Dunes & sandwaves tutorial

Started by wiwine, May 28, 2014, 07:22:41 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

wiwine

Introduction

This tutorial is intended to help you create nice sets of dunes with Terragen 2 or 3.
We will try to generate single dunes (barkhanes), fields of barkhanes, or linear dunes.
My method offers two major profiles (dunes and sand domes), that you can combine to get nice views of sandy deserts.
At a smaller scale, you will also be able to create sand ripples drawn by the wind on these dunes.

Please note that this tutorial is NOT a scientific study about dunes formation !
Even if it is based on certain obvious rules (the incidence of the wind), the reality is far more complex.
My choice was to create these dunes with trigonometric functions, for aesthetic reasons.
The real dunes could be modeled only from much more complex calculations, including some parameters I'm not able to use with Terragen : incidence of surrounding reliefs (rocky hills for example), obstacles like plants, or fluctuating winds.

Prerequisites

Terragen version : v 2.2.23.1 or higher.
In the previous versions, there was a problem with the Perlin 3D Scalar node : spikes appeared in renders when using multithreading.

Tutorial

Here is the first part of this tutorial, with the .tgd files.
The second part in a few days (I hope).

Comments and suggestions are welcome !  ;)

[Edit 2014.06.04 : tutorial PART 1 v1.2 + files]
[Edit 2014.06.06 : tutorial PART 1 v1.22]

archonforest

This is just fantastic!! Thx for your time to put this togehter ;)
Dell T5500 with Dual Hexa Xeon CPU 3Ghz, 32Gb ram, GTX 1080
Amiga 1200 8Mb ram, 8Gb ssd

kaedorg

I just had a look to the pdf but for sure these files will be helpful
and a lot to learn here.

Thanks a lot for this contribution

David

Dune

#3
Great that you succeeded in doing this, wiwine. Thanks a lot. I will surely dive into this! First quick impression; very sophisticated! Second impression will take a while as I will be gone for a few weeks.

TheBadger

Thanks dune. Have not read yet. But Im sure Ill be glad to add this to my library.  8)
It has been eaten.

Dune

Don't thank dune, thank wiwine!

j meyer

#6
Thanks wiwine!

N-drju

No time for it now.

But thank you. :)
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

mhaze

Thanks it's brilliant - would also make good waves.

fleetwood


TheBadger

Quote from: Dune on May 29, 2014, 02:02:43 AM
Don't thank dune, thank wiwine!

BAAAAA! Im sorry! Thank you wiwine!

In my mind I saw "Dunes" in the title as possesive, even though there is clearly no aposterphy :( That is because I am a lazy typer, and now I am becoming a lazy reader...  :-\
It has been eaten.

Jo Kariboo

Merci wiwine ! Très complet et complexe comme travail. Je vais tenté de faire une image à partir de tes fichiers. Merci encore une fois !

wiwine

--- UPDATE ---
Tutorial PART 1 : update V1.2 (some tiny corrections, and a new example for a field of dunes (1b)).
Files : added clip files + files for field 1b.

[attachimg=1]

mhaze

Thank you a great tutorial - sadly the math is beyond me but I can follow the blue nodes - just!

choronr

Thank you, this is masterfully put together; and, will be looking forward to see how some of us will be creating scenes using your techniques ...appreciate this very much.