I have been trying to figure out how the distance shader works as seen here:
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Distance_ShaderI think I am finally starting to understand how to use it connected to a Density fractal and a Camera, but at times I have had it disconnected from any cameras, and it still seemed to have some affect on the clouds (I discovered this because I deleted the distance shader and the clouds changed). I would have thought that if the distance shader wasn't connected up to a camera, that it wouldn't do anything.
A second problem I had/have is with only two colors (Black/White) to use in the distance shader there doesn't seem to be a way to have the clouds fade out near the camera as well as far away from the camera. The distance shader is used like a mask (alpha channel) so setting the near color to white, and the far color to black can be used to have the clouds fade in the far distance, which is good for keeping the clouds from going to far back into the horizon. The problem is I want to also have the clouds fade out near the camera, so essentially I could have a section of clouds fading in and then back out, but to do this I would need a distance shader with a near, middle, and far color like a gradient. Right?
If so, would it be possible to expand the functionality of the distance shader to have more than 2 colors (Matt)? Or is there another way to do this that is simple?
Derek
