Fractal procedural erosion shader public beta

Started by Daniil, November 15, 2015, 01:49:40 PM

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bobbystahr

Quote from: blinkfrog on November 15, 2015, 01:49:40 PM
I am pleased to present the beta version of fractal procedural erosion shader for Terragen. It is developed using Terragen SDK.

At the present it works on Windows only, no OS X version yet.

And yes, it's free.

Shader process it's input and outputs eroded landscape. But may be it is better to interpret it as eroded landscape synthesizer which is basing on uneroded input landscape.

Achieving good-looking results highly depends on how the unprocessed terrain was designed. Original landscape doesn't need to have many small-sized details, they can sometimes confuse the algorithm. Moreother, usually small details are shaved off completely and algorithm generates its own details. So you can generate original landscape using lesser number of octaves, also it is faster.

Currently shader doesn't process truly infinite area, as one can expect from procedural algorithm. Actually it handles the square area of size approx. (1000 * Erosion scale)^2 (1000 km * 1000 km for default settings) centered at (0, 0). The support of much bigger sizes is planned in the future.

Shader uses extensive RAM caching during its work, and can hog up to several gigabytes. You can control the amount of RAM which shader can use, but actually the more RAM you have, the faster plugin works, especially during the animation rendering.

To evaluate a single point algorithm has to evaluate context area around: to sample original area and to build drainage network; it results in a noticeable delay before actual render or even just preview starts updating. But all data is being cached, so evaluating of a point next to first takes much less time. The less distance between points, the less new data has to be evaluated. So after initial delay rendering is speeding up. And if you render the animation, subsequent frames are rendered faster than the first. But if the erosion cache grows too large (bigger than limit) it is being flushed, and shader has to rebuild some data again.

To install just extract the dkerosion.tgp into "Plugins" subfolder in your main Terragen folder. There are two builds, 32 and 64 bit, you need to install just one of course. Then you can find the erosion shader in the Displacement Shader section of shaders.

Some images:
[attach=1][attach=2][attach=3][attach=4]

By Ulco Glimmerveen (Dune):
[attach=5][attach=6][attach=7][attach=8]

By Martin Huisman (Tangled-Universe):
[attach=9]

Version 0.4.0 beta.
[attachurl=10]

Daniil.

Woo Hoo...well I may not be here for a few daze no\w...Many thanks ...off to play
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

AP

#16
I have a problem here. The terrain is flat. I have the three blue Colour to scalar nodes in between the Erosion node and Compute terrain node, masks in the Erosion node are checked and i am feeding the red only into a Colour adjust node then that into the mask of the Surface layer node.

RArcher

Try your network like this instead
[attachimg=1]

AP


fleetwood


Daniil

I just have edited the second post and added Maps and Mask tabs description.

Daniil.

mhaze

Nice, the masking is interesting I can see uses for that. Thank you once again for all your efforts, this is a wonderful addition to TG.

bobbystahr

#22
Had a few play arounds and thought to put my WIPs here. Using mostly the Generate  node as a base(Third Erosion Test) but Classic is great as well for making a .ter with no detail as a starter. Also one(2nd 2 images) where I made a terrain using bloody huge Fakestones...C&C welcome.
I added the tgd for the fakestone one
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

AP

It looks like using the Fake stone shader to erode would be good for single peaked mountains. Even eroding localized small scale stones for extra realism would work well. Also, perhaps hero elements and shapes like the Matterhorn come to mind using a more steep Fake stone.

Daniil

Hello Chris!

I've checked your clip file. I've never used tgc-files before, so may be I am missing something, but it seems erosion shader in your clip doesn't have any unprocessed terrain connected to it's main input. With powerfractal connected it works.

And yes, it doesn't work without any input - so this is bug that needs fix.

Daniil.

AP

#25
I had displaced Power fractals connected to it including some Surface layers. I had it in between the Surface layers (incl. PFs) and the Planet node. So it should have processed normally but it would explode. When i Mask by shader with Limit erosion to mask, it still explodes where the mask input is.

AndyWelder

Thank you, Daniil, for this free gift. Much appreciated! BTW: Looks like you made Terraformer2 obsolete  ;)
"Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" Karel Appel

Daniil

Quote from: AndyWelder on November 20, 2015, 08:39:27 AM
BTW: Looks like you made Terraformer2 obsolete  ;)
Can't agree. Traditional raster erosion still much better in terms of realism.
But I'm developing better erosion already. :)

AndyWelder

QuoteBut I'm developing better erosion already.
Looking forward to that!
But something different: How do I insert/load this  plug-in into TG 3.4? I can't find an option to do so... The .TGP has been copied to the "Plugins" folder.
"Ik rotzooi maar wat aan" Karel Appel

bobbystahr

Quote from: AndyWelder on November 20, 2015, 09:27:38 AM
QuoteBut I'm developing better erosion already.
Looking forward to that!
But something different: How do I insert/load this  plug-in into TG 3.4? I can't find an option to do so... The .TGP has been copied to the "Plugins" folder.

In terrains  Add Terrain>Displacement shader. It should be at the top of the list.TG 3.4...?did I miss an update?
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist