Rock Bridge?

[scott8933]

See picture for ref.... Is this doable somehow? Just your standard natural stone arch.

[dhavalmistry]

this cant be done right now but there is a workaround for this

the workaround is to split the arch in two by using two heightfields and displace them upwards and join at the top...

[scott8933]

You can get a nice curve with that? In my experiments, I used the twist and shear shader which looked like it would work (same way, make two and join them) but it wasn't giving me a curve. Just a straight angle. Has there been a thread on this, or is it covered in the docs?

Thank you!

[dhavalmistry]

getting a curve like that is very hard unless you want to go into functions....and yes there was a thread in image sharing section by old_blaggard. He once attempted to achieve similar effect once..I am not sure how successful was he but maybe you could try searching for that thread....unfortunately I dont remember the title of the topic....

[choronr]

Check out the gallery of 'hillrunner' at http://www.rendus3d.com/ . You'll find he created something similar to the 'Delicate Arch' seen at the Arches National Park in Moab, Utah.

[dhavalmistry]

this one to be specific

http://www.rendus3d.com/showphoto.php?photo=6

[Oshyan]

You can do it easily with an imported 3D model, textured to match the terrain. That is the approach Hillrunner took. There may be other workable approaches too, but that's the easiest to control.

- Oshyan

[child@play]

or you just use spheres within terragen : http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2749.msg27948#msg27948     

[old_blaggard]

It's also possible to do it using some advanced function techniques.  I made an arch image quite a while ago (http://www.ashundar.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-4209) totally within Terragen by using two adjacent spikes and tilting them towards each other.  I also did some experimenting with creating truly curved arches like that - the key there is to start with a vertical spire and feed a sine function that is given the y-coordinate (Get Position then Y to scalar) into the x or z of a redirect shader and apply it to the spike.

[Virex]

That makes me think. If you could take a sinlge spire and bend it sideways and down, you might be able to make an arch out of a single piece. There would still be a bit of deformation where the arch pushes into the ground though...

[old_blaggard]

Yup, that's what happens.  I got the arch to look pretty good, but I never got around to adding displacement and textures to it.

[scott8933]

Makes me think I'm missing something simple here - is there a basic bend deformer somewhere in TG2? I don't recall seeing one anywhere.

That makes me think. If you could take a sinlge spire and bend it sideways and down, you might be able to make an arch out of a single piece. There would still be a bit of deformation where the arch pushes into the ground though...

[Cyber-Angel]

The problem with current terrain rendering is that it is based on 2d methods such as heightfeilds even procedurals both of which are based on 2D noise, but for how much longer are we going to use these methods are there no 3D noise types out there, no way to generate 3D fractals? Indeed what lies beyond where we are right now the future of terrain rendering and is there a strong mathematical basis for it?

My concern is that terrain rendering may get left behind when it come to pure research but more fundamentally then this is how much control will be in the hands of the user and would you be able to convince a geologist or other such educated and knowledgeable person that what they are looking at is a convincing representation of nature without them shacking their heads or rubbing their chins and thinking that some thing is not right?

Power is nothing without the ability to control it and this is the crux of the point and future of terrain generation is going to have to get use to the fact that users demand control over that which they create. Node based interfaces are the best route for now, but they may them selves be replaced with better interfaces methodologies that are yet to be devised, however human factors (Human-Computer Interaction) is likely to play an ever increasing in this and all software can use the benefits of research conducted in the Aerospace and Defense industries centering on information and workload reduction.

To this end heightfeilds and procedurals and there replacements should be seen as basic building blocks around which a set of powerful 3d sculpting tools should be built that allow hard or impossible terrain features to be created: with these users could theoretically move maintains in the literal sense of the meaning.

A search of Goggle provides no immediate answers to the above questions but then it dose not support natural language search at this time, or maybe I am just not entering the right search queries: either way its getting to the stage where computers and related subjects are getting to be no fun any more and that worries me.

Sorry if this is going off on a wide tangent.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel           

   

[old_blaggard]

scott - That bend reformer you're looking for is called a Redirect shader .

C-A - TG2 *does* currently use 3D fractals.  The cloud system is volumetric and uses 3D Perlin noise to decide where the clouds are and aren't.  The current displacement and color system uses 3D fractals as well.  The only limitation there is that TG2 is built on a displacement engine, which means the terrain is pushed and pulled and displaced but not separated - it makes generating parts of the terrain completely separate from the others impossible.

[rcallicotte]

Thanks for the explanation, o_b.  Helpful to understand these inner workings of the program.