tunnels

[mhaze]

I've been trying to punch tunnels through a rock without much success - any ideas?

[dandelO]

Do you mean a rock object, a mountain, a stones surface, something else? I'm not quite sure how to think about a solution without a bit more of a starting point of your problem.

I think you mean how would you make a cavern complex inside a rock structure, is this correct? I do have a decent solution to creating one that I had to work out for a project recently, it can be as complicated as you want and without too much work, I have lots of renders and animations travelling through a completely closed cavern complex but I can't share any of them here so, here's a quickie that I'm throwing together just now for a contest for fun, is this anything like what you're trying to do? It's quite dark but I hope it's light enough so that you can see that you can make never ending underground tunnels quite easily.

I'll get onto making a more complexed one shortly, I'm kind of limited in what I can do with this particular file due to contest rules but you can see the main tunnel close up and another smaller one branching off to the right, these can be followed forever or, until you hit a dead end, and can be entirely procedural.

[attachimg=#]

* EDIT: Replaced image with larger render. *

[Dune]

Or something like this?

[dandelO]

And if you'll excuse the extreme low quality on this, here's 30 seconds of travel in a random fractal complex, with a bit more time the shape and forms can be honed and tuned to pretty much whatever you like, just a quickie that I ran when I went to bed as an example, I didn't spend much time on it, as you can see.

http://youtu.be/uEEgrFNwJEo

[mhaze]

Dunes image is exactly what I'm looking for!  But I'm also intrigued by your ideas too, dandelO as I think they might be adapted.  I've tried using a painted shader but get wierd results. I've tried using a simple shape but that does not work either. Mick

[Dune]

It's hard, though, to get a nice hole. I used a painted shader on the ice wall to define the hole areas, then used that to feed a default shader's opacity input, and used that as a blender I think for a surface layer. You'll have to experiment a bit. But the default shader's opacity tab is the trick. I think I also used a painted shader to define where the wall was dent inwards (redirect), and then the second painted shader to 'opacitate-out' a narrower area (the backside of the terrain isn't rendered, that's why it works). But it's never gonna be perfect!

[mhaze]

Cheers Dune,

I vaguelyremember using redirect once before for a cave the opacity idea is a new one - plenty of food for thought.

Thanks

Mick

[mhaze]

Well. I've sort of got it working but the painted shader seems to leave a lot behind. Back to the drawing board. What we need some simple shapes and boolean operations!

[Dune]

You might have to change the painted shader to 3D.

[mhaze]

Tried that still got lots of bits left over but it's progress