add or pass through

[Dune]

Okay, there's something I don't understand; if you have a painted shader and pass a line of masks through it, the final mask is different from an added painted shader to the line of masks. How come? Where the painted shader is painted white it was black originally, so I would have thought the result being the same.

[bigben]

Are you inverting the mask?
[edit] NVM, Had a play with functions.  Looks like pass through is equivalent to mix. Notice that I use scalar instead of colour for masking.  You only need one channel.

[Dune]

Thanks Ben! I need pass through, so this is a great solution. I was working on this scene (though I threw out the front stone patch in the meantime).

[bigben]

Very nice.  Do you use colour adjust nodes on your masks?  I'm thinking of things like the border between the soil under the vines and the grass/plant objects.  If you're subtracting the soil mask from the plant population you can control the density in the overlap independently by feeding the soil mask through a colour adjust node before subtracting it from the population. That lets you place a higher density of plants up (or slightly overlapping) the edge of the bare soil...  Playing with the gamma is also useful for changing the shape of displacements at the edge of the mask.

[mhaze]

Excellent! I've been trying to create a scene like that for years - it's harder than it looks.

[Dune]

Thanks guys. It takes quite some nodes indeed. And yes, I do use a lot of color adjusts to vary overlap and such. Also smooth step scalars, which behaves slightly different in certain circumstances.

[bigben]

oooo... there's a step function... and a few others I haven't seen before 

[bobbystahr]

oooo... there's a step function... and a few others I haven't seen before 

lotsa lil 'easter eggs' if you've been away a while....

[Dune]

Yes, TG4 is getting more complicated, but also more versatile with every update. I should have written that the other way round, with the first between brackets