Height maps

Started by rolland1013, April 16, 2018, 07:09:46 PM

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rolland1013

I was wondering if there was a way of creating height maps for trees/plants etc?  I'm creating an island that has a variety of trees and plants on it.  I've painted a density shader for distribution, but it would be great if I could do the same thing for scale.

Thanks,
Niel

WAS

Quote from: rolland1013 on April 16, 2018, 07:09:46 PM
I was wondering if there was a way of creating height maps for trees/plants etc?  I'm creating an island that has a variety of trees and plants on it.  I've painted a density shader for distribution, but it would be great if I could do the same thing for scale.

Thanks,
Niel

I'm not sure what you mean by heightmaps for "trees/plants etc". Objects incorporate heightmaps, or bump maps, as part of their texturing. With populations the only control you have is the Minimum and Maximum Scale, coupled with multiple populations and distributions, can give you dynamic look.

I'd suggest you head on over to the Terragen Wikipedia and take a look at the article about Working with Populations. Specifically, take a look at the example projects available on the basics of masking.

You can create very high contrast, low offset PFs to use as a population location mask, and also use it to mask other population location masks to prevent overlaying.

N-drju

Quote from: rolland1013 on April 16, 2018, 07:09:46 PM
I was wondering if there was a way of creating height maps for trees/plants etc?  I'm creating an island that has a variety of trees and plants on it.  I've painted a density shader for distribution, but it would be great if I could do the same thing for scale.

Thanks,
Niel

If masking trees with respect to their sizes was what you asked for, then it's not possible.

What you can do however, is creating several pops with distinct sizes and mask these. But you'll have to do it for each species and each size you planned for, so the RAM used for this project will grow...
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

René

It would be nice though to have such a feature; scaling according to grey value. :D

N-drju

Quote from: René on April 17, 2018, 07:05:19 AM
It would be nice though to have such a feature; scaling according to grey value. :D

On the other hand, if you used say PF to feed the scale data, it would be no different from what is happening now, read - random sizing of the entire population.
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"