Creating "Spires" and Heavy Displacement (Mojo-esque)

Started by efflux, October 12, 2007, 05:53:21 AM

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efflux

#30
I think Calyxa came up with that technique for Mojo. At least she wrote the tutorial that those pictures came from. That spawned a multitude of classic planets. Now we have it in TG2 :D. All we need now is sparse convolution to make it even better.

efflux

Craters, or at least as close as we can get at present. If you clamp higher than I did, there will be less craters but they'll look more round. It's similar terrain as in the the spires but tweaked about a bit and negatively displaced which we should try doing with suface materials on the spires.


efflux

I've had another idea. We clamp really high to get roundish craters from the perlin but not many of them, so we just clamp a load perlin functions of various sizes. We have multiple craters  ;D

Oshyan

This is awesome stuff guys. Keep it up! :)

- Oshyan

Volker Harun

I am off for family business this weekend, but my brain is cookin' ,-)
I really like your image and the craters.

The things that come to my mind are quite easy to achieve, but they cost cpu-time, slowing down renders.

Oshyan, can you split this thread?

efflux

#35
Yes, this thread went off the original topic a bit but is very useful. Some people may not find it. It's certainly not a bug thread :D

The stone roses technique is mega. To explain in simple terms. This allows you to create those spire like structures with their own surfaces that will be locked only to them no matter how you displace them and no matter what is going on around. If you enable the terrain that is disabled in that last tgd and do whatever you want with it, the stone roses will simply float above and retain their surfaces.

It's actually very much like the fake stones but open ended.

Yes, my brain is cooking now as well and I have limited time. I'd love to go to town on this.

Oshyan


efflux

OK Oshyan. Thanks. The thread title is now much more appropriate. The trouble is it kind of starts funny because I was responding to Volker's picture and the idea about spikes not rendering. I couldn't think of a way to really split this thread and make it all make sense. Maybe I should edit the first message with a link to Volker's picture and a brief explanation about the spike problem and the thread split. Would it not be better to then put this in general discussion?

cyphyr

Wow this is awesome work guys, ouch! your really at the bleeding edge here. :)
Richard
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efflux

Thanks cyphyr. As you can see there are a load of tangents offshooting from every new idea, as in here. Hopefully we can go further.

Volker, in case you're wondering why I changed the node names to their defaults. I like to keep things this way so that anybody can quickly see what those nodes are before opening them and maybe understand the use of the nodes in a better way. Although it doesn't explain what their true function is in the graph is, I hope users can work this out for themselves. I might name nodes in future to better supply both these aspects.

Volker Harun

#40
It is time for a null-shader for writing expaining texts. This would be very handy when sharing functions.

Just to mention, that the first page's picture was by me not by Andy, though his work is very inspiring! ,-) ;D

efflux

Hi Volker. You mean the orangy spires picture that I've put at the start? I have mentioned that this is your image.

Volker Harun

Oh, sorry ....
Another thing:
Think of the output that is used for the spires' shader breakup:
Make an Add-Scalar of 0.75 and multiply that with Pi (3.141, or the Pi-scalar that Matt is going to add as soon as possible ;D ).

The result would be a smooth S of values starting at -1 and end at 1. (If I am right, cannot test it right now)
So adding a scalar of 1 and multiplying that result with 0.5 should be very (!) nice for blending the power fractal of a displacement shader or for blending the fractal/function that is used for the surface shader's displacement.

Get it? Or am I just talking nuts?

Volker

efflux

#43
OK Volker I need some time to think about what you are saying there. I'm not a mathematician but I can understand it. I am actually working on something else. Colour gradients. Mostly hacks so far but artistically some interesting ones. Maybe that could tie in here. After all we want some kind of gradient and we can do that with a mix colour (or mix scalar). If we could use the perlin somehow. It depends what we want. Do we want surfaces to blend or also terrain? I'd love to smooth that sharp edge where the clamp is.

efflux

#44
I've done away with the colour adjust shader now (replaced by scalar nodes) and I'm working on changing the blending area but surfaces only. I will get back to you on this.