Where's the ground gone!

Started by rajm, October 20, 2015, 04:31:57 PM

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rajm

I've recently upgraded from terragen 2 to 3.3.04.0 and this afternoon was editing a terrain added some plant populations (I'd also added a child surface shader '...heather approx)  and exported it so I could render on another machine.
When I looked at the preview on the other m/c the view was clearly different and instead of being relatively close to the ground the camera was over 1km above a rather deep hole
Here's a shot the pre situation easter-tn.png  and here is the render on the saved file  same camera position (slightly lower quality render) and the plants are now hanging in mid air over the hole!
Went back to other machine where I'd closed terragen and opening the saved file (not in the export area) I see the same issue

The terrain is based on a .ter file including just the the tgd file below (but not the vegetation). If I look at the top view preview (to the left of the 3d area) I can't see this hole beneath the camera and on creating a new project and adding a heightfield with that ter file, that area of the planet looks to be rolling hills rather than a deep abyss

Having tinkered a bit more it appears that it's my setting of 'intersect underlying' on the child layer - the layer ...03 heather approx - (and the default favour depressions) which is the cause of the hole, I didn't notice the hole appearing before I did the export - is this expected - I would have thought that setting related to one of the previous shaders rather than apparently to the core of the planet?

WAS

Can you please gather your project? I cannot reproduce the issue as I don't have the terrain.

But from what I can tell it may have to do with the compute terrain on the objects, when there are further layers with displacement nested below it. Furthermore you have Power Fractals piped into the distribution with displacement as well.

Oshyan

I'm not certain what's going on here but I have a couple of comments.

First, both of your cameras are rather far away from both of your heightfield terrains. You may have moved your camera where you wanted it and then forgotten to press the "Copy view to current camera" button, it's hard to say. That would certainly explain why things look flat, if your camera position isn't saved as what you thought it was. But if you look around the scene (raise way up and look left, for example) you should see the heightfields. You can also right-click in the 3D preview and choose "Center on object or shader" and find your heightfield shader(s).

Second, your built-in Generated heightfield isn't set to auto-generate, so it's just going to be flat unless you press the Generate button. This too might account for the flatness you're seeing.

Now, your imported heightfield has georeferencing enabled, but I don't have the terrain to load and see where the georef puts it. So it could be anywhere, perhaps even where your camera actually ended up. Maybe the generated terrain is extraneous, I'm not sure.

Finally, in that 2nd image you show, it looks like your camera is *under* the terrani. Look for a little red terrain-like icon in the corner of the compass in the 3D preview. If you see it, it means you're under the terrain.

If none of that helps, as WASasquatch mentioned we probably need to have more of the files to test further, at least the georeferenced terrain. They're almost certainly too large to upload here but you could use WeTransfer, Mega.nz, etc.

- Oshyan

rajm

Thanks for the advice from both! I'll look at those issues, the camera would appear to be above the ground, no red icon and when I move it up slightly it claims to be 1km above the ground. Here's the gathered project http://www.capuchin.co.uk/Docs/hole.zip I've removed the vegetation to make it a smaller download (and it still shows the issue)

rajm

Here's another example started from scratch but using that same .ter file which shows the same problem the child layer has intersect underlying set to true. The previous example was using a terragen 2 file, this one has been created just with version 3

Oshyan

The issue seems to be due to your use of Intersect Underlying in a Surface Layer where the input of that shader is not connected to the output from the Terrain. If I recall correctly Intersect Underlying needs upstream terrain data to work properly. So if you want to use it you'd need to plug it into the main upstream shader chain.

- Oshyan

WAS

Quote from: Oshyan on October 21, 2015, 03:02:26 PM
The issue seems to be due to your use of Intersect Underlying in a Surface Layer where the input of that shader is not connected to the output from the Terrain. If I recall correctly Intersect Underlying needs upstream terrain data to work properly. So if you want to use it you'd need to plug it into the main upstream shader chain.

- Oshyan

I can confirm this. I have user Intersect Underlying on heightfields, outside the main terrain chain (and subsequently the compute terrain) which either resulted in nothing, or messed up terrain

rajm

Thanks for those confirmations I'll make sure that connection is made! I'd managed to replicate the problem without a .ter file but as you say it's nothing to do with that