Function to Soften

Started by WAS, November 22, 2015, 05:35:35 PM

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WAS

Lets say I have some voronoi diff scalar, is there a way to smoothen it so it's not exactly so hard? I've looked at some other topics covering making a roster image and bluring said image but that doesn't work in this case. But I figured there should be a way within the node networks to do such a thing?

Oshyan

As we've covered before, blurring is generally a *raster* function, whereas the noise functions you're dealing with are - at least to begin with - procedural or "vector" in a sense, i.e. they have a non-fixed resolution. Blurring generally works by averaging samples over a number of adjacent pixels, which is just not possible when your source data is, er, not made up of finite pixels as in the case of procedural functions. I haven't seen any implementation of "procedural blur" though, like "procedural erosion", it may be possible. :D

What you *can* do is rasterize your procedural function(s), in the case of Terragen by using a Heightfield Generate shader and feeding in the output of your shader network. This rasterizes your shaders to a resolution set in the Generate node's settings. But it does it for displacement. You can then reconvert to non-displacement (color values) if that's what you want, probably by using "Shade by Height" in the heightfield's options. But as you are probably gathering it's a little convoluted. Anyway, after doing that, you could apply a Heightfield Smooth operator, which is a type of blur.

- Oshyan

AP

I wonder if the Smooth step scalar or Soft maximum or minimum scalar would work in this case?

WAS

Quote from: Chris on November 22, 2015, 08:55:18 PM
I wonder if the Smooth step scalar or Soft maximum or minimum scalar would work in this case?

Going to fiddle with them along with a colour adjust, see what I can get.

AP

I am working on some additional ideas which maybe a decent compromise. Seeing how certain shader elements can mix and fade with altitude for some type of blurry mix. All guess work here.

WAS

Yeah there are some really nice displacements and texturing that can be made, the only issue is smoothing out the random jaggies, which I can only assume are the vector like hard angles you can literally see the polygons on in the preview, even with HD on.

AP

#6
I managed to blur the bottom slopes. I will try and see if i can blur the top slopes.

WAS

Quote from: Chris on November 23, 2015, 12:32:35 AM
I managed to blur the bottom slopes. I will try and see if i can blur the top slopes.

Very nice! That is promising. Is that with the minimum/maximum scalars? I did a minimum scalar and was able to smooth out the hard blacks in my displacement test, so that's a bonus.

No more 10m spikes.

Little test I've been doing trying to re-create the alpine shader with a bit more detail. Getting there




AP

Smooth step scalar. Careful adjustments. I plan on posting a couple of file tests soon.

With the overall structure you already have, why not just erode it and see what happens? You will never get the full look of that shader. It has some rather unique elements to it.

AP

Here is one of the tests to try.


WAS

Thanks Chris, I'm going to give it a try tonight after the lady gets to sleep. These things bore her. :P

AP

Your welcome and no problem.

fleetwood

You can use a warper on  the voronoi diff if you are using a get position in texture (not a get position in geometry)