Add Object - Object - Rock - Shattering

[KlausK]

hi everyone

I am trying to figure out what shattering does. What I found so far is  that it does not behave as I would expect.
And I could not find any hints in the wiki. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.

Question: should I even use this feature at all and am I wrong thinking it behaves more or less like something you find in a voronoi or bullet shatter algorithm?

Workflow:
01: Simple terrain
02: Add Rock object
03: Turn shattering on and set it to 10 planes (which is the maximum)

• are there horizontal and vertical planes only at work? No diagonal or angled ones?
• is there a way to control the position of the planes on the object?

04: Increase the Number of faces on the Rock tab.

• default is 20.
• increase to 100, 200, 400, 600 is going fast
• 800 lets my computer work for about 5 minutes which seems very slow (see specs in footnote)
• the calculations seem to NOT be multithreaded. CPU utilization 2-3% all the time, Ram usage goes up to 13-15 GB
• I tried to set the Number of faces to 2000 to get a really smooth Rock. After ca 1 hour I killed TG.
• the increase in faces does not respect the original "planes" of the rock. It becomes essentially a smooth sphere.

05: What does the Variation count parameter actually do?

Does someone know a usefull way of utilizing this function? (I saw a thread where luvsmuzik tried to create flames with this)

Hints, tips, tricks, and explanations are very welcome
Cheers, Klaus

ps: I`ll post a sample image soon

[Kadri]

I tried something like this with shattering:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20351.msg215660.html#msg215660

[KlausK]

Thank you, Kadri.
I read this thread sometime ago when I first tried the shattering stuff.
But it did not then and, unfortunately does not now help me understand what is going on within that Shattering tab, I`m afraid.
This is just one of those miserable times when I hit a wall. For the life of it I do not see the connection between the available settings at all.
The Rock object acts like completely - well, nothing I would expect. I do not even understand what each and every parameter does and why
when it does what it does...that the 3D preview (without RTP) does not update until I put in a new number in the shattering separation field
slows down experimenting also. At least I found out why the object would not change after putting new numbers in.

And for your little Planet Explosion test, if you did this with one Rock object - I can`t get my head around this. If it is done with shattering
and populations for example, that is more then one step ahead of me trying to understand the basics of shattering and mesh deformation.

I guess I am in need of getting to know what the settings really stand and are for (the native language barrier kicks in here heavily).
This is one more function in TG me hoping for the staff setting up a proper help page and/or a basic working example asap.

Cheers, Klaus

[Kadri]

Matt or Oshyan will be correcting these probably but these are what i found it looked like:

*Shatter probability: Looks more like "on" or "off" whatever numbers i used.

*Number of shatter planes: Kind of random sections where the object breaks

*Shatter separation: The greater the number the farther away the shattered parts. The rock sometimes doesn't look like it is shattered as you want probably. If you reseed the object you can see it better ("Rock" tab+Seed). If the object is in the origin the shattering is sperical all away from the origin. But if the seeded object is a little off the origin all the shattered parts go in that way for example. The shattering is always from the origin (not were the object is) if that makes sense.


Yes the rock gets a smooth sphere with more faces. When you use more faces you need displacement to get a rougher object.

The Variation count is probably only related to a rock in a population. You get that kind of number different looking rocks basically.


The planet explosion test was a rock population, not one object.
Just populate a planet with a rock population and the rest is easy with "Shatter separation" animated.
You can use many more things too of course.

[AP]

I am surprised that anyone is using the rock object. That feature always looked tempting to use but never fared well with me to this day.

[Kadri]

I am surprised that anyone is using the rock object. That feature always looked tempting to use but never fared well with me to this day.

Years ago i heard that it was problematic and didn't used it.
I haven't used it  (i think) more then for tests. Is it still problematic?

[AP]

It has been a few months since I had used it very briefly. I intend to look at it again at some point.

[Dune]

I don't use it either, hardly ever anyway. But perhaps it should be used more often. It's like the grass object; it's simple but very handy for mid distances. More experiments needed.

[fleetwood]

If I remember right, Planetside has said at one time that the Rock object is a legacy object that wasn't particularly successful and it might be deprecated at some point.
I never saw much point in spending time on it if it may be dropped. I think it had slightly more use before the fully displace-able objects like the cube, sphere, and octahedron were added to Terragen.

[Kadri]

I got curious and just played around with the rock object in a population.

Displacement was funky.
I had to uncheck and check the "Subdivide mesh" box (Rock object+"Rock"tab) to see the new changes in the render.

[KlausK]

Thanks for the input, everyone.
I can rest in peace now (regarding this topic )

Cheers, Klaus

[René]

They are nice for making rocks on (fake)rocks. The displaceable objects are far better for making rocks but they can't be populated.