Arizona cliff / stratas

asabourin · August 20, 2015, 11:25:33 AM

hi there!

I have been learning Terragen 3 for a week now and I am trying to reproduce this scene as much as I can. The part that puzzles me the most is those selective stratas that are now all over the place and also very pronounced. I beleive there is a another way than using stratas to achieve this, maybe someone could point me out?
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Dune · August 20, 2015, 11:59:13 AM

A redirect shader may help, where you can direct displacement in X or Z direction, or a vector displacement shader (same, kind of, but through the color of a PF), or you could add a compute normal after displacing the mountains and then using lateral displacement (by PF). Masking the strata shader may also be an idea, or add multiple strata shaders, with different masking.
I'm sure others will chime is as well.

Welcome, by the way

asabourin · August 20, 2015, 03:31:23 PM

I have been trying many different ways. here is what I have to far (I am obviously only working on the basic structure right now before the details)
I have my nodes and a result picture attached.

Voronoi 3d diff seems to get this big scale hard edge i'm looking for but the same is still very repetitive. Also I have 2 very distic steps with a progressive depth while I would like them to alternate.

Thanks for your time!

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TheBadger · August 20, 2015, 06:20:33 PM

From my perspective, I think you are making it too complex.
I have to keep things as simple as possible or I run into too many problems as the node tree gets big.

The easiest thing I can think of to get some more of the detail you are after is just to add a strata and outcrop node, and then mask that with a PF node. At least then you will have more of what you are after very fast.

Are you trying to do this all with functions? If you are good with functions that will help you a lot in the long run. But I think you will get much closer to the basic forms using more traditional red nodes.

I don't get blue nodes to save my life.
I would make the canyon with a image mask, and edit it in PS as I went. Then once I have the basic shapes and scale, start using power fractals including the strata and outcrops very early in the network.

Here is a very early stage of a canyon I had been working on. Basically its just a image mask and a few other things in this stage, adding just a strata and outcrop to it and masking it, and repeating, would do a lot very fast.
In my case I am waiting for vector map output to take the terrain to a sculpting soft to do more. My scene needs rectangular shapes which in TG requires blue nodes. But when I can export it as a vector I will be able to make those shapes in one short session

Anyway, not saying you will get all you want just by adding the nodes I mentioned, but I think you will get closer and be able to add to it.

Just my thoughts on it.

Tangled-Universe · August 20, 2015, 06:39:47 PM

Where's that screengrab from and where did you get those files from, Unity?

Dune · August 21, 2015, 02:59:26 AM

I set up another idea for you, lots of ways to handle this.

asabourin · August 21, 2015, 10:31:53 AM

Hi Martin,

I tryed to send you an email from your website but it didn't work.

I'm a technical artist and I went to the Siggraph 2015 at Los Angeles where I found a talk that would help us here at Red barrels to push our rocks to another level in our next video game. I was pleased to attend to Veselin's talk who covered exactly what I wanted. This is a screengrab from the document released to those who paid for Siggraph and it is a work that I beleive you made for Veselin actually. I don't have the file and I just wish I coud because that work is absolutely marvelous.

I started terragen tuesday, this is a steep learning curve and I can't spend so much time since I have a whole world to create but every bit of help is very apreciated.
I have just finished going through your canyon wall tutorial which helped me to get the small / medium stratas details and how to create cracks and so on. But these big hard edges extrusions features are a mystery to me!

Dune:
Thank you so much, I'll try to work on your file and see if I can get these big extrusions out, it's already looking very nice

I'll keep you posted

Tangled-Universe · August 21, 2015, 11:43:52 AM

Sorry if I made it look like I was accusing you of something, but I was just very surprised to see this show up

Anyway, yes my website, sigh...I really need to take some time to update it and to fix the contact sheet so that I can discriminate the relevant messages from bots/junk more easily.

I sent you a PM.

Cheers,
Martin

asabourin · August 21, 2015, 03:13:57 PM

Here is an update, I am getting the hang on stratas a bit more now. I can get this first big protrusion I'm looking for but somehow I don't know why I can't really mask it as I would like. I think the key would be to have it going in and out (like a wave) , and I tryed using the twist and shear shader like I saw on a tutorial but it just leans all the canyons on one side while creating waves but at a very low frequency. I'm trying to get noise in there, anything I'm doing wrong? Also I wonder if I can have the stratas lean inside without having them all in diagonal .

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TheBadger · August 21, 2015, 03:59:27 PM

On the nodes you have plunged into the strata, go to them and hit the "D" key (this toggles them on and off(off will not effect the terrain or render)) Then starting with the first node in the network branch begin tracking down which setting is not working how you expected it to. if everything is good then move on to the next by turning it on and doing the same.

Also, not that this is your issue, but keep an eye on the "reverse mask" for any node that has a mask. IT can get nodes mixed up as you grow your branch. I just mention it because there were a lot of times when I was learning, that that little box had big effects on my results.