Stacked Power Fractals, their scale and displacement & gradient patch size.

[Alfamike]

Guess the answer is going to be somewhere in what I mentioned in the subject line.

Anyway. I have several PFs linked up in series. When the output of the bottom PF is plugged into the Child of a Surface Layer, the render shows no terrain, only sky.

I have played around with the scale and displacement of the PFs and Surface Layer and with the gradient patch size of the Compute Terrain, to no avail.

[attach=#]

I have attached the TGD I am struggling with.

What's going to be a solution or work around? I know TG2 has probs rendering spikes, but think that is not the case here.

Thanks!

AM

[rcallicotte]

Try this reworked version.  I changed the smallest scale to .01.

Don't forget to rename it.  I didn't...so you don't overwrite yours.

[Alfamike]

Hey thanks Calico, that sorted it.

I didn't think I had to increase the scales even more and had actually already upped the scales a factor 10. Don't seem to remember having this problem before. I can use this now with the larger scales, no probs. Ta.

With the TGD I originally posted here, the render wouldn't work with even just a single one of the PFs.

AM.

[Alfamike]

Hi all,

To my first post in this thread. Calico's change worked for all camera pitch angles that are positive and for any heading, roll, and cam XYZ.

However soon as you pitch the render camera down (i.e. -10° or so) the sky only gets rendered? It depends a little on cam height, though. I'm looking at cam heights over the terrain < 2m.

Any more thoughts on this.

Thanks.

AM.

[cyphyr]

Just a thought but try using a distance shader as a blend shader on your smallest scale displacements. No point in having them far from the camera (hey cant be seen), so try dropping them off between say 10 and 20 m distant from your render camera.
Richard

[Alfamike]

Just a thought but try using a distance shader as a blend shader on your smallest scale displacements. No point in having them far from the camera (hey cant be seen), so try dropping them off between say 10 and 20 m distant from your render camera.
Richard

Thanks Cyphyr, that works!

Even when you hardly constrain the PFs by distance (from the render cam all the way to the horizon). Negative pitch of the render cam and low elevations above the terrain are no issue anymore then, even though the render preview windows struggle with it.

Appreciated.

AM.

[Oshyan]

Is your camera particularly low/close to the ground? Is there anything else unusual about your scene?

- Oshyan

[Alfamike]

Is your camera particularly low/close to the ground? Is there anything else unusual about your scene?

- Oshyan

Hello Oshyan, sorry been away on a course for a few days and not been on this site.

Yes, the camera is close to the ground. I have noticed before that the camera is not a point object. When you're close to the ground with your render cam , a change in pitch (for example) might put it into the ground. In my case it is defo above the ground, albeit barely.

I have attached the tgd for you; don't think there's much out of the ordinary there....

Hope to hear from you and thanks in advance.

Brgrds,
AM.

[Oshyan]

When you're very close to the ground one of two things could be happening. Either A: you are within a part of the terrain due to small-scale displacement or B: you are running into the near clipping plane, where the closest parts of terrain are clipped and not rendered. In this case it sounds like B is happening. I wasn't positive that even occurred in the actual renders, although I know it does in the preview window, but it does sound like that. The solution is to get a little further away from the terrain. I'm not sure that the clipping plane distance can be adjusted for renders.

- Oshyan

[Alfamike]

Thanks Oshyan, I did not know about any clipping distance, but it looks like that might be the case indeed.