Distribution and fake stones

[mhaze]

Hi

I'm struggling to control the altitude of the fake stones shader, any help would be gratefully recieved.

Mick

[mhaze]

Ok prob solved

Mick

[rcallicotte]

Mick, sorry nobody got right back to you.  What was the problem?  I had read this, but wasn't sure exactly what you needed and was in the middle of pile of stuff.

[mhaze]

hi calico

Thanks for answering

I was trying to control the heightof fake stones with a distribution shader but in the end used a suface shader. I don't seem to be able to get the distribution shader to work.

Mick

[rcallicotte]

I've used Surface Shaders for this and many other like things.  It's an all around node for getting a lot of things done with terrain.  But, I'm not sure I shouldn't know better how to use the Distribution Shader, since it has worked okay for me in the past.

[mhaze]

I've discovered how to get the distribution shader working for fake stones anyway, you have to use it as a blend shader.

Mick

[monks]

Just been tinkering with this myself, and I was connecting to the fractal breakup; will try the blend. 

monks

[Alfamike]

Hello,

I'm having problems restricting fake stones also, but in this case by slope.

Having looked around on here I found someone who had the problem before and it was solved by one of Planetside staff.

Great!, so I clip out what I needed and put that bit into my TGD, but no joy. (You can still see the original clip disabled in the shaders box.)

Have been plugging things in and out for a few hours now and yesterday, but still no stuck.

I have attached the TGD and zipped BMP for creation of the terrain using image displacement. Thanks to free Genetica Viewer. :-)

Hope someone out there can shed some light on this, and thanks in advance.


Best regards,
AM.

[mhaze]

use a distribution shader rather than a surface layer and it works - not sure why the surface layer does not work.

Mick

[Alfamike]

use a distribution shader rather than a surface layer and it works - not sure why the surface layer does not work.

Mick

Hi Mick, think I tried that but will check to make sure. Thanks for your reply.

I did notice that in some cases connecting an input to the distribution shader makes it work differently.

AM.

---------------------------

Meanwhile, in the attic:

Started from scratch and got the distribution to work. Then clipped the interesting bit out (attached here) and stuck it in the TGD as I posted above, between the base colours and the planet, nothing else.

Still it seems like I'm getting rocks on slopes that are steeper than my max setting and in flat places I don't seem to be getting any at all.

This is still puzzling me.

Attached two screen shot:
         One with the working setup, from scratch.
         The other one (without atmo) is the TGD from my previous post with inserted clip from first screenshot.

Anyone any thoughts? ( Am I misinterpreting the slopes from the current camera position?)

Thanks for your patience.

The best.
AM.

[lonewolf]

Not at a computer with TG to check, but is invert blend shader checked?
This is what it looks like to me.

Iain

[Oshyan]

If you use a Surface Layer you have to make sure its color is set to pure white. A Distribution Shader doesn't have color settings and outputs correct values for masking/blending by default.

- Oshyan

[Matt]

It could be something with your terrain. The stones look like they're distributed correctly in the distance, so I would guess that the blend shader is setup correctly, and it's only in the foreground and midground that it's not right. Do you have any other displacements after the Compute Terrain node? If so, they won't be affecting the terrain normal.

Matt

[Alfamike]

Hello guys, thanks for the feedback.

Ian:
No. I have tried that in the process of getting the distribution to appear like I expect it has to.

Oshyan:
My distribution shader V4 does have a colour setting, but I have never used another than white.

Matt:
I understand what you're saying. Please refer to attached screenshot. I've left some of the interesting shader dialogs open. Between Compute Terrain and Fake Stones there's only the Base Colours Power Fractal which does not have displacements enabled.

Hope to hear from you again.

All the best.
AM.

PS. Also attached the TGD. BMP for the Image Map Shader is posted above (Cosmic Target Practice)

[Alfamike]

Hello... again.

Am still trying to solve this slope 'challenge' I've got distributing my fake stones.

Below are two screen shots. The only difference between them is the gradient patch size in my only Compute Terrain node.

The result with half the default patch size ( 20 -> 10) is closer to what I'd expect when restricting by maximum slope. Still there are stones on slopes over my max steepness, but that could be an optical illusion....?

(In this case I also have to use Terrain Normal instead of Fine Normal in the Distribution node.)

Any more ideas? I was not expecting at all to have to reduce the patch size to get expected results.


Regards.
AM.