Fiscalli Cliff

[choronr]

Sub Title: 'Sucking in the Green'.

Terrain by 'efflux'; veggies by 'Walli'.

[schmeerlap]

Maybe some boulders on the slope below the stack would be good. Was the brown band two thirds up the stack applied using an image map shader, it has some black streaks that don't look right. Good render on the whole, though, I like the cinemascope vista.

[TheBadger]

funny title 

[choronr]

Maybe some boulders on the slope below the stack would be good. Was the brown band two thirds up the stack applied using an image map shader, it has some black streaks that don't look right. Good render on the whole, though, I like the cinemascope vista.

Thank you John, I do have some large stones/boulders in the low spots along with the bushes. Good idea to add some around the base of the stack. Yes, the image map forms the band ..should have used a different one.

[efflux]

Hi. It's cool that you're using this. I like the integration of the trees. My suggestion is to stretch out the terrain to make it more canyon like. Try hooking in the terrain on the steps thread or creating a new one. Slightly redirecting it can break the regularity. I plan on posting more about it because I have ideas to make the voronoi more tweakable. I wish we had a voronoi fractal. Here's an image done by Infidel (according to the folder name on on my drive) in Mojoworld. I'm not sure this is even on the net anywhere. It's voronoi. I think possibly he used the technique or something similar to what I did on the altitude terrain blend thread (although this has nothing to do with altitude blending, it's just that you use altitude blending to control where the voronoi is) but for sure the whole terrain is voronoi based. It highlights something I mentioned elsewhere. With voronoi for the whole terrain form you can create the appearance of rivers in gorges although they all join together. This whole angle needs drastically expanded on.

[choronr]

Thanks efflux for your thoughts on this. I have a couple of .tgd (w/voronoi) files that you might be interested in; but, have no way of getting them to you.

Will experiment with your ideas on this ...thanks.

Bob

[efflux]

I will eventually return to tweaking this voronoi idea. I've been working on other angles. Best idea for present is to try different terrains. Bear in mind the distribution of the altitude blend which will relate to whatever terrain you use and also the displacement of the voronoi. That might benefit from being tamed down. That value is negative otherwise those voronoi will create concave shapes on the terrain (might work though in some instances). Try adjusting the constant scalars that change the voronoi sizes. This will also depend on the scale of the terrain.

[inkydigit]

Great looking structures Bob!

[RichTwo]

I've tried efflux's file before, but (and I'm not meaning to be critical) it produced a "Play-Doh" quality in displacements I didn't so much want.  Brilliantly formulated, yes - and it has probably even more potential!  And you put it to good use with the view you have here.  I think if there was a way to break up the smoothness into something more random and rugged - ah: that's TG2's limitations, I think.

[efflux]

I've tried efflux's file before, but (and I'm not meaning to be critical) it produced a "Play-Doh" quality in displacements I didn't so much want.  Brilliantly formulated, yes - and it has probably even more potential!  And you put it to good use with the view you have here.  I think if there was a way to break up the smoothness into something more random and rugged - ah: that's TG2's limitations, I think.

Hi Rich, yes you're right. This is the problem and why I want to return to it but I go through period of using TG2 and it takes time to sort out the files. Currently I want to do other things for a while because I've been working in TG2 for a few weeks now.

I know Choronr is into using rocky surface terrains because I've seen the work and this idea here, if improved, fits in. If you can create very simple geometric forms that have a general resemblance to forms in nature then the rest is solvable to take it away from the more CG look. Also, Most of my files supplied in the forums are smoothed out to be as simple as possible so only the results of the technique is seen. In this case here, all we want to do is create bulging eroded forms on the sides of cliffs. The messing up and naturalising of this depends on other methods. It only takes a few tweaks to start to break up the mathematical monotony. Same way as fake stones is just a simple voronoi that has to undergo a few tricks to make them look good. One of TG2s strengths is it's ability to build up a lot of displacements from the surface textures without them getting broken. This creates a lot of interesting texture. Mojoworld would end up with masses of artifacts in these scenarios. However, as you can see from that Mojo render. The general forms are really good. It's voronoi which has been added that creates that eroded look and the river area does not have those forms.

[efflux]

This terrain here is almost exactly the same graph as the terrain Choronr has used. Just some tweaks on the terrain shape and extra things to break it up. Voronoi have a function that creates flat tops. Other than that it's exactly the same graph. It's not finished. Just a test to see what happens after tweaks. The altitude blend line is bad. That's another issue. You can't alter the curve of the distribution area when using the red distribution shader. To solve that requires blue nodes. However, there are other ways to distrubute anyway.

[efflux]

I'm taking a break from TG2 now for a bit. I spent a lot of time messing with atmosphere and clouds so got held back with some other things including where I wanted to go further with the terrain idea you used here Choronr. When I get back to TG2 again I want to sort out a lot of things to do with terrain. I just know that some of this can be taken a whole lot further.

Rich, I think you posted a file a while back of terrain you did that I really like. I still haven't got around to looking at that. I will do so eventually to see how it works.

[RichTwo]

The voronoi displacements do only so much and that's a great take on that, yet still has a CG look to it.  Bob, if you think like I do you keep on keeping on.  Guys like Ryan - er, efflux - they know so much.  And  they have, too real lives as we all do.  Slowly the geniuses come out of the woodwork and we glean what we can from them.

I've taken a break because of my own circumstances dictated otherwise, but slowly will reenter this maelstrom when I can.

[TheBadger]

efflux,
that last image of this method is really peeking my interest. But how to you guys plan to deal with the unnatural creases in the terrain?

[efflux]

TheBadger.

The terrain altitude blend creates a problem in many cases because you can see the start and end points of it's blend region. That's also what causes the line in my image. If a step of some sort happens at that area it tends to look more natural or if it's a gentle change to a shoreline.

Another method is to try merging terrains instead of the altitude blend. Create a terrain, add the voronoi or whatever other forms you want to use to change it's features - this could just be a lot of displacement roughness. Then create a copy of the initial terrain fractal without the extra detail. Make it smoother. Merge with the choose by altitude set to highest (or whatever exactly it says in that box for highest - I'm not looking at TG2 now). See if you can play around with this second terrain to get it to generally be on the low areas. Try giving it displacement offset in conjunction with lowering the displacement amplitude. The blend line will be sharp but not a straight line. I haven't really experimented much with that but simply merging terrains should be a way of getting some great forms.

The altitude blend method can be improved but with more blue nodes. It should also be possible to distort it.

These are things I'll get back into eventually. It can take a long time to fine tune things to get effective results.