Posted: March 26, 2012 Post subject: Please help: Caves
I haven't used Vue in years and recently purchased Vue 10 Complete. I want to be able to create some scenes that have caves in the rock face. For example, a cave that is in the cliff face at water level of a stream or river. Each time I TRY to create a cave, the terrain in the terrain editor goes all weird. Perhaps I am using the wrong tool? I dont know. The tool I attempt to create a cave with is the 3D Sculpt tool inverted. Then the terrain goes all weird & I either try to recreate it with a fresh terrain or I have to apply the Retopologize which just double or tripple the polygon count. So please! Can someone help me with this quest? I would really appreciate it.
Joined: June 30, 2007 Posts: 1014
Location: San Diego
Posted: March 26, 2012 Post subject:
Is your terrain rotated in your scene so that you are using it as a cliff wall? Procedural or standard terrain?
ADDED:
All my brush presets are gone. Hmmm.... I can't help you right now.
ADDED MORE:
I got my brushes back. Unfortunately, my system has neither the graphic power or RAM needed to do cave sculpting (whether I go into the side of a mountain, or come at it from the top going down). I'd say you are using the right tool though. Remember: The smaller your brush is, the more polygons you will give birth to.
Standard Heightened. Never attempted to do it with a procedural terrain. I've also gotta learn how to go about creating my own brushes. Been so so long since I've used Vue that I forget all this stuff. Have been playing around with C4D since I last used Vue years ago
Think of the 3d sculpt tool as Mudbox or Zbrush. In order to correctly sculpt the terrain itself will need to add more polygons to ensure smooth unjagged edges. What I've seen in that tool is a 256x256 standard terrain will almost immediately raise to over 1 million polygons in just a few strokes. the solution Ive found that works is to use the RAISE brush inverted to work on indentions and caves. All the 3d brushes seem to have this effect, when actually very nice result, takes a major toll on your machine. The raise brush is still a 2d brush, so it doesn't require more polygons. Just up the resolution of the terrain manually to about 1k to do the digging, then when done bring up to about 4k for a smoother look. 8k if your machine is capable.
But therein lies the problem. The Raise brush, inverted or not, only works on a vertical aspect rather than a horizontal aspect needed for caves, as indicated by the post that marks the centre of the brush. When ya start digging it's vertical & ya try to get up close to the terrain with the edge of the inverted Raise brush & it just climbs the wall so to speak. So, how do you, if its at all possible, unlock the Vertical Only aspect? And if not, how do you get around the vertical inverted raise brush climbing the wall?
Joined: June 30, 2007 Posts: 1014
Location: San Diego
Posted: March 27, 2012 Post subject:
Ok. I just tried the brute-force method, which is creating two standard terrains (leaving "skin only" turned off so both terrains have thickness to them). Then shrinking one of the terrains (resizing it smaller) and rotating it so that it can be stabbed into the side of the larger terrain. Selecting both terrains and doing a Boolean Difference creates a nice cave. Here is my first try. Looks like a sink hole or erosion going on. http://www.shonner.com/shawndriscoll/images/cave%20test.jpg
NOTE: Getting a nice "bevel" around the cave edge will depend on the slope of your stabbing terrain.
I have tried the boolean method and it works to a degree. I did a water cave scene & it looked almost perfect. But I had to play with the camera position as some parts of the water doubled up almost like an above/below surface shot (despite the camera definitely being above the water surface), and the edge of the cutaway terrain was visible below the water surface. However, I figured out a way to fix that particular issue by deleting the default ground plane which was fine considering that the camera was situated inside the cave looking out to the stream. Although with certain other aspects or types of scenes, deleting the ground plane may not be a good idea.
Joined: June 30, 2007 Posts: 1014
Location: San Diego
Posted: March 28, 2012 Post subject:
Good lighting will obscure any boolean edge shown. I'm thinking of doing another with two booleans. The first boolean just makes a very wide dent in the cliff side. Then a different boolean is cut deeper into the center of the dent. Hmmm....
Search
Profile
Log in
