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

[rcallicotte]

What amazes me is that only five years ago, we would never have thought it possible to create a 3D world with such realism and depth and with such infinite possibilities that we couldn't grasp all of it due to your own imaginations.  For me, this fact overrides whatever learning curve I've found here and, actually, have found that understanding most of this software product comes pretty easily with some experimentation using just the default values.

Has anyone noticed how much more creative you were when you first started using TG2 and didn't even understand the many nuances with so many possible nodes and formulas, etc.?  I miss that and loved it when I was just experimenting.

But, for using TG2 as a professional tool, I think having a few intermediate to advanced "how-to" tutorials for doing some of the following would keep most of everyone happy and propel a level of professionalism to the rest of the movie / TV / animation / gaming tech community -

1.  How do I use TG2 to create a skybox?
2.  How do I use TG2 terrain in another application?
3.  How do I take my animation into TG2 or the other way around (into my version of <application name>)?
4.  How do I export planets to another application? (made this one up  )

These are just a few examples of solid tutorials Planetside could provide as starting material for many who come here just to do something in a movie, on TV, in an animation or to use for a game.  I'm sure there are other ideas as well.

[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

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.

and that is what saddens me...without some understanding of these Blues I fear I will reach the end of what I can accomplish with out them...bad enough I am colour blind and am forced to use image maps to get anywhere near what 'normals' see in terms of actual (real) colouring of my projects...maybe a Glossary which translates to Layman's Language, this Math esoterica.
In Imagine 3D, my intro to 3D art, there was extensive use of procedural textures which as Imagine had a TDK available, 3rd party geniuses could create whole libraries of textures for the community(see Worley's Essence Textures...currently available mainly for LightWave and maybe C4D,and Richard J Jennings contributions as well)There's a link to the Imagine which he gave to the community when Imagine3D became AbandonWare in 2000.
I realize you likely won't be able to see them but the package illustrates the variety available...and all with an easily understandable GUI with either sliders or numerical input fields...I guess that's what I'd like for the opaque Blue Nodes. I learned a heck of a lot using those as they seemed to open 'doors of understanding' in simply being able to see what they did by applying them to primitives...in TG2 it would be either a generated or loaded terrain in place of the primitive...maybe I want the impossible but I think not as a lot of TG2 uses very similar GUIs for many parts of creation already ....I live in hope...
Here's that link: http://www.imagine3d.org/modules/wfdownloads/singlefile.php?cid=3&lid=254
and RJJ's page: http://www.shaders.org/rjj_textures/index.htm  which shows all his offerings for a number of programs...Here's a page with the requestor GUI: http://www.shaders.org/ifw2_textures/sshots.htm

[Tangled-Universe]

Honestly I think there's no single user here who's work with TG2 would be very inhibited because of lack of knowledge of blue nodes.
There's SO much you can do without the blue nodes.

The blue nodes indeed offer flexibility when you want "less procedural" solutions for some aspects of your work, but I do not believe at all they are essential for good work/results/understanding of TG2.

It just adds another layer, as Jon pointed out, but beneath that (or actually above, since the 'normal' nodes are a lot complexer than blue nodes) there's also a virtually endless amount of possibilities which, frankly, most here only just scratched the surface of.
Don't get me wrong, I do not intend to brag here, but I feel the need for blue nodes is only when the regular nodes don't offer enough flexibility and not when the user is limited by his experience or knowledge of the foundations.

Things get full circle then as it eventually is about Oshyan's previous post.
This is a difficult matter, but don't believe or let one make you believe that understanding blue nodes equals understanding TG2.

[airflamesred]

Indeed you don't need the blue nodes, but why put them in front of me and not tell me what they are. Or am I reading this thread wrongly?

[Tangled-Universe]

Yes you are in my opinion. Hence the title. In my opinion blue nodes are not a key part of the "Terragen Modus Operandi" or "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies".

[cyphyr]

In my opinion blue nodes are not a key part of the "Terragen Modus Operandi" or "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies".

Agreed ... although ...

The blue nodes do I believe describe and control a lot of what's happening "under the hood" so a better understanding of one leads to a better understanding of the other.

I could be wrong (that would not be a first!) but I believe that many of the effects created by "normal" nodes are in fact being created by what amounts to blue nodes hidden within them. Essentially, a Power Fractal, for example, is a bunch of blue math nodes encapsulated in an easy to use format. (Am I right here or did I just make that one up ?!?)

I know for example that the Power Fractal, Cloud Fractal and the Fractal Terrain and basically the same thing but with differing default values and biases on the sliders. I also know that Perlin Billows is the reverse of Perlin Ridges. These nuggets I have gleaned only through years of experimenting.

There's a word that Oshyan used, "holistic"; I was going to use it in my first post but thought better of it. I was also going to use the word "Meta". Both describe the kind of encompassing understanding that it seems only comes with years of trial and error. If we could work out a set of basic principles that would be understood right at the outset of learning Terragen I'm confidant the learning process could be sped up considerably.

Oh and Bobby, I hardly use the blue nodes at all. FrankB's advanced cracks in the file sharing section is as far as I've got and hey, he made those! So whilst I agree it would be great to have a better understanding of them its by no means necessary.



Richard

[Tangled-Universe]

I see your point Richard, but if you look at my very first post in this topic, there I summed up a couple of things which I find a LOT more important to know first before getting interested in blue nodes.

You're essentially right that a powerfractal internally is a mathematical representation of a possible blue node network, although that even remains to be seen given the mathematical nature of fractals which you can't reproduce with blue nodes.

[efflux]

There are a number of levels to learning to use TG2. It also depends on exactly what it's being used for. You may be into heightfields and importing models or you may be into procedural planets or even animations.

1: There is using the UI and the various navigations etc. Then there is other basic stuff like rendering settings. After a few renders you know what that does. You will know how to make a terrain, put colour and texture on it and render it. It helps to have some documentation on these basics which is available but with trial and error you will find out this stuff pretty easily.

2: Creating scenes requires knowledge about what will look realistic or at least be somehow a believable scene. This takes a very long time. It doesn't matter what app you are using. You will look at your render and maybe wonder why that atmosphere doesn't look quite right etc. This requires a LOT of experience.

2: You may be able to make great realistic scenes but you need imagination and artistic ability to create a scene and make people want to get lost in it. I think ultimately this is the most important skill because at the end of the day without this, the end result will lack.

3: There are some technicalities to do with 3D thinking in terms of geometry and maths associated with it, for example trigonometry in particular. The maths of this is not rocket science. I just try to learn how to get the results as I go along. You do not need complex maths understanding at all to use blue nodes because most of the time you are simply using them to create a few simple effects, not constructing some incredibly complex geometry. Add, subtract and multiply and the ones you'll use most often. I guess you could construct very complex shapes in TG2 but beyond a certain point, any complex geometrical shapes would be handled in another app and brought in as a mesh. HOWEVER, this is my first critique. The blue nodes should have basic explanations about the maths functions they perform i.e. what a bias is, but it must be visually represented with how this would effect geometry. Something along these lines should be on the planetside site:

http://www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/maths_intro.html

4: This is the biggest problem. There is a lack of info about how TG2 really works in terms of how different data flows happen with various nodes and shaders. What input expects colour or automatically changes the data type etc, where are things getting coordinates from, what exactly does the warp shader do in specific terms of the shifting the geometry data etc etc etc. What the hell does "mix" mean exactly. I know I keep harping on and on about Mojoworld on this forum but I have to again here. I'm not using it now, it has problems but a manual is not one of them. There is a 447 page paper manual which scratches the surface of how to use Mojoworld and how all the nodes can be made to interact to get certain effects.

[Seth]

what are those blue nodes you are talking about ?!

[FrankB]

I disagree with Efflux on point 4. What he perceives as the biggest problem never was a problem at all for me. Mostly TG2 does the conversion of scalar/color for me unnoticed. It never stood in the way, it just works most of the time automatically. At some point you figure out that some shader inputs only take color or scalars or displacement, easy peasy.

Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.

Regards,
Frank

[Matt]

Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.

This is coming in v2.4 But you can still browse the Node Reference by hand:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Node_Reference
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Matt

[FrankB]

Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.

This is coming in v2.4

Matt

oops

got so used to that it appeared like normal to me!

[Matt]

oops

got so used to that it appeared like normal to me!

No worries. v2.4 has been in development for a long time. We are very close to release now!

[efflux]

The biggest problem in TG2 is displacements. If you use only colour or only very subtle displacements then it can be dealt with and things make reasonable sense. The modes to mix and mask things just work. Where it all falls apart into confusion is with displacements. Try working on a scene where you want to incorporate and carefully control displacements via various masking methods and TG2 descends into utter confusion. If you have used other apps, and I'm not just talking landscape but any app, then control of surfaces can not possibly be easily grasped. I understand the associated complications with surfacing a terrain as compared to just surfacing objects in an ordinary 3D app since landscapes have all sorts of position complications to do with colours and how they match to displacements but still, TG2 is very hard to grasp. In fact, it is my firm belief that absolutely NOBODY here actually fully understands how to use TG2. I am close but I still haven't grasped it completely. There are several things I planned on posting about but due to some complex technical issues I'n trying to get my head around, I haven't managed to finish anything, including several planets I'm working on which are the best I've done yet.

[efflux]

As for connecting to the net via TG2. I never do this. My Windows system goes nowhere near the net (Windows + net = disaster). Not that this is a major issue except that I have to have boot into a Windows partition just to use TG2. Everything else I do is done on Linux.