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

[Volker Harun]

More fractals = longer rendertime, too.
Your altitude-function sound promising.

[efflux]

We're reaching the limits here. It'll take me a bit of time to optimize this for less artifacts. This is why actually blowing out the underlying surface that the secondary displacements rest on is a good idea. More layers of various displacements rather than one simply distorting the whole thing.

I apologize for spelling mistakes. I corrected it. I'm typing too fast.

[Volker Harun]

Do not worry about spelling - it is the intention that counts.
I am on a 'final' render now, after that I'll probably go for some fun stuff with those spires - your idea with tweaking the shape by functions, you know ,-)

[efflux]

I've got a render going now and will show a screenshot of the new altitude graph. I'm hoping not too many artifacts will appear. If TG2 can render this without major problems it'll be a miracle. Wait till you see this one .

[efflux]

I'm finding big displacements are not a problem in terms of render times. I think detail slows it more. I make sure all smallest detail sizes are kept as large as possible.

[Volker Harun]

One thing that needs confirmation:
In the preview render, when going for detail level 40 ... spires that do not show up are most probably to be cut off during normal render.

[efflux]

I'm doing a larger render here to experiment with cut offs. Surprisingly (so far) it has caught some of the biggest displacements. this would never have worked in Mojo.

[efflux]

Almost there. It's cut a few minor shapes but not as seriously as I thought it might. Nothing that can't be patched up and I'll improve this anyway. I'm happy with the control of the displacements now. I need to work on the altitude driven scales, not just displacement amplitude and we still have that sharp transition at the clamp. In Mojo you don't have that problem or at least it can be resolved because the sparse convolution curves into the ground more and you can easily create a seperate mask, not one from the original terrain. I'm not sure how we could do that in TG2 though without more problems. We have one advantage, perlin is a bit more interesting and varied than spare convolution spires anyway.

Render and screenshot coming next.

[efflux]

OK, here it is:



And here is a screenshot of how the graph is hooked together:



I had to do a few very minor patch renders but the result was much better than I thought it would be. The displacements are perlin ridges so some ragged edges due to the displacement extremes.

[dhavalmistry]

Next intermediate hack but not how I want yet and too be honest the displacements are too over the top. Asking for artifacts. I was hoping to have this solved before the end of tonight along with a pile of gradient experiments. Way too ambitous. I'll have to give it a break now.

how did you manage to get this.....

[efflux]

I got rid of the Color adjust shader, created an Add scalar, hooked the Perlin 3D scalar and the output from the Divide scalar into this, then sent that to the last Surface layer Breakup shader input.

Oh, and I also sent the Divide scalar to an input on a Mix scalar with another direct input from the Perlin 3D scalar. This was mixed by a value of 0.9 then sent to the displacement shader function input.

[dhavalmistry]

I mean what functions did you use and such...(I am sorry I havent read the whole thread yet)

[efflux]

I can't explain it all but it's all in the thread, including a file. The above changes I describe will alter the file to the picture you're looking at.

[Volker Harun]

I love those fancy mushrooms! They might be a perfect subject for that Displacement blender option in the render tab ...

[Volker Harun]

I am still working on a more subtle appearance of those spires.

The function's output is now squared twice. This is used for blending a powerfractal terrain.

Some minor tunings and the slope should be very soft.