Impact of Compute Terrain on adding fractals to DEM data.

Started by bigben, August 19, 2007, 07:52:44 PM

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bigben

I'm still working on my Ben Nevis terrain to try and add some nice detail to the relatively low resolution DEM data.  Applying other people's clips taught me that the base terrain is crucial to everything else that gets laid upon it and so it was two steps back to the very basics. I've done a bit of "carving" of the mid to steep slopes with a fairly broad negative lateral displacement masked to the mid-range slopes. Crude, but relatively pleasing.

For the finer details I've simply been adding additional fractals with varying scale/displacement to build up the extra detail. I got some reasonable displacements (in the preview) but when rendered the fractal patterns were too obvious. Recalling Volker's comments on the patch size of the compute nromal node i had a play with the compute terrain node.

Smoothing sounded good, so I tried it and it was  :)  The fractal patterns were far less obvious. It also changed the smaller displacements substantially (obviously) so these will need some re-tweaking but it was a big help. The patch size also made a difference and I'm rendering an animation now to try and find a good setting. I applied a stepped shader to colour the different slope ranges so that I could get a better idea of what values to use for cliff, outcrop and rock placement.

Just turning motion blur off ;)  I'll post some comparisons soon.