Noob questions about clamping function terrain

[Shigawire]

Moore noob questions:

1.How do you "smooth" the sharp edge where the dune touches the bottom terrain?

2.How do you select concavity and convexity and smooth that if you want?

[Dune]

I can't help you there, as I'm not very good with the blue nodes. You might need a different setup for smooth dunes (like warped ridges).

[Shigawire]

I can't help you there, as I'm not very good with the blue nodes. You might need a different setup for smooth dunes (like warped ridges).

I am not very good at the blue nodes either, or math for that matter. If anyone has a clue about how I could achieve this, it'd be awesome. In World Machine, it's possible to "Select Convexity" or "Select Concavity", and then apply "Blur" or "Glaciate" on it. This would be a great feature to have in Terragen also.

[Dune]

In TG, if you use fractals for dunes, but not use the internal displacement, but use the colors to feed a displacement shader, you can use a color adjust to mask the whites or blacks and give the valleys or tops extra displacement with additional displacement shaders. So you can keep smooth what you want.

[Shigawire]

In TG, if you use fractals for dunes, but not use the internal displacement, but use the colors to feed a displacement shader, you can use a color adjust to mask the whites or blacks and give the valleys or tops extra displacement with additional displacement shaders. So you can keep smooth what you want.

I don't understand what you mean. You mean like using color adjust to increase or decrease levels? I thought that only changed/clamped the output.

If I put up the TGD I have so far, maybe people could have a look at it?

First I'll try to make it look a little more presentable though

[Dune]

If you unclamp the white and black you can alter/invert the range... very useful.

[Oshyan]

Something to be aware of is that while Terragen and World Machine both use Procedural Functions to generate terrains, World Machine always *rasterizes* those functions to a finite resolution, which limits your detail, but has the advantage of being able to perform additional raster-only operations like blur, etc. Terragen keeps things entirely procedural (generated at render time) and thus the functions have near "infinite" detail, but you aren't able to do things like blur operations unless you manually rasterize your procedural function, at which point you lose many of the advantages of purely procedural terrain (but again you gain some capabilities, like ease of export, and being able to run blur, erosion, and other raster functions).

- Oshyan

[Shigawire]

Something to be aware of is that while Terragen and World Machine both use Procedural Functions to generate terrains, World Machine always *rasterizes* those functions to a finite resolution, which limits your detail, but has the advantage of being able to perform additional raster-only operations like blur, etc. Terragen keeps things entirely procedural (generated at render time) and thus the functions have near "infinite" detail, but you aren't able to do things like blur operations unless you manually rasterize your procedural function, at which point you lose many of the advantages of purely procedural terrain (but again you gain some capabilities, like ease of export, and being able to run blur, erosion, and other raster functions).

- Oshyan

Ah, I see what you mean.. that makes sense. So maybe the best way to deal with the unwanted transition is to modify the mathematical function so that it becomes smooth from the beginning? Or perhaps another way is to add some minor fluffy details in the zone / angle that could occlude the angle. I wish there was a way to select convexity or something. I will post more here soon, maybe I can get some help from a math-wiz to refine the function.

[wiwine]

For your work on the dunes, perhaps you should take a look to my tutorial "Dunes & sandwaves"... (in the tutorials section)
It's not finished yet, but you may find some ideas to solve your problems. 

[Shigawire]

For your work on the dunes, perhaps you should take a look to my tutorial "Dunes & sandwaves"... (in the tutorials section)
It's not finished yet, but you may find some ideas to solve your problems. 

Well damn, that is as good as I've ever seen deserts done in any terrain generator!

Bravo Sir! And thank you for having put in the effort to make a tutorial for it as well!