Creating a historic scene - Forest land

[Icegrip]

Right now Im working on an assignment to build a historic scene from a boreal forest from early 1900 and if possible to compare it with information/data how it looks today. Im using real terrain DEM and have also draped the DEM with ortophoto. Im creating image map shaders from shapefiles describing the coverage of the different forest stands. (Ryan Archer method) Each stand is populated differently so I have a LARGE number of populations.

I will post some WIP work of some of the steps. Comments and critics welcome

[Icegrip]

Terrain draped with ortophoto of today to get better texture of mires and ground...even though they will be placed with  objects later on.

[Oshyan]

Sounds like a promising and ambitious project. You said it's an "assignment", is it for school, or do you mean a work assignment? Either way I'm looking forward to the results.

- Oshyan

[Icegrip]

It's a work assignment.

Couple of updates.
Started with just populating some shaders with trees to find out a convincing height of the trees. These forest were not clear cutted in areas like they are nowadays and not as monocultural(?) as today.

[Icegrip]

Figuring out how to create realistic looking mires and vegetation under the trees will be intresting....for the mires Im striving to get something like these two photos, a typical mire where I live in north of Sweden.

[Bjur]

It´s looking rly good and (more important i guess) very natural/realistic for me.. 

[Henry Blewer]

You can leave the 'mires' areas very flat. Your object selections, how they are sized, and the blending shader will make the lower and higher vegetation stand out.

Try using a power fractal with a distribution shader as its blending shader. The distribution shader will control the slope; constrain the objects to the flatter areas. The power fractal will control the coverage for the lower/flatter areas, and the higher tufted areas. You can test this at the end of the shaders tab (node group).

Check negative check box below the population's blending shader for the higher/tufted vegetation.

[masonspappy]

Would like to see a larger size of the last two images.  What I can see in the smaller pictures looks great

[Kadri]

....for the mires Im striving to get something like these two photos...

They are photos.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

i like it (or maybe dont really like it)
when you look at a thumbnail and think its TG render for a sec or so,
when its actually just a photo

[Bjur]

Dont drink at night and post!

Thought the little pics were generated stuff.. 

[Icegrip]

You can leave the 'mires' areas very flat. Your object selections, how they are sized, and the blending shader will make the lower and higher vegetation stand out.

Try using a power fractal with a distribution shader as its blending shader. The distribution shader will control the slope; constrain the objects to the flatter areas. The power fractal will control the coverage for the lower/flatter areas, and the higher tufted areas. You can test this at the end of the shaders tab (node group).

Check negative check box below the population's blending shader for the higher/tufted vegetation.

Thanks Njeneb! Yes, the mires will have a flat look. I have a lot to learn yet. I use the mire mask to place the populations. And made three different grass populations with different heights and spacing to differ from each other. So I can actuallyt use a distribution shader within my mire mask?

i like it (or maybe dont really like it)
when you look at a thumbnail and think its TG render for a sec or so,
when its actually just a photo

Dont drink at night and post!

Thought the little pics were generated stuff.. 

Sorry for the confusion guys, from now on I will only post renders.

[Icegrip]

Adding snags and dead wood to the ground and some more blueberrie plants.

Vegetation needs to be denser and mire-work are next to fix!

[Icegrip]

After some testing I found a way with the mire. Using the grass populations that comes with Terragen and using different coulours on the grass, from "yellow" to brownish red and different sizes.

Net is to get some low rugged pine trees on the mire...

[TheBadger]

Looking good!