Gradient test

[bigben]

My previous faked ocean depth used an image map and multiple colour adjust shaders to create masks for different coloured surfaces.  Here's a better hack using mogn's smoooth gradient clip (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2968.0). I knew this was going to be handy clip 

This is a single terrain with two shaders, one for the terrain, and one for the ocean bed. Each has just a gradient as a child input.  There's no water here...  and the atmosphere has been disabled so you see the ocean bed detail.

The terrain is made from CleanTOPO2 and is about 2km resolution (my biggest padding terrain to date)

[Harvey Birdman]

Hey, that looks pretty good! One more work-around in lieu of transparency...

      

[Sethren]

If you could just isolate a reflection/specular shader and mask it off to the ocean part only then you could have a convincing case for water. The render times would be nice and quick. It's to bad Terragen does not have a blur shader. Imagine blurring the ocean part of the shader according to water depth. As the water goes deeper so does the blurring. I do this all of the time in my texture software to make for convincing water depth and it works quite well.

[bigben]

If you could just isolate a reflection/specular shader and mask it off to the ocean part only then you could have a convincing case for water. The render times would be nice and quick. It's to bad Terragen does not have a blur shader. Imagine blurring the ocean part of the shader according to water depth. As the water goes deeper so does the blurring. I do this all of the time in my texture software to make for convincing water depth and it works quite well.

That's actually quite easy... altitude = 0, parallel terrains, one clipped to altitude = 0, the other unchanged to provide the mask info (Or of course use a lake object    I've been using terrains for water surfaces too long...)

For blurring.. Multiply the colour by a fractal with colours in the range of 0.7 - 1, masked by the original greyscale input (adjusted altitude range in this case). This adds more noise to shallower water giving the impression of being sharper.  The bathymetry data is much lower res than most terrain data so the terrain will always be sharper than the subsurface detail

Hey, that looks pretty good! One more work-around in lieu of transparency...

      

And also of use with transparency, helping to colour the water by changing the colour of the ocean bed by depth.... obviously with different colours than used here.  I'd probably add an extra altitude restricted shader for both very shallow water and very low terrain to provide a sharper band for beaches. But even with this it's a much tidier/quicker approach than my previous hack

[bigben]

PS.. the CleanTOPO2 data is "cleaner" as it's name suggests but it requires rescaling the elevation with values in the metadata file. Something to keep in mind if you use it as a global bump map.

[Sethren]

That's actually quite easy... altitude = 0, parallel terrains, one clipped to altitude = 0, the other unchanged to provide the mask info (Or of course use a lake object    I've been using terrains for water surfaces too long...)

For blurring.. Multiply the colour by a fractal with colours in the range of 0.7 - 1, masked by the original greyscale input (adjusted altitude range in this case). This adds more noise to shallower water giving the impression of being sharper.  The bathymetry data is much lower res than most terrain data so the terrain will always be sharper than the subsurface detail

And also of use with transparency, helping to colour the water by changing the colour of the ocean bed by depth.... obviously with different colours than used here.  I'd probably add an extra altitude restricted shader for both very shallow water and very low terrain to provide a sharper band for beaches. But even with this it's a much tidier/quicker approach than my previous hack

Coolness.   

[Mr_Lamppost]

Do you want to stop doing interesting stuff?  Time is running short as it is 

Seriously: Excellent work 

[Harvey Birdman]

And also of use with transparency, helping to colour the water by changing the colour of the ocean bed by depth.... obviously with different colours than used here.  I'd probably add an extra altitude restricted shader for both very shallow water and very low terrain to provide a sharper band for beaches. But even with this it's a much tidier/quicker approach than my previous hack

I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of depth-affected translucency, so you wouldn't have to use the gradients at all - it'd occur automatically as the light passed through the material. I'm not sure if that sort of thing is built into the transparency feature we hear about or not.

[bigben]

It probably would be as this is fairly standard with water, but it can always be complemented by an additional variation....  although I can't really think why at the moment because the effect would be subtle... but just in case... 

[bigben]

That's actually quite easy... altitude = 0, parallel terrains, one clipped to altitude = 0, the other unchanged to provide the mask info (Or of course use a lake object    I've been using terrains for water surfaces too long...)

Actually that's full of crap       You'll just end up with the colour of the shader for the altitude of the water .... best to wait for transparency

Do you want to stop doing interesting stuff?  Time is running short as it is 

Seriously: Excellent work 

What, you mean produce a final image?    a) having too much fun tinkering, b) very critical of my own work.... Always something to be fixed  which leads to even more tinkering   

[Mr_Lamppost]

Do you want to stop doing interesting stuff?  Time is running short as it is 

Seriously: Excellent work 

What, you mean produce a final image?    a) having too much fun tinkering, b) very critical of my own work.... Always something to be fixed  which leads to even more tinkering  

And how much more would I get done if I stayed out of here 

[Cyber-Angel]

Nice choice of Continent for your test take it from some one who knows. 

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel