More new stuff 4.3.09

[luvsmuzik]

Build 4.3.09 (Frontier Build)


Easy Cloud's animation tab has a new feature called "Time warp". When using any of the animation effect (Drift or Evolution), normally these are calculated from the distance between the current frame and the reference frame, but this produces animation with a constant speed. "Time warp" allows you to vary the speed during the animation, pause or reverse time, create bounce effects, and so on. You do this by editing the animation curve on the "warped frame number" parameter.

Surface Layer has options on the "Effects" tab called "Better colour/shade continuity" and "Better displacement continuity". These cause the fuzzy zone calculations to use a higher quality exp() function instead of the fast approximation which was used before. The fast approximation is usually good enough for colour/shade distributions, but it can cause visible segmentation of the fuzzy zone when used to constrain displacements.

Added "Smoother fuzzy zones (better curve continuity)" checkbox to Distribution Shader V4, on the Tweaks tab. This is similar to "Better colour/shade continuity" in Surface Layer (see above).

Null node: Made rotation parameter visible. Added scale parameter. Nulls imported from FBX files import rotation and scale (rotation has not been verified for correctness yet).

Direct quote from latest update 10/09/18

[WAS]

Awesome! Was just noticing earlier today that not only does reflection have no mask, but neither does Displacement. You always gotta use a surface layer to mask a Disparagement Shader.

[Dune]

Or just use a surface layer for displacement, of course.

[WAS]

Or just use a surface layer for displacement, of course.

Mostly redundant when you're packaging just displacement for terrain purposes. For the end-user, especially new users, it adds a whole lot to look at, for no reason, with displacement in a sub-tab.

[Dune]

Depends. You have a lot more controls that way; slope altitude, breakup, offset...

[WAS]

Depends. You have a lot more controls that way; slope altitude, breakup, offset...

Indeed, again, all things that add more to something that's just a displacement that needs a mask. It's redundant. It's not really depending, there's tons of extra settings that will be entirely redundant.

For example, I wish there was a basic Surface Layer without all the extra bits to begin with. Just childs and masks. Would make packaging layers neat without redundant features that can break it.

I notice right off the bat with new users they don't know how to recognize settings that aren't applying or redundant and tend to switch up a bunch, than come to the forums "What's wrong here!?"

[Dune]

I like it the way it is, it works very well for me. And for beginners; if you add a surface layer you immediately notice that it's covering the base layers with a white color. If you don't need that color, switch it off. Then you are free to add children layers and stuff with their own restraints, and use that surface layer basically as a 'container'. If you need a color there, get to work on the restraints for the desired effect of that color on the underlying terrain.
I'm not waiting for too many nodes, and that makes it even harder for newbies to choose what to use. Of course, many nodes could have a masking input (displacement, vector displacement, distance, simple shape....), but I don't think they really should all have them, as they can just be used as children on a surface shader (as container), which has that mask input.