Another Basic Planet

[Falcon]

Since the other attempts on this have apparently died, and are also pretty old, and don't always run well on the current TG2 version, I've started my own.

Now  I'm somewhat new to TG2 (played a lot with TG1 back then) so I lack some of the fine details and cool features. I hope to get some help here.

What I've done so far:

I'm using three power fractals to cover my entire planet. One defines landmasses, one large-scale elements (mountain ranges) and one local details. With this simple approach I'm already getting a fairly good results, see attached image.

Now I need help: How can I prevent all those tiny islands from springing up everywhere? I don't mind a few, but here the mountain range fractal pockes the surface all the time when close to the shores of the continents fractal. I've tried a few things, but nothing has worked. I'm sure there's a trivial solution, but I don't know it.

[rcallicotte]

Nvseal has done extensive work on planets both for terrain and clouds.  Others have contributed.  You might want to look into that to get a good start.

[Falcon]

Nvseal has done extensive work on planets both for terrain and clouds.  Others have contributed.  You might want to look into that to get a good start.

I've done that, and I'm taking many ideas from there. However, their approach is mostly for orbit-scale renderings. I want to be able to go down to ground level, and while it may be lacking fine details, the basic landscape is there.

[Volker Harun]

In the displacement of a fractal-terrain (or powerfractal) you'll find the roughness-setting. It works hand in hand with the fractal's smallest scale. Roughness=0 is equal to no smallest scale.

Knowing this. it is easy to create a shader (Call it shader A) to shape the continents. This inverted shader can be used for the oceans.

Think of a copy of shader A with more roughness, but blended by shader A itself - you will get a coastline with islands.

Still using shader A as a blendingshader, you can create another fractal to distribute mountain ranges and so on.

Have fun,
Volker