August Image of the Month Competition

[Aaron]

Hello all,

Congratulations, fame and eternal glory go to dEaThMaStEr, for winning the image of the month competition for July. dEaThMaStEr has nominated the following theme for August:

Mountains

The rules, and some additional suggestions from dEaThMaStEr, are provided on the IoTM Comp page.

As dEaThMaStEr will be competing again this month, judgement of the competition will be by popular vote. On the 1st of September I will lock the gallery and ask members to pick their favourite, with voting closing on the 4th of September (i.e. after 3 days).

Best of luck,
Aaron.

[DeathTwister]

Now that is a great Idea so we can all play Woot Aaron.

DT

[DeathTwister]

Question:

What sizes are concidered to be mega terrains?
anything larger then 20m?
or just huge 32x32?
was that a silly question? I am not sure, but wanted to make sure my terrain sizes are right to enter /smiles........

DT

[dEaThMaStEr]

Well, just go by your own judgement really. The idea is the more massive, the better. Its to try to see what people can make, as far as vastness goes. Myself, I'd like to go for a 40kmX40km map. Maybe bigger, we'll see what happens.

Mostly its just how I've seen some people put like, one small terrain item and enter it. The idea here is to get somethin of an actual terrain, not just one mountain or 2, but a massive range.

[DeathTwister]

Hummm,

Ok that sounds great. But I have a small problem then so will have to live with an edited version. I may be able to make something that big, but other then a video game engine to drop it in, all my software won't take a file that big ROTFL, so I will have to export out a smaller version of what I really would like to do. To much going on to try and do that for a comp as I am sure is one of the reason more people have not entered as they are all doing huge terrains. I think hahahahahaha. Unfortunately I have the free version of terragen, and don't know other software yet enough to try and get huge terrains into other software yet. Maybe in 2-3 months or so I will have more time, but right now, Wooo am I under the gun so to speak hahahahaha.

Having said that here are 2 entries from me then. By the time they get into TG they are down to 513, but started out at 20m. Could easily make em 40m, but for this competition I thought that would be ok, Although I have decided to make it bigger now it is done as it came out pretty good I thought. Mainly due to Aarons new features in the new build, WOW Aaron, it's great by the way, and I have to find the time to get into the new features soon.

Anyway I am uploading 2 entries for now, and maybe more if I have time as I am playing with a new expierement so maybe enter one more later.

DT

[DeathTwister]

Hay all,

My third entry is in and I am off to play with the world later in the day. I really liked Seers entry woot!! Way to go dude..........Just a tast off topic and then I am outa here as I am being lazy and posted once not twice this morning.

KK going out the door and back up to Takilma for more interviews tonight and tomorrow after/evening sometime. Going to do interviews with Gaia Consort and I think a live Jam with Kari Moore, a grea tartist. I will see if we can run both tapes on Sunday morning early maybe, for all you brothers and sisters that are around the world and are asleep while we are playing.

Next week if all go well, major updates and upgrades both hardware and software for the station. Shon is planning to go up as soon as we have the hardware there to put in. We also may have found something better then shoutCast as well. OK have fun.

I can hardly wait to see new entries when I get back, drools.......

DT

[monks]

I've got my entry into Iotm- OK, I've been a cheapskate and used a shot from a recent ME-DEM article , but I just love the terrain L3DT produces. Of the terrains in that article, this was my favourite.

btw, the little tiny rocks are artifacts that GeoControl (the renderer) produced yuk

monks

[Aaron]

Hello,

Wow, it's looking like a great comp this month. Bravo DeathTwister, SeerBlue and Monks; looking good, and all very different.

I think I'll have to set up another page to show notable entries, since it's a bit sad that only one of these images can 'win' the competition. Hmm...perhaps a highlights gallery every few months would do the trick.

Toodles,
Aaron.

[DeathTwister]

Hay all,

WOW Monks nice, I like The Northern Hithaeglir shot you entered allot. Nice work, I will have to go read that article here now that I have seen that.
Good to see entries come in, batter up who is next????????

DT

[dEaThMaStEr]

Heh.. I sense I won't be much competition this time around.. *tear*

[Aaron]

Hello,

Heh.. I sense I won't be much competition this time around.. *tear*

Don't abandon hope! Your TSE renders from the first IoTM had a great 'mountainy' feel to them, and the hazy atmosphere effects were particularly appropriate.

Sometime next week I’ll try to pop-in an entry (time permitting). These are the ideas/guidelines I’m considering:

Keep the camera up in the air - not necessarily above the mountain peaks, but certainly off the valley floor (see SeerBlue's entries for good examples). Unless you're using highly detailed textures (or else Terragen), you don't want the foreground to be ruined by the appearance of low-res textures. A hundred metres in the air should be more than enough.

Also, the map doesn’t have to be enormous to feel like a mountain range. Here's an example (from L3DT v2.2, back in '04) where I painted the a mountain range around the edge of a 1024x1024 heightfield. With a re-texture and some mountains rendered onto the skybox, it would probably look pretty good.

That image also shows the importance of getting the atmosphere right - the skybox doesn't match the terrain lighting/haze, and it really hurts the realism. You definitely need the right amount of atmospheric haze (and of the right colour) to convey the sense of scale.

Anyhoo, just some random thoughts.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

[dEaThMaStEr]

Also, the map doesn’t have to be enormous to feel like a mountain range. Here's an example (from L3DT v2.2, back in '04) where I painted the a mountain range around the edge of a 1024x1024 heightfield. With a re-texture and some mountains rendered onto the skybox, it would probably look pretty good.

Well, when I mentioned makin em big, this is kinda what I meant too. You mention a skybox. What I think would be cool is instead of havin the skybox of large, off-in-the-distance mountains.. have actual mountains. So instead of a regular skybox like that, the terrain is actually large enough so that it almost has a skybox feel to it. Get what I'm sayin?

[DeathTwister]

Hay brother dEaThMaStEr,

Your craft is awesome and your art as well, I love your art and you will do fine and I agree with Aaron, good tips for doing photo shoots on terrains.
He said it very well, and has a good grasp of photography, and with Video game engines. I wish I could have said that that well. hehe but that is why Aaron is da boss here hahahahahahahahahaha. I can tell Aaron does real life photography or has taken classes somewhere along the line.

DT

[dEaThMaStEr]

Grr.. I would've had an entry possibly tomarrow, but my mom went on the comp while I was at work, saw L3DT making my 16x lightmap, decided it must not have been important, and cancelled it..

Oh well... I recently had a slight uplifting in hope! I realized one thing missing in my pictures was a single simple element that can make quite a difference: atmospheric blue shift. So, I wrote up a test shader for it in about 1 minute. Worked perfectly! So with a really high res texture, maybe some snow effects, possible some particles here and there, good fog, and a blue shift.. This may come out decent!

And unlike you Terragen junkies, it's all realtime.

[Aaron]

Hello All,

Well golly gosh, is it that time already?

This is a friendly reminder for those who have not yet entered the August Image of the Month competition to press the turbo button. The gallery will be locked in around about one week's time.

Happy rendering,
Aaron.