"Terragen Modus Operandi" or "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies"

Started by cyphyr, January 08, 2012, 05:24:29 PM

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cyphyr

There's been a lot of talk recently about tutorials and I'd like to talk out an idea. Its hardly even concrete yet but here goes.

There's two issues, peoples desire for a simple solution to their Terragen issues (how do I do this or create that effect?) and the easiest way to actually learn Terragen.

A lot of the time people seem to want a simple solution, "Oh just press that button" (simplified) but with Terragen we have a very open ended system, even the developers express surprise at some of the work that has been created. Hmm, I guess that makes it more akin to a render engine, MentalRay etc in a way. So when someone is asking how to make, say a beach, there are just too many possible ways, possible interpretations and final desired outcomes to be able to give a particularly useful answer. Some times a screen shot or even a simplified tgd file can help. And there is also a distinct desire NOT to do it for the enquirer; part of the joy of this program is finding ones own solutions, something I would not want to take away from the student.

The second part, what is the best way to learn Terragen, is also complicated by the same issues. Only knowing how to make a beach (one method), and then a hill side, add in a forest etc, all separate elements will still not enable one to actually "learn" Terragen. Although an intelligent raid of the File sharing section could I'm sure produce some great images. :) These are all good resources and very welcome but do not teach anything of the principles of why something is done. Learning is done by a kind of osmosis. If you like they could be seen as a teaching resource, the clay and paint.  Even the tutorials fall in to the same category, they provide information but only to a specific goal.

To actually learn Terragen a set of principles must be learnt, an operating methodology, a "Terragen Modus Operandi" if you like.

Do you agree?

Some of these principles will be simple logic, understanding the flow of the node structure, some will be more mathematical, the dreaded blue nodes for example. And some will be of an artistic nature, rule of thirds for example. Understanding these (I'm sure there's many more) should be the backbone of a more specific goal orientated learning approach (like we have now with shared files files that do a specific job or tuts that teach a specific method)

So to a question, what would you say were the Primary Principles and Working Methodologies of Terragen, and what would be the best way to convey them.

Sorry for the ramble and please, no disrespect meant on the huge amount of work that has gone in to the resources already at out disposal. This is on a different tack entirely.

Cheers

Richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
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Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)

FrankB

Richard, I frankly don't understand what you are saying or asking with this post. It's either too late already for me to get it or maybe you can, hmm, say it differently?

cheers,
Frank

Tangled-Universe

Ghehe, I've read it twice and I'm not sure too.

Just to answer your main question of "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies of Terragen"; I think that as you've said yourself due to the open end nature of TG2 this is a very difficult question to answer.

By The primary principles I think you mean the basic knowledge required? Like:

Understanding hierarchy and flow of data
Understanding types of data
Understanding the powerfractal
Understanding the surface layer and texture coordinate modes
Understanding the renderer

The primary working methodologies are very specific for everyone and is the toughest to answer I'd say.
If you did mean something like order of work I would tend to go for something like this:

Get your basic terrain (duh)
Position the camera and determine scale
Choose lighting and composition. Do both at once as lighting is key to composition and vice versa. So is scale actually.
Basic shading
Detailing terrain
Tweak shading
Clouds

But honestly I don't really stick to this at all times.

So Richard, probably after a night sleep, what do you mean? :)

Cheers,
Martin

cyphyr

I'm not particularly trying to say anything, just looking for another point of view. ;D

Both setups you illustrate above are exactly what I'm discussing and I'm sure there's other ways and other subjects as well, so you get what I mean. If you think its a trivial subject then fair enough, I thought it was an interesting topic of discussion :)

G'night

:)
Richard
www.richardfraservfx.com
https://www.facebook.com/RichardFraserVFX/
/|\

Ryzen 9 5950X OC@4Ghz, 64Gb (TG4 benchmark 4:13)

TheBadger

I agree with what your saying cyphyr. The problem I see is that no one can do it by them selves. It would take a sort of culture to develop the way you can find hundreds of threads for photoshop topics. No one thread or topic is going to make you a master of photoshop, but when you take the totality of the photoshop community as a whole, everything you could ever need to know is there. Still, a new user would have just as much difficulty with photoshop in terms of sifting through the abundance of information. As a terragen user I would prefer the abundance of information problem for adobe products, to the lack of in formation problem as a TG2 user. But still, the point is I dont think it will ever get easy, but I am looking for faster!
It has been eaten.

bobbystahr

My main over riding problem in using Terragen is the math in the shaders. In school,as a part of some screwy Canadian Social Experiment,I was split from my pals I went to elementary school with and not allowed to study Latin,Physics,Trig, et al and consigned to an arithmathetic level understanding of maths...basically board feet, pitch of a screw, mundane realities which do not help understanding of the "higher math" used buy Terragen.
I feel I'm not alone in being 'left in the dark', unintentionally I'm sure, by my lack of higher math skills.
If there was someway to 'translate' the 'math terms' into a 'layman's English', this would, in and of itself, make TG2 waaaay more accessible to many of us out here.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

airflamesred

I totally agree with cyphyr.
I don't want recipes, I want to understand the ingredients.

Hetzen

I agree Richard. There is a eureka moment when you get to understand Colour Space and Displacement.

The math side of things can be very easy. For example, if I want a PF to mask another PF (ie only show PF2 where PF1 is), all you do is Multiply PF1 by PF2 (assuming you only need the colour information rather than displacement). The actual math in this example is as simple as 1 multiply by 1 equals 1, or 1 multiply by 0 equals 0 (where 1 is white and 0 is black). Sure you can us the Blending input of PF2 to do the same thing, but maybe you want several PFs to influence where PF2 is shown, so you may want to Add/Subtract PFs together.

Another simple example is having a bitmap defining a field, and another defining a road that will cut across the field, so you just Subtract the road from the field...

I had no understanding of vectors before using TG and now use them in most projects.

The problem is coming up with a definitive 'way of working' as there isn't only one way of doing anything. The node reference is to my mind all that's needed for your ingredients description, which atm is still being fleshed out, but it's mostly there.

Tangled-Universe

Ghehe, well Jon there's a big hole/gap between being able to grasp PF masking by multiplication of 1 with 0...1 and be able to grasp vector calculation.
The first is easy, even for a "math-moron" like me, but the latter is over my head ;)

rcallicotte

If only Volker were here to put this in perspective.  He has a very good grasp of what works and why, as do many others here.  But, I liked his input.   :D

William Vaughan, the Lightwave evangelist, has this knack for making the understanding piece of LW come through and he makes it enjoyable.  For one, then, I think we need someone who can do that with understanding...someone who makes it look easier and inspires others to learn by doing it.  Oshyan is very good at this as is anyone in the Planetside staff.  Franck and TU and Moodflow have all been good at it.  Others have been more technical and hence more difficult to understand, but their contributions have been stellar.

I liked it years ago when a handful of people took the initiative to experiment and understand.   I learned so much about so many things back then.  This is the best way to learn.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

bobbystahr

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 11, 2012, 07:39:43 AM
Ghehe, well Jon there's a big hole/gap between being able to grasp PF masking by multiplication of 1 with 0...1 and be able to grasp vector calculation.
The first is easy, even for a "math-moron" like me, but the latter is over my head ;)

hear hear...this is the main reason most of my tg2 work has been so pedestrian so far. I get the first part like TU,but as a fellow math moron, the use of a most of the functions in the list are as opaque marble when I read the names on the list. Not a clue is supplied to my brain by the name of the function as it's a math term which in my education cycle I never ran into studying shop math in trade school...which is where I wound up due to the previously  mentioned social experiment.
I yet again plead for plain English descriptors that give the layman some hint of what happens when a function is applied.
I fortunately wound up being a singer/songwriter for all my adult life so by and large higher maths were not terribly relevant and there was no incentive to even care about them till TG2 came along. As I was ejected from High School at 16 yrs old any job I wound up using to supplement my music earnings (very little at the best of times) and generally some form of manual labour requiring little or no brain function beyond the mechanicals of doing the physical part of the job, ie: silkscreen printing, making high quality leather objects (custom work_self created job)
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Oshyan

I still maintain that an understanding of Math is *not* required to do a lot of great work in TG. A solid grounding in artistic theory, color, light, etc. is, in my view, more useful for most "average" scenes, in terms of creating realism and beauty. "Blue nodes", etc. are useful for doing creative, unique, new, cool things, but I do not often need them, and when I do I can almost always rely on a simple clip file someone here has created.

As to the original question, I do feel there is a fundamental basis of knowledge that is needed to really understand TG2 and that will help a lot in the *absolutely necessary* continued explanation that is based on that foundation. Frankly much of it is already covered in the basic documentation in terms of network data flow, etc. but there are definitely some missing pieces like clear outline of the data type conversion, explanation of node connection compatibility (why does a Heightfield Load not connect to other nodes but only to a Heightfield Shader, why are the Light Source nodes not connected to anything, etc.).

I don't know that this necessarily translates into a "working methodology" or "philosophy", but I suppose Matt might be able to articulate some kind of "philosophy" of TG. In past discussion this has more take the form of comparisons and references to other apps and approaches that exemplify certain principles rather than a ground-level explanation, but perhaps more can be forthcoming.

The problem is that this fundamental basis of understanding of how TG2 works still fails to actually allow you to "build a cool scene". The reality is that the skills and knowledge needed to do that are very broad and multi-faceted, and only partly to do with TG2 itself and how it works. I'm sure many of you have noticed how some people just take very naturally to TG2, producing excellent images quickly and seemingly without greater experimentation or tutoring than others, while others have labored either publicly or behind the scenes through many iterations, getting better and better, but more slowly. Why is this? Perhaps the people who "just get it" have some other useful knowledge that gives them a head-start on understanding TG, perhaps they just "think like Matt" (hehe). I don't now.

If I had the answer as to how to teach TG2 well, I would be doing a better job of it. There is certainly a lack of completion in the foundational documentation which we are working to address, but I fear even once that is done it still won't be enough for many users. I'm not blaming the users by any means, I just frankly don't know how to really solve the fundamental problems. It seems like a consistent theme that those who do understand how to use TG2 well can explain specific things in specific ways when asked a direct question, but still seem unable to really communicate a more holistic understanding that they may have. Perhaps this is just the nature of complex systems (I tend to think so) and only time and experience will solve it. Ideally experience on real projects, though (preferably) without deadlines. Admittedly a somewhat rare combination. ;)

I do think also that the tools TG2 provides can and will evolve to help users realize their intentions more easily and quickly. But that's a bit out of the realm of what I can address personally.

- Oshyan

bobbystahr

For example Oshyan, I had to google scalar and radians and I still don't have a grasp on what the heck they do nor how to use them
It's all 'greek' to me....English as opposed to Math language is what I'm requesting...dumb it down a bit is another way of saying it.....
TG2 for Dummies
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Hetzen

Quote from: bobbystahr on January 13, 2012, 04:01:05 AM
For example Oshyan, I had to google scalar and radians and I still don't have a grasp on what the heck they do nor how to use them
It's all 'greek' to me....English as opposed to Math language is what I'm requesting...dumb it down a bit is another way of saying it.....
TG2 for Dummies

When coming up with names for nodes, it's quite important that they're called what they really are Bobby, so that there is some synergy with the outside world, and that you can use that term to look up what a Radian is in Wikipedia for example.

Whether you actually want to get into trigonmetry is a completely different matter, and as Oshyan has quite rightly said, there is no need to use blues to get good results. But I'm glad they're there, because it adds a whole new level of working under the hood to get quite unique results.