TG2:Rivers?

Started by jackblack, October 11, 2018, 12:29:46 AM

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jackblack

Hey guy's it's been years since I've picked up Terragen and I have TG2, was wondering, is there a way to create a river that's partly procedural? Or are there any good river tutorials? I've searched in vain so far.

Thanks

WAS

Quote from: jackblack on October 11, 2018, 12:29:46 AM
Hey guy's it's been years since I've picked up Terragen and I have TG2, was wondering, is there a way to create a river that's partly procedural? Or are there any good river tutorials? I've searched in vain so far.

Thanks

I don't remember what was all available (a Since Version X thing would be nice for the wiki) in TG2 anymore, but I imagine the closest you could really get is a Simple Shape Shader and redirecting it with a large scale PF. A  couple slight variations of it could be used to create banks and such for masking purposes, though they won't be very accurate, but will still probably look nice.

Dune

#2
Simple shape into input warp shader, and a PF then a vector displacement shader into warp shaders other (warper) input, then play with the values to warp that simple shape (elongated into a line and softened by smooth step and a certain percentage, basically. But there are presets available on this forum (from others and me), like this one: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,16684.msg163003.html#msg163003
And there's a comprehensive preset at NWDA: http://www.store.nwdastore.com/presets/dunes-river-
But if you mean a river that's cascading/flowing down a mountain slope, you'd have to use Daniil's erosion plugin, and make that work for you.

N-drju

Wasn't there an option like "carve riverbed" in the heightfield operators? ??? Damn, I remember I used this option once but not sure whether it was Terragen or DH2005 map editor!

If not, follow what Ulco says and make a river through a SSS. To be honest, this is a tool that has probably the widest area of application in TG.
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

luvsmuzik

Yes there was a carve river operation. My memory says TG2 release. I had a few images, but render size is small and they are loaded on the old 1Gig and I refuse to dust it off, LOL. The fan sounds like a helicopter.

jackblack

Quote from: N-drju on October 11, 2018, 02:08:02 AM
Wasn't there an option like "carve riverbed" in the heightfield operators? ??? Damn, I remember I used this option once but not sure whether it was Terragen or DH2005 map editor!

If not, follow what Ulco says and make a river through a SSS. To be honest, this is a tool that has probably the widest area of application in TG.


I know, I just recently downloaded a file here from the file sharing section that makes a river, there's a river carving heightfield operator in it, but I can't find anywhere where I can add such a thing, anyone know where this thing is? It's in that file, and it works, but I can't add one, very odd, I searched all through all the operators, shaders and such, it doesn't exist.

Oshyan

There was a very limited and highly experimental river shade in previous versions. It was decided that it wasn't creating consistently good effects so it was retired. We are working on some other more promising approaches for future releases. In the meantime I would defintely suggest you take a look at Daniil's erosion plugin ("Classic Erosion").
https://daniilkamperov.com/

- Oshyan

jackblack

Quote from: Oshyan on October 13, 2018, 04:35:41 PM
There was a very limited and highly experimental river shade in previous versions. It was decided that it wasn't creating consistently good effects so it was retired. We are working on some other more promising approaches for future releases. In the meantime I would defintely suggest you take a look at Daniil's erosion plugin ("Classic Erosion").
https://daniilkamperov.com/

- Oshyan

Yeah, looks like I'm going to have to drop a whole paycheck into TG4 to get what I want I guess.
I got the money though, just won't be able to get my parents that massage chair for Christmas.

SILENCER

You can't go wrong with Daniil's classsic erosion.

Gaea also will give you some crazy fluvial results, which, I believe, involves one of the same mad scientists responsible for Terragen's fantastic Erosion plug in. Deltas, swamplands, things like that. Looks boss. Output from Gaea is now stupid fast. You can use that as a displacement map in TG, then add your water plane below. Best of both worlds.

Amazing displacement and the Terragen renderer's magic wand for the win.









WAS

#9
Quote from: SILENCER on October 15, 2018, 03:11:52 PM
You can't go wrong with Daniil's classsic erosion.

Gaea also will give you some crazy fluvial results, which, I believe, involves one of the same mad scientists responsible for Terragen's fantastic Erosion plug in. Deltas, swamplands, things like that. Looks boss. Output from Gaea is now stupid fast. You can use that as a displacement map in TG, then add your water plane below. Best of both worlds.

Amazing displacement and the Terragen renderer's magic wand for the win.

I believe, you could use Danill's erosion in TG free, and pipe it's results into a heightfield of somewhat matching settings, and export it as a ter you can load in TG2.

The results for river maps aren't too bad either from Danill's plugin. Here's a quick example: These maps can be used in TG to create rivers from displacement. Pretty handy instead of working with terrain slopes.

jackblack

Quote from: WASasquatch on October 15, 2018, 03:55:53 PM
Quote from: SILENCER on October 15, 2018, 03:11:52 PM
You can't go wrong with Daniil's classsic erosion.

Gaea also will give you some crazy fluvial results, which, I believe, involves one of the same mad scientists responsible for Terragen's fantastic Erosion plug in. Deltas, swamplands, things like that. Looks boss. Output from Gaea is now stupid fast. You can use that as a displacement map in TG, then add your water plane below. Best of both worlds.

Amazing displacement and the Terragen renderer's magic wand for the win.

I believe, you could use Danill's erosion in TG free, and pipe it's results into a heightfield of somewhat matching settings, and export it as a ter you can load in TG2.

The results for river maps aren't too bad either from Danill's plugin. Here's a quick example: These maps can be used in TG to create rivers from displacement. Pretty handy instead of working with terrain slopes.
I tried using it in the free version, but was never able to figure out how to export the heightfields.

WAS

Quote from: jackblack on October 15, 2018, 06:54:21 PM
Quote from: WASasquatch on October 15, 2018, 03:55:53 PM
Quote from: SILENCER on October 15, 2018, 03:11:52 PM
You can't go wrong with Daniil's classsic erosion.

Gaea also will give you some crazy fluvial results, which, I believe, involves one of the same mad scientists responsible for Terragen's fantastic Erosion plug in. Deltas, swamplands, things like that. Looks boss. Output from Gaea is now stupid fast. You can use that as a displacement map in TG, then add your water plane below. Best of both worlds.

Amazing displacement and the Terragen renderer's magic wand for the win.

I believe, you could use Danill's erosion in TG free, and pipe it's results into a heightfield of somewhat matching settings, and export it as a ter you can load in TG2.

The results for river maps aren't too bad either from Danill's plugin. Here's a quick example: These maps can be used in TG to create rivers from displacement. Pretty handy instead of working with terrain slopes.
I tried using it in the free version, but was never able to figure out how to export the heightfields.

I believe you'd need the paid version of the plugin to export maps.

jackblack

Well I don't even know how to export a basic heightmap from terragen.

jackblack

Well I went ahead and bought TG4 Pro, guess I'm one of the cool kids now.

SILENCER

I tried using it in the free version, but was never able to figure out how to export the heightfields.


The Gaea FB group, of all things, is where the action is on that software.
Dax is there all the time answering questions and bug hunting, like Boss Fairclough is here.

Right click in the last node, usually erosion, and choose SAVE
Then click on the build manager in the upper right.
Choose you resolution and file format.
File destination is set in the preferences, which is a a little weird, I hope they change that.
Some of it is a little bizarro, but once you get under the hood you'll be fine.

Off to the races.