Jungle waterfall

[Henry Blewer]

I would load them into Terragen 2 one at a time. Get the basic terrain looking right. Then do the river and the deep area. Use a displacement shader for each.

[miha2]

ok, thanx. i'll try that. and write here tomorrow

UPDATE:

No luck so far. by the way, how do i load them properly? i could do it normally later, but not now... don't know what the thing is going on here. when i have it done, will write here.

[miha2]

Guys, it's been a long time since you answered. I still can't do it (though haven't been trying for a long time, was waiting for your answers). I know there are at least 3 ways - 1 is create an image, and that's what i'm not lucky with, 2 is to create 3 heightfields, and here i'm not lucky with too. the 3, and the hardest one, is that i create 3 'make river' operators. 1 would be a ground and would make "river", 2 - in front of it, pretty broad and deep, like, 6ft high. 3 would be in the 2, but it'd be like a river itself, without water in 2. Whew, i'm done writing it here. if you have any ideas, i'd like to know more about them. if not, eh... sad, but i won't be able to do it... without your help...

[Henry Blewer]

I have been really sick; I caught the flu last week. Still feel bad, but considerably better than before!

On the topic. Center the Height field on the 0,0,0 location in the height fields main control panel in the Terrain Tab. You will want to use an image map shader from the operators. This should do the trick of getting a height field from an image map.
The other parts of the project would use Cypher's 'Floating Island' displacement method. Add a plane where the water fall needs to be. You'll need an Alpha channel mask image to get rid of the areas of plane that are not waterfall. The displacement needs a camera projection. Together they make the streams of water falling. Last add a water shader.

Where I ran into trouble trying this is matching the top of the fall to the 'level' area leading to the waterfall. A particle system setup would be ideal, but I would hate to make my computer (slow, old, and reliable) calculate this for a week, then have to start over when it did not work right.

Let me mess around a bit. Maybe I will have a happy accident and figure this out more. I'll post the tgd.

[Henry Blewer]

I am not having any progress with this. Everything just looks stupid. Moving on to new  stuff for a while. Maybe after some more practice and learning I can get somewhere with this...

[miha2]

Sorry to hear that, I got sick yesterday, too. But today feel way much better, all thanks to my mom. When you get better, I'd like to hear more from you, since all I understood from what you said is that I should center the heightfield. Couldn't find the Cypher's Floating Island displacement, don't know where to find alpha channels in Terragen, but I hope you understand what I want to do... It should be something similar to this: http://www.tour.crimea.com/CARDS/details.php?image_id=734, but the river should go a bit "straighter". The less turns it makes, the better the picture will be. And the waterfall itself should be coming not like on the picture, but more like it's "falling", not "rolling". River should be as narrow as possible, though the waterfall shouldn't be as thin as Multnomah Falls. I know it's not that thin, but if you look on it from far away, it's thin and long. I want my waterfall to be, let's say, 2 ft (about .7-.8 meters) wide, and the same width for the river, and it should fall from the rocks, and on both the lower level and upper one there should be trees and grass. It should look amazing like this, I think...

[Dune]

Why don't you try painting the waterfall with a painted shader onto the landscape you have (first pause the preview when it's ready rendering), where you want the water to fall, and attach this as a blend shader to a cloud fractal. Set the clouds height where you have the waterfall. Then stretch the cloud fractal (make the Y 4-10 or so), and experiment with densities and other settings....

[miha2]

I
H_A_V_E
N_O_T_H_I_N_G
Y_E_T
D_O_N_E
I just don't know how to do the fall... that's why i'm asking.

[Dune]

Make a landscape, then add a painted shader. Position yourself high above this landscape, wait until it's pre-rendered, pause it, then paint in where you want your river (perhaps decrease the size of the brush) to drop down, with white, the higher part of the river you could paint in gray. Or use another painted shader and use this for a lesser depth of river. Then use this painted shader as the right hand side input for a displacement shader. Set this to minus something and your river will go down. 

[miha2]

1. under landscape you mean heightfield?
2. if i pre-render, it won't change anything, or am i wrong?
3. paint, if i'm not mistaking, acts weirdly. or is it only on my computer?
4. i don't really care about deepness of the river - it should be pretty low. i just want it to be.
5. ok, i'll try that and write here.

[Dune]

1. Yes
2. Indeed, and no, you're right (I mean the preview window upper right)
3. That's why you have to pause the pre render, or it might crash.
4. You can put any height in the displacement
5. Good luck. Experiment!!!

[miha2]

you say it so easy that i want to believe i can do it all by myself. but no, let's do it together. ok, for now then, let's do the
1. heightfield. how do i make it steep but max a couple of meters high? 3 meters is my max.
2. actually, i thought you were talking about pushing the render button, wait for the dots to load, and then pause... (and indeed, i didn't even know there is that button...)
3. ok, i'll try that
4. i thought it might be easier to do it with Make river operator (in heightfield -> add operator)
5. let's try it, but don't think i won't write here... i'll stop writing here only when i get it done so that (well, maybe somebody will be about creating this fall interested too...) i can write tutorial. basic, of course, but you know, it's always good to create waterfall.

6. EDIT i tried it just now, but the paint shader is not visible, tried both paused and updaused versions. any ideas? or i'm something doing wrong? the right hand side input is function (in displacement connected to paint shader)

[Dune]

This is going to be hard if you don't know the basics of TG2. I suggest you read some tutorials and download some sample files, create some simple landscapes, then start thinking about a waterfall. All sorts of information can be found here on the forum. Sorry, but I have no time to take you through these steps. If you search for 'waterfall' or 'painted shader' you might find some tgd's.
But one hint: the button to activate the painted shader once you have created it is in the top of your GUI.

[miha2]

OK, no problem here. if you don't have time to teach me basics, that's pretty much fine. but i do hope you have time to teach me advanced features.

[Dune]

No problem.