[Da_Elf]

Awsome TG stuff there. im more of a max user than a maya user and the export tools i found didnt do too good a job of exporting to max. But the good thing is vray has a really good displacement capability. The part thats sucks is that TGs materials are really nice and id have to do a fair bit of work to recreate them in max using prodecural maps. For vegitation there could either be painted in in PS or use 3d trees converted to vray proxies to increase the amount of trees i can put in a scene

[AA]

<Da_Elf > Vray is pretty impressive ! I am creating some Matte paintings for some Video Game Cinematics on a new PS3 title where they are using VRay for really heavy geometry and the renders look insane ! I know that they have it for Maya as well, but I have not looked into yet. I want to play around with that . . . Do you have any samples of the work you are doing ?

[jsbaxter]

I'm getting it tomarrow so I'll be able to play around with it. Cant wait

[AA]

First renders

I just bought this program this week and these are my first renders/experiments with procedural terrains and volumetric clouds. It is a fairly large program and you can do quite a bit of tweaking, especially in the terrain editor, as well as the volumetric clouds. VERY impressive setup and engine . . . Again these are some renders after spending about an hour in it . . . there is a lot to learn, but it comes with a great book/manual about 560 pages :twisted: . . . . the windblow on tress and animation setup is also impressive. If you already are familiar with other 3D software packages, and have a technical understanding of camera setup, etc . . it is really easy to pick up, and start rendering : ) I am sure that more and more people will start using this soon

This sure was worth my money !

[Da_Elf]

welll vray for maya is still in really early beta. im a beta tester for the max version though. most of my work has been architectural visualisation pieces and some of my scenes can be as high as 250million polygons it certainly nothing like the low poly camera mapped models used in 2.5d matte paintings. the only time i did a matte painting was for a short fantast film i did a while back and the matte was mainly 3d animation that i comped the green screen actors on to. http://pages.infinit.net/elfpro/tower1.jpg is the tower. http://pages.infinit.net/elfpro/elfpro.html is my old site. This stuff i did about 7 years ago so vray and my modeling skills have come a long way since then. I guess these links are sort of appopriate since the background is a TG render using one of the really early public versions. I just made a 360 sperical environment and loaded it into the background

[plaf]

this isn't a bad bit of software. I'm liking it! :) - and there's even a plugin so you can import .dem data. sweet!! here's an hour-doodle:

[AA]

Very cool <plaf> it has great mood. I created a section yesterday for this software for people to post their creations of 3D environments using Vue5. Feel free to post/share your work in there. I am working on a very detailed CG scene using VUE, where I will eventually paint on top in PS, and I will post the results. The control in the Terrain editor is quite amazing. I also brought in the geo I did in VUE into Maya, looks sweet ! :twisted:

VUE 5 Gallery
http://www.laborganika.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=64

<Da_Elf > Your work is great. I will try Vray soon, I am also VERY impressed with the GI renders you can get with VUE5 . . . . WOW . . . I will post a test of a 3D model I build in Maya, then rendered it in Vue's engine.

[plaf]

cool, thanks a lot! I didn't realise you had a forum as well, but I just checked it out and registered there - looks like another place to stick in my bookmarks :) I think I'll try and get the VUE trial edition (I have to be a little cheap at the moment since I'm not working anymore, but back at university)
- the above image was done in terragen... hmmm... which I think I'll start up and give a whirl right now! ^__^

[AA]

I am one of the BETA testers for the new version of Terragen http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ which is not available for public yet. This program has huge potential. Especially for things that are further away, such as backdrops and background elements. Thought I'll share a very early work in progress file with everyone. First render test . . . The terrain is Produceral and the clouds are volumetric all done in Terragen. Again this is a very early test render of this scene I am building showcasing the potential of this software. You can animate the camera flying over the environment with alpha channels for both sky and terrain for further twaeks and adjustments. You can also easily create a 180 and/or 360 panorama of this. I will share/post updates.

plaf wrote;

cool, thanks a lot! I didn't realise you had a forum as well, but I just registered there.

Thanks for registering in the LabOrganika Art Forum http://www.laborganika.com/forum/index.php , which I started about couple of months back and it already has over 900 people in the community, it is growing very fast.

[Da_Elf]

technically speaking i guess proper compositing procedure would be to have a black ground, no shadows and white fog going into the distance to simulate a z-depth render. then have a textured render with no shadows and no fog for diffuse pass, then have your sky layer, then maybe black ground with your volumetric puffy clouds which might cover some areas (like low laying clouds on a mountain top), it would be great to render a normal map but since you cant do that a simple shadow pass would have to suffice. beta testers have alot of power depending on how close they cnverse with the main programmer. i talk with vlado about vray almost every day on msn. what im saying is maybe you can suggest to the guy incharge of terragen to add in a normal map shader.