Planet Pig

[rcallicotte]

Would someone do me a favor?  I did this at home, but can't do it here.  The Constant Scalar and Displacement need to have a balance.  If you can just give me the percentages that you find are working, I can try it here.  I'm getting nothing again.

[Kevin F]

Would someone do me a favor?  I did this at home, but can't do it here.  The Constant Scalar and Displacement need to have a balance.  If you can just give me the percentages that you find are working, I can try it here.  I'm getting nothing again.

call me crazy but the pic I did earlier had constant at 95, and dispalcement at -2000! also my terrain scale was 25000 lead in and feature scale 1080.
Kevin

[rcallicotte]

Thanks Kevin.  I'll try these.

Once I'm home again, I'll check mine.  I believe they were all positive integers.

[Volker Harun]

Too bad that I am out off time ... but my fascination carries on!

[efflux]

I'm out of time as well, Volker. I can't take this much further but the basics are here and I think this has massive potential. Mostly because any kind of interesting strata or altitude driven anything gives the scenes a great sense of height and scale.

I can try to answer any questions but I'm not starting to experiment further. Believe me though, this could go far.

Calico, are you trying to use the graph where I have multiplied the power fractal output since the other one doesn't have a constant scalar? The power fractal connected to the multiplier still has a 0-1 colour value and is clamped. The clamping keeps it from going over 0-1 (this is why in my previous graph where I ignored the proper 0-1 colour values, I had the clamping turned off - that was the quick way to hook everything up). The multiplying constant scalar value simply alters the scale to suit what size you want your strata to be. For example I used a value of 40 here. My terrain had a displacement amplitiude value of 1000 but also had a spike limiting and a displacement offset of 1000. I may have set the offset to that because the strata disappeared below 0 altitude. I can't remember but you could check that one out. My terrain was reaching a height of around 2000m where I applied that coloured strata - there are many factors which influence what your tallest peaks may be, not just the displacement amplitude. That last render was not much short of 2000m tall in what you are seeing. The distorting powerfractal was multiplied by 40 (the strata size) so do you start to see how these figures make sense?

You'll find the right balance of scales and once you do this you will be off and running with many possibilities. Just remember that we don't want tiny smallest features values on anything because we'll get messy displacements i.e. smallest scale or roughness values. This idea is to provide rough strata forms not infinite fractal detail. If you saw child@play's renders with the furry effect, where he tried this altitude thing. This is why he got that. Lots of fractal detail which caused lots of tiny displacements.

A lot of this stuff is very frustrating to get to grips and will take some time with but once you get it it will be easy.

Also, a side note. Although TG2 has nodes for scalar and colour. It doesn't matter in many cases. TG2 will know if you are using colour or scalar.

[efflux]

As I said, your scale values on the powerfractal influence the distortion. For more natural effects you don't want too much distortion. Set these values really high. Several times your scale values on your terrain. This is because if they are low they will distort your strata within too small a distance and really swirl up the shapes, unless that is what you want.

[rcallicotte]

efflux - Thanks so much for the explanation.  I've simply kept the nodes from the very first graph with nothing but the Perlin noise with the Constant Scalar and Displacement.  Understanding is slowly developing about how this all works with the Perlin.  I even tried mixing the Perlin terrain with a Voronoi terrain and found a lot of displacment messes.  It's interesting to hear your point of view on the small fractals.  Focusing on the displacements without so many fractals is sort of a leap in another direction I have yet to explore.  Last night I was just decreasing the values of my displacement and constant scalar, but keeping the ratio about the same and found it doesn't really matter that I slapped it out there so large as before.  This program can deal with numbers in a way I have yet to discover.

What this is doing is increasing my overall grasp of Terragen 2, which is what I hope for everyone in the future.  We're so privileged to have so many knowledgable and helpful people here.

This product is just one big adventure. 

[efflux]

Keeping the displacement multiplier and the constant scalar about the same is fine. In my scene my displacement multiplier is 10 so less than the constant scalar of 40 because I don't want too much displacement but yes these values should be close. It all depends on what effect you want but really you don't want small strata size (the constant scalar) and big displacement.

The only reason I know this stuff is from using Mojo and I understand it's not that easy because it took me a long time in Mojo but you have one big advantage in TG2. It is much much easier to use and learn. With Mojo many people shared their finished planet files. These were often fantastic pieces of work but it didn't help people understand how they were built in my opinion hence now you see less cool renders in the gallery because some of these Mojo masters are not working much anymore.

[efflux]

It's the concept you have to grasp. Your terrain may have a lot of detail. What you want to do with the strata is push the terrain out in stratified bulges but you don't want the strata having lots of detail. It is being controlled with altitude which means that lots of detail in the strata will create lots of fine strata which will result in an effect where there are so many small strata that you just see a lot of noise. You will have seen this no doubt in your experiments. Once you grasp the idea, then the settings will make sense.

[efflux]

The problem is knowing the best way to get people learning. We definitely need all this stuff put into easier to understand tutorials.

Volker and I supplied files on the spires thread. I saw a few people using Volker's file but I saw nobody really tweaking it to create something new which suggests they didn't learn exactly how Volker got the results otherwise they would have experimented a bit more.

I'm not working in any new explorations which takes up too much time but what's already done I have a little time to help with. From tomorrow onwards I won't be producing any new work for a while.

[efflux]

On these various threads we have four basic and very powerful techniques. Clamping, masking, altitude driving and distorting. Four fundamentals that give you immense power in TG2. We need it documented properly but this takes time. The distortion is a new thing that I've only just completely mastered.

[rcallicotte]

This is something I was working on last night (and just now re-rendered after some more tweaking) and like it, except for some strange shadow effects.  Nevertheless, with some level tweaking of lighting in PS, I like this end result.

This is nothing more than taking your original Perlin graph, efflux, and tweaking it as well as placing it with some other displacements I've worked on before such as Fake Stones.  But, the Perlin is the major player in this one.

[rcallicotte]

I'm not sure you saw what I did here - http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2662.0 , but this was completely taken from that thread about voronoi.  I created it using the illustration about what you all were doing and tried to follow along.  While I readily admit I didn't follow it all closely, I learned a lot and the proof (as someone says) is in the pudding.  I didn't use a TGC from anyone for this work, though. 

Usually, when I get a TGC from here, I dissect it and learn all I can.  I ask questions.  It's too bad we don't all have time for this or that some might actually be just simply too greedy to participate and take our work up like ravenous starlings at the beach.  I sometimes only have time to learn the generalities, especially with large lessons from BigBen or Volker or you, efflux.  Patience, though, will win out in the end.  All I need to do is come back here later and dig in again.

I agree that some clear tutorials would help immensely.  It almost shocks me that in the software world of 3D art that learning the tool takes so much energy, when being creative should be the goal.  Whenever the tool gets in the way of creativity, it must never be a good thing for the end products created.

The problem is knowing the best way to get people learning. We definitely need all this stuff put into easier to understand tutorials.

Volker and I supplied files on the spires thread. I saw a few people using Volker's file but I saw nobody really tweaking it to create something new which suggests they didn't learn exactly how Volker got the results otherwise they would have experimented a bit more.

I'm not working in any new explorations which takes up too much time but what's already done I have a little time to help with. From tomorrow onwards I won't be producing any new work for a while.

[dhavalmistry]

Here's another variation. In this graph I retained the clamped 0-1 colour values but multiplied the fractal's output before going to the perlin. By retaining the 0-1 colour value it can be useful for other purposes. In this case I drove the blending shader on a power fractal which is supplying colour to the surface layer. You could also get outputs from after the perlin. There are numerous ways to drive the colours. In fact this is probably even more useful than using it for displacements.

The problem is to do with TG2's shadows. You'll find they screw up with displacements like these as they do with all distorted displacements. A serious problem but maybe it will be improved.

I am trying to get the result like yours (not color but strata displacement)...but its not working....what am I doing wrong???

[efflux]

OK, I will take a look at your file, dhavalmistry. If this all becomes too much of a problem I'll put a tgc on here but I'm not a big fan of that especially when I see them simply being used as is without any tweaking or development which shows some understanding. Not that you guy's will do this but some will with no advance in understanding which is the aim of discussing this stuff here. If even one person susses out these techniques properly then it's a success.

Calico, TG2 is actually quite difficult to learn. After all, we are creating entire virtual worlds here so it is not easy to learn but TG2 is very easy in comparison to other similar apps which are so poor in their UI, I don't want to use them again.