So how do i create a weightmap in Terragen?

[Nala1977]

coming from 3d background i really miss the possibility to drive shaders trough a weightmap, basically have control where shaders appear or not.
Is like  a mask but in 3d software is way easier to achieve.

So in this example i have a simple shape displaced, i applied a plane and gave it a red color trough a power fractal shader.
Now ideally you would have a defined zone where you create a mask that can change color, in my case i want the surrounding area on the bottom of the pillar which i want to color in green (i marked it in photoshop so to let you understand).
For example in 3d you would calcolate the distance between the plane and the pillar and create a weightmap there. I can not find a way to do this.


anyone have any idea how i can control where the green appears? i am thinking to plug some node in the power fractal color node of the red plane to drive it, but i have no idea how to achieve this.

anyone could help please?

thanks

[KlausK]

Maybe like this...

Painting better masks in PS would certainly help.
These are standard SSSes from TG, of course.
Some more maksing needed to get the green circle softer, I guess.
But it`s a start

CHeers, Klaus

[Nala1977]

Hey Klaus, that is a solution but im afraid is not that practical when you have multiple objects in the scene or when for example you have coastal rocks formation,  you would have to create a lot of planes and mask everyone of them with 2x planes.

Ideally i would just use a single plane (huge) and every geometry that intersect it (pillars and what not) would create this kind of mask on contact.
So is there a way of having terragen calculate the distance between 2 geometries and create a mask there? I dont know, with math nodes or something, in your example you do not have the ability to "fractal" the green and breakup the mask because its based on smooth step of the simple shape shader.

[sboerner]

So is there a way of having terragen calculate the distance between 2 geometries and create a mask there?

Sounds like you are describing an ambient occlusion mask. It would be nice sometimes to be able to generate an AO pass in Terragen, but I'm not sure there's a simple way to do it.


As for breaking up the simple shape mask, you can apply a power fractal (or any color shader) to a SSS to break up edges and density, by running the SSS through the other node's mask slot or by combining with math nodes.

[Nala1977]

i just want to create this system to be able to shade a foam on a water shader. So i want to create a contact area with the geometry where the mask is calculated where the plane and the coastline will intersect, that way i'd have a mask where i can just apply a white foam shader and have it naturally follow the geometry.

personally i'd pay for a plugin that let you achieve decent foam, coastal water control, its a bit weird that Terragen doesnt give you a friendly setup to do this.

[WAS]

Just use the displacement scalar of the terrain clamped around the water level alt.

[Nala1977]

now thats what i was looking for, thanks a lot WAS