I made a displacement mountain ring to go with my haze ring. You can then just plonk this in any set and you have an instant background mountainscape. Still texturing and defining to go yet and the line between the foreground and haze doesn't look right......

Very nice Ken. Things are slowly starting to come together

Ken,
won't it be easier to use a hemisphere with a sky and horizon painted?

Not sure. I'll hold off developing it till we get a firm direction which way. If the other way, I won't be doing it cos I can't draw.

I've been thinking about this as well. Skydomes for background and a second for clouds with an expression to auto rotate the cloud dome, could also add a third one with a gradient material for sky color (time of day). Also adding a main camera with pose slider for rotation and positioning, camera targeting, all kinds of stuff, could also add the sun light with rotation and positioning slider, intensity. I have alot of ideas for this. We could do alot with this if it's something that is worth pursuing.

Hi

IMHO using a sky and an horizon painted is not the way to go.
This project should demonstrate AM capabilities and it would be a shame
if it can't take care of sky and cloud ( basic stuff for any 3d app )

Of course we should use draws but mainly on decals and texturing, not in background layer like sky, mountain etc.

I think Ken is doing an usefull thing with this mountain skyline setup

We should make a couple of animated skydome WIP setup where we can use as we need.

-for a fast sunrise or sunset ( with and without clouds)
-for fast cloud movement ( clouds comes darker as character approach danger)
-cloud move to give impression of time passing.( different clouds, sirrus, stratus, cumulus, thunder heads etc.)
-or just to get stunning picture... weather events seem very present in the magician of OZ isn't it?

Of course picture coming from a sky setup may be use as layer or animated in a 2d style
...but the source should be 3D rendering.

Ken, if you can regroup all sky ressourses (.prj , wip ,lURL link etc) you can get a hand on under SVN prop/sky or in this thread it would be appreciated later I'm sure of it.
Any "sky event " animation will be excellent too. (bird flock, bees flying etc. )



my 2 cents
Al

Unless you specifically need this for a shot, then there is no reason to do this. Instead you just have a skydome mapped with the environment for the set.
You can generate the elements for this image within A:M--I'm not saying it has to be completely painted...
We can have multiple environments for skydome in the decal, and switch them with a pose.

I'm all for showing off what A:M can do, and in my opinion this does. Are you going to model clouds??? Some things are best done in Photoshop, and distant backgrounds are one of them.

Maybe It would be right to fill smalll area with a background or sky painted ...I mean when people don't focus on it , so they won't notice it...(not sure about a time saving in a long run)
But for serious sky/background scene (even distant) we should do it in 3D...
This what I think and suggest , it doesn't mean that it is "the way" to do it.

modeling clouds ??? Well...
I've seen some really nice clouds movment done with AM in the past ! aren't you ?
animated material or other specific technic .... clouds moving in a sunset , all superb and cool effect
Those kind of scene are often used in scene transition, end of the days etc.

The effect team should be better placed to look at this.

I don't think all weather event are establish yet so having a pool of sky/cloud WIP effect doesn't seem to me a bad idea...I'm sure some AM'er have nice WIP that we can look at ?

Thanks
Al




We probably say the same thing here
hehehe
Al

Okaay. I'll stick what I've done so far on the svn anyway. I'm sure the way forward will become clearer at a later date.

Hmmm, I guess my idea with the domes, light and camera rig wasn't that good of an idea. I'll just crawl back in my hole and do what I'm asked to do (maybe) and keep my ideas to myself. Just crack the whip if you need me. I think I've about had it, I'm not needed here anymore, my jobs done. later.

Hi Mark

Put everything you got on SVN...It's hard to determine how this would look like.
if you have an idea you're very welcome to make a WIP or .prj ...so we can look at it
and I don't know why we shouldn't use it if it look great ?

I know your ability and I'm curious of your result on this.

my 2 cents

Al

Mark, I think you took that the wrong way--I'm sorry if I stepped on your toes.
I am curious about what kind of automatic environment rig you've got cooked up--why not go ahead and invent it!? You ARE needed, don't let the brevity of the internet give you the wrong impression of what people really think.
I was just expressing my opinion about the simple way to create the environments--I have already been experimenting with this too... Bottom line, whichever looks the best is the way we should go. But how will we know if you just walk off with your feelings hurt? We are all artists, trying to work on one final vision, and what we finally end up with will be different than what any one of us had in mind--hopefully better

Here is a nice way to transition the modeled landscape to a skydome image: Camera fog with the color samples from the haze color at the horizon of the sky image...

Hmmm, elbow problems. I'll have to let David know, this shouldn't happen in the way the rig is designed.

Hi Will

I love the texture and look with the Tin Man

Steve