Terragen 3 Colour Variation in Populations.

[Oshyan]

You mean having the population tinting be visible? That would depend on having shaders (other than image maps) be visible on objects in the 3D preview, which means the shaders need to be calculated, then presumably rasterized and sent as pixel data to the OpenGL rendering process. Certainly possible, but it does require a good deal of additional work. The general issue is something we're aware of and hope to improve in the future.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

The problem with all these gadgets is that the more 'luxury' in the preview, the slower it all gets. I think.

[Upon Infinity]

You mean having the population tinting be visible? That would depend on having shaders (other than image maps) be visible on objects in the 3D preview, which means the shaders need to be calculated, then presumably rasterized and sent as pixel data to the OpenGL rendering process. Certainly possible, but it does require a good deal of additional work. The general issue is something we're aware of and hope to improve in the future.

- Oshyan

Yeah, I figured I was being greedy.  One of those "luxury" features.  Ah, well, I'll make do without.  Thanks for the response.

[PabloMack]

I haven't used it yet actually (no need for me) but I believe it does work on all parts of an object, doesn't it? So if you only want the bark or leaves of a tree to vary you'd need the 'old' setup.

I would guess in the future PS might want to apply colour variation only to a specified surface name or list of surface names in the populator object. Hopefully surface names are preserved after loading OBJ's. I gather the PF people are talking about stands for Power Fractal?

[Dune]

PF=Power Frcatal, yes. And that's why I use the olde method, I want to make a distinction between bark and leaves, if necessary. Furthermore, I now tend to make my objects including color variation PF's, so I only have to load them.

[choronr]

An issue I'm having with color variation in populations is that after I add the PF and set the scale, I do get the color variation - however, the objects are much darker than the original object. This has happened on several different objects.

[Dune]

That's because you multiply the original color by a range between white and black, so all except the whitest will turn darker. You should up the main color, or reduce the blackness of the PF by adding a grey color instead of the black or shifting the slider up a little.

[choronr]

Thank you Ulco, will experiment with your suggestion.

[Oshyan]

Dune's explanation is correct but his proposed solutions are not the best way. You want to use the Diffuse Color Multiplier on the Colour tab of the population (the same place colour variation is enabled) to correct for this. Try values above 1...

- Oshyan

[choronr]

Thanks Oshyan. I was actually setting the scale of the PF; then, adjusting its color to a light yellow/orange for dry/dead bushes. After this, I found that I had to take the default diffuse color up from the 0.5 to 1. This was still too dark. Had to almost double that to get the desired color variance.

[Oshyan]

Yes, again you really want to use the Diffuse Color Multiplier instead (and do NOT do the other adjustments, to keep your base setup the same as it would be without color variation).

- Oshyan

[choronr]

Thanks Oshyan. We'll see how this will work for a new project I'm working on.

[Dune]

Ah, yes of course, you're working with the new color variation setup. I don't and that's why I wrote what I did. Sorry.