Distance Shader and Object Populations

[sylink]

I'm relatively new to Terragen and I've been trying to recreate the Golden Forest tutorial because I've been playing with adding objects.

I have the populations added and attempt to add the distance shader to keep all the trees away from the camera but it never works even though I appear to have the nodes set up correctly.

The only way I've gotten populations to vary according to the distance shader is by making it top level and separate, but then I get the colors all over the terrain as well.


Here is a picture of my nodes:



When I render, the trees aren't away from the camera and end up blocking my view, which defeats the purpose obviously!
Link to the golden forest tutorial in case you don't know about it.

[Tangled-Universe]

The screenshot shows you only have limited a surface layer's coverage with the distance shader.

This won't work anyway, due to how the surface layer is configured by default. To have the breakup fully control the surface layer's coverage you need to set coverage to 0.5 and fractal breakup to 1. If the breakup is then blended with a distance shader then you'll have a surfacelayer controlled by the fractal breakup + distance shader.

What you need to do is to create a separate surfacelayer/distribution shader and connect the distance shader to that.
The distance shader's settings you have tell me that you want trees "starting" at 40m from camera with coverage reaching 100% at 80m from camera.
Use this surfacelayer/distribution shader as "density shader" in your tree population.

[cyphyr]

Its often better to use a separate camera for distance shaders rather than the render camera. It basically gives you much more flexibility.
For example you can move your render camera about to make test renders without changing your population every time.
Your settings look ok although I don't know why you have plugged the distance shader into a surface layer, its not needed for just limiting a population density.
On a larger scale (for viewing ease only) the sample below is doing the same as yours. See if copying my settings helps.
Cheers and good luck
Richard

ps hehe, @TU this is a great example of why doing Terragen tuts is so problematic. There often is no "right" answer, only methodologies. We have both come up with differing solutions, both correct, but coming from our own differing learning experiences! Go figure. Oh by the way TU did you check out my post on IU at the other place?

[sylink]

Alright, I went back through it and noticed that the Surface layer wasn't made under the shaders tab, and you simply make on in the node network then connect to the trees and make the sublayers, and now it seems to work.

However, I noticed his surface layer (old-pines) seen here http://www.archer-designs.com/tutorials/terragen2/making-of-golden-forest/resources/img-14-distance-shader-network.jpg

connects down the screen to something else while mine doesn't.  Should the output of the surface layer connect to anything else?

Thanks for the help.

[Tangled-Universe]

It probably links to another population.
If it was important he would have expanded the view of the node network and would have mentioned it.

Richard is right about using separate cameras. This is what I always do, but didn't cover in my explanation as I did want to keep it as simple as possible.

@Richard: thanks for replying there, I just replied too

[bobbystahr]

@Richard: thanks for replying there, I just replied too

Is  this 'other place' a secret or can anyone go there, hee hee hee....got a link or is it a forbidden site.  ..   ...

[Tangled-Universe]

It's the alpha testers forum Bobby

[bobbystahr]

understand...cool...thanks for your (thealphatesters) work on making TG2 better than it already is. ..   ...