Flat Cracked Earth

[ruddiger52]

I am pretty new to Terragen. Can someone give me a clue on how to achieve this:

http://www.redbubble.com/people/nstanev/art/4495054-1-cracked-earth-landscape

I tried adding an erode v03 but it doesnt seem to have any effect at all.

[dandelO]

You could download my 'crack shaders'.

[dandelO]

In fact, go for this link. http://store.nwdanet.com/terragen2store/6-terragen-2-presets/20-surfaces/51-crack-shaders-by-dandelo.html

There's a better detailed usage note and instruction file included with that one.

[jaf]

That photo looks a lot like the dried lake in the Anza Borrego desert in Southern California (Little Blair Valley.)  Attached is a seamless texture from one of my photos from there.

[ruddiger52]

cool I have the shaders. How do I use them?

[dandelO]

Hi, Ruddiger52. To import the files to TG2, go to 'file>>insert clipfile>>select clipfile from your saved location on your computer'. Select whatever scaled clipfile(1m or 10m) you want to use into the node network between your 'compute terrain' node and 'base colours' node. Compute terrain goes into 'input' of the crack shader then, that should plug into the 'base colours' 'input'. Your ground should then be cracked all over. You can link up both of the crack shaders in this way or, just one. Whatever suits your scene. The included notes should give you a lot more detail about their best usage methods but generally, the above covers the basics of linking them to the default node network.

[dandelO]

Here's a shot of how my node network looks with one layer of cracks...

[attachimg=#]

EDIT:

Those might be a bit deep for the effect you're after. Inside the internal network(right-click the 'cracks' node and select 'internal network' to see the inner workings) of the main shader you'll find a node called either '1 or, 10m cracks - displacement'(depending on what scaled crack shader you've used). The defaults of the one I've used above(1m cracks) is set to -1, try setting it to around '-0.1' to '-0.25' and you should get a better approximation of the type of surface you're after. The highlighted node is the one I'm meaning, I've left the settings panel for it open in this shot too so you can see it.

Like so...

[attachimg=#]

[dandelO]

Looking at the photos, and especially at Jaf's image, I think my shaders could do with a bit of warping to bend them out of shape a little, they're a very 'rigid' looking pattern to me now, it's been a little while since I made these and I think they could be much better, when I see them again here now.
I'll get around to it tomorrow, probably, and post an updated version, thanks for drawing my attention back to them again!

For now, it's 4am and my kids will be up for school in a few hours! Aaaarrrggghhh! I should really sort this sleeping pattern out before I think of sorting shader patterns! Goodnight!

[schmeerlap]

Yeh, dandelO's procedural cracked ground is definitely the right way to go. You also might want to check out the following link where I tried to do cracked ground using image map shaders: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5498.0
In that thread Mr_Lamppost alerts me to the danger of undesired repetitive patterning when using Image maps.
A good piece of software for generating your own tileable textures is Genetica 3 ( http://www.spiralgraphics.biz ).

John

[freelancah]

You might find this tutorial interestnig too.. http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=195

[Tangled-Universe]

Or this one: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6432.0
Plenty of possibilities this time

[ruddiger52]

Whoa thanks for the detailed replies. I am working through everything now. I think these cracked shaders are perfect for what I need.

[Blackheart6004]

Another good link on how to created cracked surfaces - http://en.tgblog.de/?p=27

[ruddiger52]

Cool so heres what i have so far using the 1m shader.  Lookin good. I scanned the readme and saw how to change scale and distribution. Is there a way to make ground surface smoother and maybe the crack edges a little sharper? Jaf's image pretty much illustrates what i mean

[dandelO]

Highlight the group 'final redirects' and hit key 'D'. That will disable the small displacements and give you a smooth cracked surface. You could then tighten up the colour adjust shader that is linked to the voronoi to sharpen the edges a bit.

Looking at these shaders again now, I think I will redo them to set easier controls up, my defaults are a bit extreme, I think.