Dutch beach ridges, 5500 years ago

[Dune]

As the title says. Another version of what I've done years ago. All procedural, based on simple shapes and a lot of masking from there.

This is what the Dutch coast looked like 5500 years ago (if I remember well). The shallow North Sea brought up ridges of sand, behind which extensive (half our country) marshes grew in the then secluded areas. The land grew higher than the sea eventually, until the early Dutch dug all the peat up, and now half the country is below sea level again. Luckily we still have the dunes!

[Mahnmut]

Looks good!
thatss some node network.
And are those whales I spot?
There used to be more around...
Best Regards,
J

[masonspappy]

Wow - that is some node network!!

[schmeerlap]

5500 years ago (if I remember well).

Great expansive scene, as per The Who you can "see for miles and miles" in Holland.
That's you paddling downstream in a canoe, approaching the delta. 
I need to learn how to do surf and wave foam like this.
I started counting the number of nodes but ran out of brain cells to finish the count. 

[Dune]

Well, if you only have 123 braincells, I doubt if you can ever make foam

Let's have a try; add a (blue node) displacement to scalar to your terrain output, have it followed by a color adjust and plug into a surface shader mask input that sits in the line of nodes for your water, after the water shader. Now check out you water level and fill in values approximating that value for white and black in the color adjust, one slightly bigger than the other, and see what happens. You shoud see a white border emerging near the coast. Play with the values from there...
If you happen to acquire more braincells; after the color adjust you can add a divide (divide by some small number (constant scalar)  for distance between surf) then a sinus (blue nodes), then a muliply scalar (blue node) after that. Have the color adjust multiplied by the sinus, and feed that into the mask input of said surface shader (which should of course be white or so). Now you should have some lines following the coast. You can vary, warp, combine, breakup etc from there...

[masonspappy]

Even with that (very good) explanation, I struggle with understanding a node system like this because I can't see the default name of the node your using.  A few examples: "whiten rivers for less..." , "Adjust standwallen a...".

Which tells me what you're trying to accomplish here, but I have to guess what the default node names are. Even if I choose the correct default node, I may not realize that if I don't choose the correct values as well. 

Dune, this is by no means any criticism at all  of your outstanding works and explanations, so please don't take it as such. It's just an inherent weakness within the Terragen node labeling system for understanding why & how  a particular thing is done a particular way. 

PS - we needed 123 brain cells to understand this node system??  If that many are needed I'm going to break out my crayola crayons and go sit quietly with a coloring book for a while...  

[Dune]

No problem   Posting the network was not meant as a tutorial, but merely for the fun of it, showing how a node structure like this can produce a landscape like shown. I always find that amazing. And indeed, you won't be able to see any values from the node description either, so it's illustrational only.

If anyone cares to make foam (only for adults over 123 braincells!) I'd be happy to make quick basefile. But the basis must be somewhere in the forum, as it has been discussed often.

[KlausK]

I struggle with understanding a node system like this because I can't see the default name of the node your using.

Sorry for hijacking this thread for this but: that is what I have been asking for for years - coloured nodes for at least the categories they stem from. Which would greatly help understanding the flow of the nodes from top to bottom. The values of course would only be visible when having the scene file. And it is a matter of going through example files to get a feeling for that. But since we do work in different scales in our landscapes, the values are only helpful to a certain degree anyways.

I always add a prefix to my nodes when I rename them for what they are doing. Something like "PF_little_bubbles" or "FT_ground" or something. That helps me see at first glance which of the nodes I used.
                       

Very interesting to see what the coast looked like back then and how it became what NL is today.
The very-very lonesome paddler is really a my favourite

CHeers, Klaus

[Dune]

Yes, I often do that as well, the prefix, but forget it as many times.

The lone paddler is a 9m Viking ship (for size comparison), the humpbacks are 13m 

[schmeerlap]

only for adults over 123 braincells!

Phew! Doesn't apply to me then. My next door neighbour keeps telling me I act like a seven-year-old, at which I yell back at her, "I'm seven and three quarters." 

My first reaction when I read through your procedure was to seek out a paper bag and blow in it for five minutes, and then comfort myself with a nice cup of tea (with three bags of sugar in it). But I appreciate the time and effort you put into trying to explain it to me. And you know, I might just gird my loins, grab the proverbial bull by the horns and give it a go. But before I do have to tell you that I can't find a "Sinus" node in the version of Terragen I'm using. The nearest node to it I can find is a  functions>trig>Sin scalar.
ps: It's comforting to know that there are others who struggle with node networks.

[Mahnmut]

Schmeerlap- at age qarter to eight, you do make some really cool pictures!

[Dune]

Well, as my Kindergarten teacher said to me, you can't start learning Terragen early enough!

Check this out, it's only a few minutes setup, so in need of a lot of adjustments. For a rough steep coast I wouldn't use the sin(us), or mask it back, and just use the color adjust gradient with some sort of foam breakup. Lot's of possibilities with this.

[schmeerlap]

Thanks Ulco. Downloaded the tgd and will use the relevant nodes.