Mask Shader

[WAS]

I was wondering; why doesn't Terragen have a simple Mask Shader? IE, takes colour/disp input and simply masks it out.

Of course I realize we have dist and surface layers, but aren't these overkill? Aren't there default calculations involved that are wasting resources for the task that aren't involved?

Just thinking after my billionth time adding a surface layer just to mask something.

[Dune]

Just yesterday I was wondering too if 'bigger' shaders need all elements computed, and thus slow down the line. Then indeed the simpler the better I realized again, after what Matt wrote about the difference between a scalar and color function, never thought of those to be different in speed.