Hi,
Quote from: DutchDimension on June 20, 2011, 10:35:02 AM
I think one of the things that can help demystify function nodes is to know what type of data they expect and what type they output.
Is it Vector data, scalar, colour... or is the node polymorphic? It's implied by the name of some of the nodes, but certainly not by all. Consequently, a Terragen user with but a rudimentary understanding of maths will easily be lost at this early stage, thus immediately stumbling before he or she even got to connect a few nodes together.
...snip...
Personally I'd love to get some more clarity on the data types of some (if not all) of the more "obscure" function nodes. Be that added to the documentation or in similar fashion as SI ICE does it.
TG2 implicitly converts values from what it gets into what it needs, so basically the data passed is polymorphic or weakly typed. We did actually have documentation up which described how all the conversions worked but it seems to have got lost just at the moment.
If you look at the function nodes (open the Node Palette and choose the Function category) it looks like all of them do a pretty good job of indicating what sort of data they work with. Perhaps you're talking about other types of nodes though?
I think it was a deliberate decision to avoid having type information shown for network connections. You can hook anything to anything and appropriate conversions will take place. Occasionally I've come across situations where I think it would be helpful to indicate the specific data type a connection prefers.
Regards,
Jo
