Nice Terragen rendered image...May need help, tho.

I have an idea on how to make a nice background for an upcoming project. I sort of felt influenced by Vista and the "Aero" interface for doing something special. However, it seems as tho this picture looks a bit hazy. I'm gonna attempt to sharpen this image and make it pop. However, I don't see that this wasn't a bad angle or terrain mesh. Might easily work as a background image or skybox rather easy...



EDIT: Oh yeah, in case you didn't notice. This is going to be a high-def, widescreen game's background image. So hopefully you have a 720p/1080i resolution, as this is in 1280x768. I believe I was going for a game where you have to shoot at fish that jump out of the lake.

To be honest, I'd try moving the light source away from the centre of the image.

Probably would work better if it was out of shot.

I also think the landscape is a bit uninteresting, but maybe that's just me...

Well, so much for using TerraGen... Thought that would've made some nice background screenshots for a nice widescreen, high-def game experience. Thanks a lot to Vista for trying to influence me with that Aero interface, too. I was just about to try a "see through" status bar to see how well that would've looked with a sunset/desert lake type background.

EDIT: Even tho this is darker, it may be a little crispier (not too sure if that's the right way to describe it), but I've always loved tropical/desert sunsets, and think that this may bring that out. Might want to try a nice "glass" status bar somewhere and make this a nice game background.



Kinda makes me think of a Mediterranean island coast of sorts. I'm wondering, tho... Would 1280x768 be a 720p resolution or 1080i? This way I know what type of display this would give on an HDTV.

720p = 1280x720 , 1080i/p = 1920x1080

Ah sweet, thanks... Obviously most 32" LCD TVs have 768 vertical lines at least, so that's where I was going. Anyway, I'm wondering how to go about making a "glass" status bar to put the score displays on and everything. The way Microsoft seems to do this on the Aero interface makes it seem a lot more difficult than it really might be...

The first background was washed out an generic. The second one is gloomy and generic. Sorry.

Well, you have PlanetSide/Terragen to blame for that one. They wanted "photorealistic" backgrounds? HA!

Fair enough. :)

I don't think its terragen thats the problem

http://www.planetside.co.uk/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=43&g2_serialNumber=2

somethings just no right in your light settings

Terragen like any similar generator application usually seems to be easy to use but in realty most are not easy at all after certain level.

Your images seem to have athmosphere density or haze set too high making the images look like downtown LA. Also your Y-scale is way too big to create realistic looking scenery... Norway might have something looking like this but it's an exception.

You CAN have crisp and wonderful results though if you're pro enough:

http://lucbianco.free.fr/2bgal/serie.php?id_album=39&stat=ok

Crisp, yet keeping to the high-definition resolution standards as well, that's where I was trying to get at. Something that'll look crisp on a widescreen monitor and/or HDTV.

Want to make skyboxes with Terragen? Here you go :)
http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Making_a_Skybox_Using_Terragen

Saved me so much time, I used to do it the old way and manually change the camera settings after each render.

I prefer Bryce. Version 4 or 5 is free.

anyone know some place I can get some good looking heightmaps, done with terragen..no need colormap textures..

Hmm... I also hear that there was LD3T or whatever that was called again. I remember using that terrain generator, but it was almost like a washboard when it came to implementing that in Blitz3D.