TG Earth model progress.

[lat 64]

Too rich for my blood.
I'm out fellas. Your full house beats my two pair (of cores).

My best data is about 45 kb/sec.
I do, however, look forward to seeing some nice renders though.

Time for a cigar

[bigben]

As I'm setting up the masks I thought I might ask for some feedback...  As a lot of this model relies on the use of masks there is the potential for the network window to become quite tangled. To help alleviate this, and to help making things modular, I'm adding Null shaders to the internal network of the output nodes of key masks and settings. This should also help to make things modular, as I can make a clip for a specific feature e.g. night lights and include links to related masks e.g. rivers and lakes (no city lights on top of water), without having to include the related masks.

Separate clips will be interchangeable for key components comprising masks and images, terrain, scene parameters and of course the different shaders.

It does,however, make it a little slower to follow the links as you have to open a node to see where the link goes to but I think it will be well worth it in the end.  Whether or not you follow that convention with your own tweaks will of course be up to you.

Any thoughts ?

[Dune]

I like this kind of setup. I mostly work that way too, cleaning up into 'hidden' nodes after the main hurdles are taken, or even from the start. My only 'complaint' (which I mentioned earlier) is that you can't see where an outgoing arrow goes; a popup with a line to follow would be of great help.

[bobbystahr]

I think I need a tutorial on the how to create and use of "hidden nodes"....please, searched the WIKI  and nada there except references to them, but no how to.

[Dune]

It's very easy; say you have a surface shader with a lot of children and mask and breakup attached... CTRL+X those. Then rightclick on the now empty surface shader and choose internal. CTRL+V your nodes there. Then go back outside, hover your mouse over the child input, and choose the surface shader (you'll see 2 above eachother, the lower one with a link sign in front), open the lower one and you are able to choose the one node you want linked, which of course should be the last in the child line). The child input will then dissappear off the surface shader. Then hover above the mask input, get into the surface shader again and choose the mask shader. And finally hover above the breakup input, etc. This will hide all additives of that surface shader inside it. From inside you can also attach external links, which may be hidden inside other shaders.
Once you get the hang of it, it's easy. Like with everything 

[bobbystahr]

Many thanks Ulco. I have this copied and pasted to a note pad and will see if I can grok this. I sure do hate the messy node screen I;m presented with after a while of making surfaces in the tree structure which I find easier at the out set. Off to test my comprehension.

[bobbystahr]

Many thanks Ulco. I have this copied and pasted to a note pad and will see if I can grok this. I sure do hate the messy node screen I;m presented with after a while of making surfaces in the tree structure which I find easier at the out set. Off to test my comprehension.

Got it! ...a real D'oh moment for me. Somehow the terminology confused me...thanks again.

[bobbystahr]

The real secret to using these 'hidden nodes' is descriptive naming of the parent Surface shader of each hidden node so when it comes to 'tweak time' you have an easier time navigating.

[bigben]

The real secret to using these 'hidden nodes' is descriptive naming of the parent Surface shader of each hidden node so when it comes to 'tweak time' you have an easier time navigating.

Definitely,  I've used a few capitalised keywords like PARAM, IMAGE and MASK at the start of the parent nodes to a) group them together and b) make them easier to spot in the list (except, of course, on the node in the example image above )

[Dune]

Yes, naming is paramount! And if there are nodes that you'll use more often to link to put an A in front. Especially with a few hundred  ), the list to scroll down is long.

[bobbystahr]

Yes, naming is paramount! And if there are nodes that you'll use more often to link to put an A in front. Especially with a few hundred  ), the list to scroll down is long.

In making Distribution shaders which I often re use, when I name them I put an ! in front of the name and they're always top of the Right click>Assign shader list.

[Dune]

Hi Ben,

Is this what your underwater Red Sea DEM should look like? I need to displace it quite considerably to see some elevation (took the size from the file, but located near North Pole for ease of work). There's a strange band of height just off the land part as you can see.

[bigben]

It certainly shouldn't need that much. I'll check the file when I get home tonight. There are a few artefacts in the elevation data, both from my merging and the merging done in the bathymetry for GEBCO. There's no real escaping them but they shouldn't be too bad unless you're multiplying the elevation by 1000

[AP]

Any updates on your progress?