Thickness of a Surface Layer

[rcallicotte]

How do we increase or decrease or simply manipulate the thickness of a land surface layer?

[dhavalmistry]

duplicate the surface layer and use it as the displacement layer with "Y" as slope/altitude turned on and "terrain normal" as the slope key!

[rcallicotte]

Thanks, DH!

duplicate the surface layer and use it as the displacement layer with "Y" as slope/altitude turned on and "terrain normal" as the slope key!

[rcallicotte]

Okay.  This idea to create a thicker layer seems to work as far as I can see, but I have the next idea that I haven't seen here on this forum quite like I want to do it.  If someone has done this or explained this within this forum, just tell me and I'll do my own searches. 

What I want to do next -

• create one lower layer that is on fire (glowing red and orange)
• create a layer on top of the previous layer and make this layer deep bedrock
• create cracks in the top bedrock layer to reveal the lower layer of fire

I've done the first two and have been experimenting with fractals to do the third thing without success.  I've even tried a cracked ground I found in which someone (might have been Volker) created a good terrain cracked ground TGC.  But, that hasn't worked.

Ideas?

[Volker Harun]

Maybe the attached file can help. This is the first approach that came to my mind. Do not care about the distribution and colours.

There is a 'luminance to scalar' function that seems to be necessary for the current alpha-version - but may be without use for you.

[rcallicotte]

Thanks, Volker.  This is very nice.  I'm noticing that without the extra nodes in your file (I tried to build this on my own in another TGD), my version doesn't work the same without your extra hidden nodes that bring color and displacement.  So, what I'm saying is that this is fantastic, since I can learn a lot from your total work in this file and, at the same time, I am finding this rather disillusioning that TG2 must not work quite like I was thinking.

My point of view, until today, was that the Terrain (before the Base Colours) was akin to the skin of the Earth.  Then, the Base Colours node colored over this Terrain.  Then, each successive node that is a Surface Layer was just one more layer on top of the previous layer until the last node finally connects to the Planet Object.  Now, I'm not so sure it works this way.  If it does work this way, then the easiest way to have what I want would be to have a fire layer after the Base Colours and then a very thick layer on the top of this (aka - after everything else in the order just before the Planet Object).  Once I have the thick top layer cracked, I would think I should be able to see under this thick layer to the next layer beneath - the fire level.

What, if anyone (especially at Planetside) can tell me, am I thinking wrongly about how this works?

[Oshyan]

It works essentially as you thought. All you need to do is make it so that your grey layer over the top of your red fiery layer is broken up in certain places to let the underlying fiery layer show through. A "crack" is really just a "place where that layer doesn't apply". It's not literally a "crack" in a "thick" layer. Everything is based on displacement, it's not volumetric, so it's not a case of "the grey layer exists *over* the red layer and if you break through the grey layer you'll see red", it's more like "the grey layer comes last in the rendering chain and so it is rendered *instead* of the red and to make the red appear you must make *gaps* in the grey".

- Oshyan

[rcallicotte]

Cool, Oshyan.  Thanks.  This is beautiful.   

[Volker Harun]

I use the distribution layer as parent because I have a better overview ,-)

Another point is, I can easily plug those 'fire-cracks' into imported objects without taking care of the terrain nodes which are on top of the distribution shader. You can distribute these shaders on each object seperately.

Attached is an advanced version with filled cracks.

Have fun,

Volker

[rcallicotte]

Good God.  This is brilliant!  I feel spoiled. 

Thanks, Volker.  More fun to play and learn.   

[monks]

Woah! Perfect- gimme gimme gimme 

monks

[FrankB]

never seen this thread before. The lava is amazing!

Frank

[Seth]

never seen this thread before. The lava is amazing!

Frank

damn ! how did i miss that one too ?! Oô

[Henry Blewer]

Hellish work.

[Dune]

Another workable method might (perhaps) be to add a plane, attach the same surface displacements as the ground, make it transparant (default shader), and add fake stones. Where there are no fake stones, the underground shows through.

---Dune