Discussion about the goals and process of "Function Nodes in Practice"

[WAS]

Thanks, I know. The point is all this information should be in the first lost thoroughly explaining what happens. What happens to the data, etc. A image is not a proper examination (the image doesn't show data altered, and what it will do in scenarios), and over the Wiki nothing much was explained other than result. I don't see this forum going anywhere if it doesn't contain technical information of the functions in relation to your examples.

Admin note: this thread was split from original discussion here: https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26990.0.html

[Oshyan]

Jon is the moderator here, and he's filling out some basic info and examples. But it's not expected that he (or anyone) will have comprehensive info from the get-go. The purpose of this forum is to discuss and exchange info and ideas, with the best, most accurate, and most useful info being promoted to the top. This discussion is part of that, and will likely inform updates to the content.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

I guess I'll just make this as clear as possible...

The original post is garbage, no offense, it doesn't accurately represent the function except the last image explaining it's use of two other functions, but only through relation of them.

It didn't explain, at all, what the function is actually doing. It just showed a image with very vague and in the case of "masking" etc, just not what's happening. Only in the case where the data is 0, but is that really what it is, masking, or the intended use of a scalar?

I thought, and many of us, thought this was going to be a Function Academy, with the initial goal of comprehensively explaining functions, and the questions being their use in peoples projects and any issues they have, such as formula conversion, etc.

I don't know what you guys planned, or what's going on, but this doesn't seem beneficial. Sorry. I could elaborate on almost all the posts here, mostly centered around misrepresenting the functions of Terragen...

In general I don't know why this time isn't spent on the documentation..all these forums and such is a mess to navigate, and ultimately the finer examinations should be in documentation. There should just be one or two function related forums. Help, and maybe sharing function sets.

[Hetzen]

The purpose of the first post is to collate further detail on how to use each function over time and it is intended to grow as people put forward questions, errata and ideas. I've deliberately tried to keep the maths to a minimum and visuals to a maximum, so that it isn't overwhelming or dry and yet simple to understand for someone new to this side of Terragen.

There is no 'one use' of any of these function nodes, they are like Lego, there are infinite ways to connect them and I can say with certainty that no one has ever connected all of them in every single possible way. I think it's impossible to demand that.

In terms of how you can use them in your scene, I mentioned that they can be used to combine various scales of noise. Perhaps a constructive question would be along the lines of 'could you show us how to use this to do that?' Or 'I have found this useful to do this, this way.' etc.

The purpose of collating this in a forum format is that anyone can get involved and as people get comfortable using them, new and interesting combinations will come forward.

Can I ask, do you understand what Add Multiplied does? If not, what's missing for you?

[WAS]

The purpose of the first post is to collate further detail on how to use each function over time and it is intended to grow as people put forward questions, errata and ideas. I've deliberately tried to keep the maths to a minimum and visuals to a maximum, so that it isn't overwhelming or dry and yet simple to understand for someone new to this side of Terragen.

There is no 'one use' of any of these function nodes, they are like Lego, there are infinite ways to connect them and I can say with certainty that no one has ever connected all of them in every single possible way. I think it's impossible to demand that.

In terms of how you can use them in your scene, I mentioned that they can be used to combine various scales of noise. Perhaps a constructive question would be along the lines of 'could you show us how to use this to do that?' Or 'I have found this useful to do this, this way.' etc.

The purpose of collating this in a forum format is that anyone can get involved and as people get comfortable using them, new and interesting combinations will come forward.

Can I ask, do you understand what Add Multiplied does? If not, what's missing for you?

It seems the initial request for what the "Functions Academy" was supposed to be, got lost. People wanted comprehensive breakdowns of what's going on, that would ultimately help users think of those "infinite possibilities" you mention. This is done so vague it's of actual no real help except visual result, and that's now how we should really be familiarizing people with the software exclusively, that just doesn't make sense. Please don't treat everyone like they're in kindergarten...

And I've tried to let you know what I think people should be getting from the get go, which is a comprehensive breakdown of each function, what is it actually doing to data you provide, especially in this 3D space. Such as when we add multiplied scalar where something is, as you broke down "-0.5 x 2 + -0.5 = -1.5".

And while there are finite (most certainly not infinite) possibilities, Scalar does have a more narrow use, and their respected uses should be mentioned. Scalar information is generally used for displacement, heck I'm pretty sure this was even iterated to me in years ago when trying to distinguish "Colour" and "Scalar" when they act almost the same.

And to those ends, it seems more appropriate to use "Colour" data for masks/shading, and "Scalar" data for displacement; and conveying this information when dealing with results.

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Like I said, I don't see this forum going anywhere if you don't do it as requested by the community. Why would you wait for people to ask or have a question, when the inherent problem is people are chased away by Blue Nodes and likely won't ask as they're going to move on (maybe even to other software). We should be making sure this information is as comprehensive and clear as possible from the get go. Especially when "documentation" (wiki) lacks this information too..  People will have better questions when they have a better understanding of the functions. Otherwise this will be a place of basic questions repeated (like majority of main TG discussion topics because of lack of comprehensive documentation and users building upon it with great tutorials.), because traversing a forum for information in 2019 is dumb, and not indexed well.

Where are people going to get this competent knowledge of TG? You really expect them to ask and not be upset they have to and it's not searchable? Lol Come on guys.

[Hetzen]

I think we need a general post about data flow.

[N-drju]

If I may throw my two cents in...

I'm partially with Jon and Planetside Team on this.

First of all, I fully agree with Jon saying there is not a single way in which a node would behave. Telling people "what is going on" is bound to fail sooner or later when they discover that, say, "normalise vector" does not work the way they expected from a "what is it actually doing" explanation. Because if a node gets in its way, it will actually be doing something else...

The inherent problem of the software in my view, is that Matt is probably one of the few people who understands nuts and bolts of it and he, sort of, made this program to meet his own expectations. It is up to you and me now, to make something out of it for ourselves - this is the problem. It's like trying to track back the authors reasoning.

Now... While I accept the fact that the software should be more user-friendly and knowledge base considerably expanded (instead of the everlasting "TBC" flipping us a bird on the wiki) one still just has to do some minimum effort to learn underlying mathematical rules. You'll get nothing out of this forum unless you at least get some initial knowledge of how trigonometry, boolean maths, and vectors work!

Do you seriously expect people to succesfully use something like "cross product" without learning the definition of what it is??

Jordan, you're saying that the aim of this forum section was lost. It will be worse once we require people to tutor us in math... In which case we need yet another forum - "Calculus Academy."

[Hetzen]

I need to get back into this. I'll try and free some time on Sunday to carry on.

[N-drju]

Take your time. I'm learning trig now anyway.