[Help]Planets, Continent definition

Started by AlexPorter, December 10, 2008, 12:34:07 AM

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AlexPorter

I'm having a few problems with my planet, while it looks decent from 5 million units (meters?) high, I am planning on using it for a sky box at about 1 million unit high.  I am having figuring out how to define continents and oceans.

From Afar:


Up Close:


I haven't yet worried about my atmosphere much, but I can't seam to define my continents unto masses and work their coloring from their.  Ideally I would like to be able to apply a coastline and mountain coloring individually.

Do I need to apply some sort of mask created in photoshop in order to create my continents?
How would I go about doing this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This is an example picture of the range that I intend to render from, and the continental idea that I am aiming for:

Mohawk20

Create a powerfractal and make it the only terrain and surface node attached (just until you have the settings right).
Set the high colour to sand brown, and the low colour to dark blue. Now increase the lead-in scale to the right end of the slider to begin with. the scale slider can have about the same size.
Play a bit with the contrast and offset in the colour tab to get the right edges and mix between water and land. Change the scale and lead-in scale to your liking, and change the seed if you want other shapes.

That should give you a nice start.
It's how I made below images...
Howgh!

AlexPorter

I am still having trouble doing this with fractals.  Could you post your nodes/tgd by chance?
Mine is still looking relatively plain and I'm having trouble applying multiple layers of color to my continents.

-Alex

Mohawk20

Ah, yes, sorry... take a look at this.

It's an animation so the bottom slider should be to the right to see all the surfaces full.
Howgh!

AlexPorter

I can already see that I am doing this wrong. Thank you for the guidance, I'll try to follow your tgd as a template.