Canyon Wall Displacement (Collaborative Challenge)

[WAS]

So I have some larger, more X stretched noise for the larger bulbous areas, but I'm having trouble masking them through. Are my scales wrong or something? It just doesn't want to mask in even with Colour Contrast at 10 making a hard mask. Or maybe the design for the larger variated clumps is just wrong. I'm not sure. Also seems to be causing some displacement breakup (sky showing through). Oh the headache. xD

[AP]

I managed to put some tests together but some parts may work well more then others. Use what ever parts may help. This has been very hard without a clear way of the proper fractal noise/s.

[WebbGeoscience]

Certain a lot closer in certain areas. Here in red is what i see and green still needs to be achieved, at least from what can be seen so far. A mix of more flat, some softer corners and wider strata.

I am currently rendering a very crude example of sharp scarped cliffs. There are several ways of doing what i have in mind so as crude as it may be, there are still man ideas left to explore.

Just in case this helps you guys with visualisation I've added a bit more geological interpretation to Chris' photo. Think the strata at the bottom is thicker than the upper layers hence the larger amount of vertical joints and horizontal layer boundaries. The red I've added seems to look like an erosional cut down (think a fast flowing river) into the yellow layers as they seem to terminate at that boundary. The blue layers have then filled the channel (see how they lap onto the red). At the top it has filled so you get thinner layers from maybe a more slow moving body of water. If you can put these properties into your models would certainly help with a more heterogeneous look.
N.B. the erosional cut down could also be a fault, but I don't see a damage zone so erosion seems more likely

[AP]

To me it seems like what is needed is an iteration function or a function that splits a fractal noise into frequencies (size variant gradient) using features to drive it by slope and or altitude. Certainly several fracture layers can be blended but having the fractures be a consistent flow might be hard to achieve.

[WAS]

To me it seems like what is needed is an iteration function or a function that splits a fractal noise into frequencies (size variant gradient) using features to drive it by slope and or altitude. Certainly several fracture layers can be blended but having the fractures be a consistent flow might be hard to achieve.

I think for a basic setup we can differentiate the noise and have a basic shader, but yes, a more accurate, slope driven function would be appropriate. This, however is where I would be at the end of what I know of functoots. I still do not understand the functions clearly from docs, and my math dyslexia makes my literally cry sometimes on frustration beyond simple times tables that I also cannot retain.or work...

[AP]

I'm still exploring various functions. Maybe, just maybe there is a way to create something like a frequency function at least.

[Hetzen]

I'm still exploring various functions. Maybe, just maybe there is a way to create something like a frequency function at least.

Yes you can Chris. By using Voronoi 3D Cell, you can create 'random' intervals with the greyscale output. Because you can't blur the edges, you will get sharp lines where the shade changes between the cells and then get ugly edges. What you can do is use a Voronoi 3D Difference noise to multiply the Cell noise to always fade the edge to black, as long as they have the same seed and scale as well as position, they will align with each other. To tighten that edge, you can use a Colour Adjust, or, you can use a Smooth Step, where the low is 0 (black) and for the top end say 0.1 to become white. This will plateau the gradient of the V3D Difference noise. Try and play with Get Altitude in Texture to drive the noise functions instead of a Get Position, this will give random banding through altitude, which you can use to break up other noise effects.

[Hetzen]

Using the above technique, you can get variation in altitude effects.

[Hetzen]

By the way, thank you for chiming in WebbGeoscience. Good of you to contribute your expertise. 

[Hetzen]

I managed to put some tests together but some parts may work well more then others. Use what ever parts may help. This has been very hard without a clear way of the proper fractal noise/s.

Sorry Chris, that doesn't just drop in. Can you send a scene file.

[AP]

Just make a Simple shape shader using it's displacement inverted/subtracted about -100 meters and smooth step about 50 meters, the clip files will be placed in the Shader group in between the Compute terrain and Planet node. The file is designed to displace only the lateral sections of a terrain.

[AP]

I'm still exploring various functions. Maybe, just maybe there is a way to create something like a frequency function at least.

Yes you can Chris. By using Voronoi 3D Cell, you can create 'random' intervals with the greyscale output. Because you can't blur the edges, you will get sharp lines where the shade changes between the cells and then get ugly edges. What you can do is use a Voronoi 3D Difference noise to multiply the Cell noise to always fade the edge to black, as long as they have the same seed and scale as well as position, they will align with each other. To tighten that edge, you can use a Colour Adjust, or, you can use a Smooth Step, where the low is 0 (black) and for the top end say 0.1 to become white. This will plateau the gradient of the V3D Difference noise. Try and play with Get Altitude in Texture to drive the noise functions instead of a Get Position, this will give random banding through altitude, which you can use to break up other noise effects.

This technique is certainly useful for other ideas in mind but this is what i mean. I forgot to mention in my previous post that the frequencies need to be reduced in size along the slope gradient like this crude illustrated example.

[Dune]

That's a neat little flock of blues. Just playing with it. If you rotate it, and add as child (or whatever), you can get nice blocks. Another technique again, good to have at hand. Thanks, Jon.

[archonforest]

That's a neat little flock of blues. Just playing with it. If you rotate it, and add as child (or whatever), you can get nice blocks. Another technique again, good to have at hand. Thanks, Jon.

Can u give some hints how u do that? I am not really good with blues but would like to learn what u said. 

[mhaze]

Very nice Hetzen,  as Dune suggested rotating it can produce some interesting results.