My stupid question of the day

[Harvey Birdman]

Yes, back by popular demand, we bring you another installment in the ongoing epic...




I've figured out how to use color distribution shaders to limit populations' altitude ranges, how to use surface shaders to limit distribution, etc., but this one has me stumped.

Can you directly exclude one populations region from anothers? I'd like to have a pop. at high detail close to the camera, then a lower detail population of the same item completely surrounding the smaller, high detail area. I can (obviously) do this with four additional rectangular regions of the lower detail version, but I'd like to do it with just one that would completely encompass the smaller region and exclude it from it's population distribution.

Is this possible?

[Oshyan]

I don't think there's an explicit, built-in way to do this, but if you used an image map of the same size (in meters) as the population (using PlanY projection) and of course in the same place, you could then use this as the blend shader for the larger surrounding population.

- Oshyan

[Harvey Birdman]

Thanks for the quick response, guy.

Yeah, I'd thought of that but I was trying to come up with a way to do it procedurally. Oh, well. I think it's simpler (than using the image map) to just add additional populations. It'll clutter up the Objects Node, but what the hey.