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Landing platform: Terragen + MAX R4, what do you think?

Discussion in 'Fan Films, Fan Audio & SciFi 3D' started by Carl_el_cee, Jul 18, 2002.

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  1. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    Well I just got my hands on Terragen last night. A "big merci" beaucoup to Jedibyknight :D . Terragen is a great program. A shame you can't animate anything... Its great for still anyway, and then rendere is SO weird if you're used to a scanline renderer like that of MAX. The platform took about 7 seconds to render and the Landscape took 3 minutes. I composited it all in MAX R4.

    [image=http://www.kaischaller.com/carl/world_platform.jpg]

    What do you guys think?

    Carl

     
  2. Shoveler

    Shoveler Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    Mar 8, 2001
    Hmmm looks pretty darn sweet but I reckon you should try making the cliffs behind the station a bit darker, they seem a little bright and make the station look unrealistic. But it looks pretty sweet! :D

    Shoveler
     
  3. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    There can only be one Sun, according to what I've seen so far. But I guess it wouldn't kill the whole pic to have the cliffs on the left dark, and the ones on the right light... *sigh* that means going into MAX again and redoing the lighting also. Ah well, to make something better, you gotta do this type of shyte.
    Thanks for pointing that out, glad you like it :)

    Carl
     
  4. Ptx

    Ptx Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2000
    Terragen can animate!

    In my travesl I have come accross lots of free plug ins for 3dMax, so have a search to see if they can help you.

    I had to pay for my Lightwave plug-in :(

    If you don't want to go this route, or if you can't find anything suiable there is a program called 'Campath' which is a great little tool for animations.

    Go to www.planetside.co.uk for Campath, this site is the home of Terragen and is a good place to start looking for things you need. There is one fantastic resource site around, but I am not in front of my home PC right now. I will post the link to this site later today.

    If you have a plug-in you will be better able to match elements for the composite, but if not, you will be surprised at how much you can accomplish with the two separate apps.

    Let me know if you need any help.

    Pete
     
  5. Shoveler

    Shoveler Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    Mar 8, 2001
    Actually I think the ones on the right look good, I reckon you should leave them the way they are. It just looks a little funny that's all, the left ones, IMO, are too bright and as a result the station just doesn't look like it belongs. Know what I mean. And yeah I do like it :D

    Shoveler
     
  6. ---VADER---

    ---VADER--- Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    Feb 23, 2002
    Hey,
    That looks really good! Just wonderin though, can Terragen work on a Mac? I've been to the site and can only find it to dl for Windows.
    Thanks

    ---VADER---
     
  7. Jedi_Cougar

    Jedi_Cougar Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2001
    Yeah, Terragen can animate.

    It takes all the still pictures along the camera's path then you use something to turn the bmp files into an avi.

    Simple as that.
     
  8. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    Ooh! How do I animate the camera then? :D

    Carl
     
  9. Sauja-Dupen

    Sauja-Dupen Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 1999
    ¡Muy bien! ;)

    I think the lighting is fine, I think the sharpness is the problem. The right and center background is nice and hazy but the cliffs on the left are sharp and clear.

    Also the shadows at the base of the tower are too sharp and too dark. IMHO

    That is really sweet.

    Sauja
     
  10. monkey_abbot

    monkey_abbot Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 14, 2002
    you can animate in terragen?!! HOW HOW HOW!!!
    i have seen the little "animation" button, but i don no bow to use it....

    thats a cool pic !
     
  11. NXTB

    NXTB Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    May 17, 2002
    Not sure Carl, but you might want to check this link out, I think it's the plugin ptx was referring to earlier.

    By the way, nice work, again. :)

    NXTB
     
  12. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    Thats cool. I got it working. The tricky thing now, is to match up my camera in MAX to the CamPath. They don't use the same coordinates system and I'd have to setup about a dozen camera-track points so they'd line up. If only Terragen allowed you to make basic geometry... you could make MAX track a sphere or some sort, because tracking a terrain is REALLY difficult, giving the non-uniformity of the mesh....

    Carl

    EDIT: I'm rendering out the Terragen-only animation. I'll post it up when its finished. 20 frames done and ??? to go :p
     
  13. EagleIFilms

    EagleIFilms Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Apr 6, 2001
    Carl, at least for Blender, there is a Blend2Terr program, where, you can put the mesh from Terragen into Blender, then move the camera how ever you want, then it'll output that camera move to Terragen, and you can render the Terragen background, then you can output that to Blender, and render the Blender on top of it.

    It works REALLY nicely, once you get it set up.
     
  14. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    Ok, heres my first animation in Terragen. Hopefully, I'll work out a way to integrate my Platform on the landscape. On2 VP3 codec, enjoy!

    Terragen + Campath animation

    Carl

    PS: Note the extremely detailed sun rays that appear to the right near the beggining of the clip :)
     
  15. BrentK7

    BrentK7 Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 20, 2000
    that's cool carl, is the flickering in the mountains just the compression or is it actually like that?
     
  16. Sauja-Dupen

    Sauja-Dupen Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 1999
    ¡Muy bien! ah sorry I mean Very Good!!! Didn't mean to confuse anybody.

    I can't wait to see it with the platform, I will no doubt look awesome with movement!

    Sauja
     
  17. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    I updated the pic. The shadows have been modified, the overall contrast of the terrain has been changed and I added some wires stretching out from behind the largest landing pad.

    [image=http://www.kaischaller.com/carl/world_platform.jpg]

    Carl
     
  18. t-toe

    t-toe Jedi Youngling star 1

    Registered:
    May 27, 2002
    So far, I found this thread very helpful when it comes to Terragen techniques and such... however, does ANYONE know if there's a plugin for MAX similar to the Blender one that lets you export the geometry and then export that camera move back into terragen? Now THAT would be sweet. ^_^

    --t.toe
     
  19. Ptx

    Ptx Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 19, 2000
    This is the resourse site I was talking about earlier. The 'plugins' section has links to Max tools. I have no idea how good these are though.

    www.terrasource.net

    Pete
     
  20. Janz_Walker

    Janz_Walker Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2000
    On that Terragen animation... the clouds move too far towards the camera, like they are only 100m up or something. :(

    Chris
     
  21. Carl_el_cee

    Carl_el_cee Jedi Youngling star 3

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2002
    What the problem with that? Did I mention it was an alien planet? When you defy the rules is when stuff looks interesting, methinks. :D

    Carl
     
  22. Janz_Walker

    Janz_Walker Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 9, 2000
    But what happens when you want to simulate an earthlike planet? Is that a hardware issue or is it something you tweaked? Hopefully the latter. :)
     
  23. Macho

    Macho Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 21, 2001
    it looks pretty good carl! I can't imagine the render time on that animation! I would add a texture of some sort to the landscape because it looks just well flat, you need some kinda texture.
     
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