine specs?

The last rendering I created above, uses a Standard Atmosphere, does not use GI, and was rendered at 800x600 on a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 (2Gb RAM) in 18 minutes. I need to try a GI one and see how long it takes.

BTW, does your material (and or texture) actually CREATE the rocks? Or are they created first and you texture them later?

Machine Spec: Intel Celeron 2.66GHz - 512MB RAM and only a 128mb V/card.

The textures do not create the rocks, no. They are similar to Vue's ecosystem stones(without the paint option) and are added as surface layers. Initialy, they will cover the entire surface of your planet, you just set the stone size, density spacing etc. for the whole layer. 
To stop them appearing across the whole planet's surface you can use a distribution shader or a mask to specify where they will appear.

This scene has 4 seperate fakestones layers and you will texture them afterwards. To begin with they are completely smooth and monotone grey. Powerfractal shaders are the best way, I find, to texture your rocks as PF shaders have an infinite level of scale detail.
The stones' colour in my image above is coming from a blend of 6 seperate PF shaders(without displacement) and 1 reflective shader, the texture is from another PF shader with displacement enabled, the scaling range for this displacement PF shader are:
Feature scale = 5cm.
Lead in(largest) scale = 30cm.
Smallest scale = 1mm.

ANY values can be set for scale giving an infinite range to play with, rather than the usual uniform bump mapping through image maps.

Thanks for sharing that with us.

I'm familiar with TG 0.9 fractals, and they are unique from Vue's. In my TerraPak, I've worked hard to recreate some of the same infinite resolution textures. I through an example on on the rocks in my image above and it rendered in under 30 minutes with GI, but needs a lot of tweaking to get near what you've done. I'll keep trying.

best, Chipp

EDIT
*I do have an 800x600 rendering in the background but it could be 10 hours on this box.. ...

Quote - Well, thanx to dandelO's fine explanation I was able to achieve fairly good results with a subsurface render set at .25 and a final with water render at .5  Mainly due to processor speed, if I had bigger, I'd do bigger, heh heh heh....

Nice, it's good on longer shots like this too because the further away the waterplane reaches, the reflection 'appears' to cut out some of the transparency.

I was just the messenger, I can't take any credit for discovering the idea, it's from a great T2 user going by the nick' of Sonshine777. Some of you may know him, I don't know if he's in here though. Top guy.
Anyhow, all credit goes to him, so if you see him around, give him one big pat on the back for discovering this marvel of ingenuity and simplicity!
Transparency's been eluding T2 users, too long and this is the most efficient workaround I've seen so far that doesn't include postworking.

Off to Planetside to do just that.. ...

I can't get into Planetside just now. Server not found apparently. :(

I had no problem from Canada..posted a thank you in his original thread...thanx for the head's up. ...

I'm new to Vue and have only recently tried Terragen, but find both to be interesting and wonderful in their various aspects.  Still, as a long-time Bryce user and having spent a couple years working "professionally" (read: getting paid next to nothing but loving it anyway) with Maya, I really don't understand how in the world the TG staff doesn't support transparencies?  Is TG only a scanline rendering program?  I love my results with it so far, but had only been using it to create distant hills and such for use as backdrops in my Maya/mental ray renders...

I'm not trying to drag elitism into anything here, in fact it's the other way around.  I'm just confused about TG's abilities I think?  How could they have missed water in their programming?!?  But I'm just speculating, it seems like Vue should have no problem smoking TG in a water render if TG doesn't support refractions...  I'm off to Vue to give it a shot!  And I don't mean to be critical, I'm just saying that both are awesome program and methinks it shouldn't be so tedious as it is in TG to create realistic water, something even Bryce pulls off easily and I've not had any trouble in Vue thus far?

I guess my question is, how can TG2 not have refractions?  Who chose to leave out something so vastly important to environmental realism, and with the amazing terrain and sky work, why would they choose to leave out water's most basic, inherent principles?

Am I just being a jerk for asking that?

InfernalDarkness, TG has been in development for years, with only 3 or 4 developers, so it took a lot more time than scheduled and  without enough cash, I suspect  ( Matt, the one who created TG, had to take 6 month break from TG2 and work at Digital Domain)  and users were getting impatient, and maybe going the Vue or Carrara way. So Planetside released the "Technology preview", which is not the final product, but allows users and fans of Terragen to play with it, and buy the final version along, thus giving Planetside a little cash to keep on working on TG2 development ( the last bit is only me speculating) in the process.

Only 3 or 4 people?  Seriously?

Well, you certainly seemed serious!  Impressive and astonishing work so far for them, I've been watching TG scenes appear for years but only recently broke down and tried it out.  Having spent some brutal time in the arch/viz industry using Maya, it's impressive to me that 3 or 4 people can do such a great job on TG whereas Alias/Autodesk with their massive billions still can't get terrain generation down in Maya out of the box...

And this also explains why they didn't include a raytracing/refraction engine, I'm sure they were focusing on landscape/terrain generation (thus, Terragen) instead.  Thanks for clearing that up for me!

Attached Link: UPDATE THREAD