stone bed and hero rock - *Final*

Started by FrankB, January 16, 2009, 03:33:21 PM

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FrankB

something different than clouds this time.

The hero rock is based on a sphere object.

Regards;
Frank

PS: sorry for the quality.. had to compress the jpeg a lot to fit it in here.

Tangled-Universe

This looks nice so far.
I like the small pebbles/stones...it's a pity TG messes up some of them.
The big stone has interesting shapes (very ridgy!), but I think it could use a bit more variation.
Looking forward to see where this WIP goes...

Martin

FrankB

I don't know yet where this goes. I have spent some time to give the stone bed some attention, and  am very happy with it.
The hero rock came out because at first, i tried to add another surface layer on top of the stone bed to add bigger rocks. That however screwed up the underlying fake stone bed entirely and I haven't been able to find a cure. <insert heavy swearing here>

Then I thought "why not try a sphere?", and that got me into doodling mode ;-)
I'm not sure the sphere is a good idea for hero rocks. It doesn't seem to accept displacements from a power fractal, but it accepts displacements from the displacement port of a surface shader, which - unfortunately - can only be controlled through color.
Not sure yet, but I believe I let go of the "hero sphere" concept.

Funny how this developed, I really wanted to perfect the stone bed, and then got crazy on trying other stuff. At first, I tried to cover the stone bed with thick snow, but that too screwed up the stones totally  - Damn, I was angry that I couldn't figure this out.
Maybe someone else had succes with adding thick snow on top of a stone bed?

Cheers,
Frank

rcallicotte

Crap, Frank, what are you complainin' about?   ;D  This is awesome.  And to think it's a sphere could make me just want to give up trying anything.   I'd like to learn how to make a rock bed like that, in my spare time.   :P
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

FrankB

thanks calico, but: the big rock looks cg at first sight. It's reasonably ok if things look cg on second sight, like the stones bed, but the hero rock doesn't meet this criteria, so to speak :-)

The rock bed is constructed based on the methodology I once posted here that prevents small stones to grow on larger ones. the rest is fine tuning, which admittedly can take quite some time and a few hundred crop renders ;-)

Now that I write his, I wonder why I have posted it in the first place  ;D ;D ;D
Cheers,
Frank

reck

Whenever I use the fake stone shader I always get some stones that look strange. I see in this image you also get the same problem I get. I've highlighted some of the stones below. Is this some kind of bug that's going to get fixed? I can never get rid of this problem.

Also will we be able to use the rock object to create hero rocks in the final release? Seems strange people are having to resort to using spheres when TG has a built in rock object.

BTW apart from the strange rocks this looks really nice.


Oshyan

Strange Frank, the sphere object seems to accept displacement from a Power Fractal just fine here. I am feeding it through the Default Shader it comes with, admittedly, but that doesn't really mess anything up. What problem are you having and how are you setting up your network?

- Oshyan

FrankB

interesting... I can't try that out now, but will do later.
Have you disabled color from the power fractal, just to be safe?

FrankB

Quote from: FrankB on January 17, 2009, 04:22:55 AM
interesting... I can't try that out now, but will do later.
Have you disabled color from the power fractal, just to be safe?

Tried that out and it works. Strange, probably I was the one who had displacement unchecked, and didn't notice.
Well, then I shall give the hero rock from sphere another chance :-)

Thanks for the doubt, Oshyan :-)

Cheers,
Frank

dandelO

I've managed to get spheres displaced fine with PFS' before, too. Weird.

I've also had snow layers over and through rockbeds(as in this poor image attachment from my very early TG2 days. I must add, ignore the most part of the image, it's the rocks at the bottom I'm referring to. This image was made in TP2 with the 'broken' intersect underlying options for the snow and no real transparency for the water, though.)

Is this the type of thing you mean, snow, over and between stones?

[attachimg=#]

dandelO

Oh, Christ! On seeing this displayed here, under my name, I don't mind admitting that I'm pretty embarrassed right now!
It's nasty on the eyes! And that stag!? Jeez! :-[

Seth

#11
lol

good light too FrankB !


PS : the displacemnt with PF works fine but as said by Oshyan, you have to get rid of the default shader :) (at least that's the way it works at home)
and @reck : i think you can really do good rocks with the fake stone shader, it's hard but i am sure we could even fo hero rock with it ;)

rcallicotte

Would you do a favor for me (us) and give the link for this?  I remember it, but can't find it. 

Quote from: FrankB on January 16, 2009, 06:34:32 PM
The rock bed is constructed based on the methodology I once posted here that prevents small stones to grow on larger ones.

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Seth

Quote from: Matt on July 01, 2008, 02:39:08 PM
I think what Jim wants to do is prevent the other displacements from appearing where the fake stones are, am I right? For this you need to mask the other displacement using a mask representing the stones. The Surface Layer doesn't have a blend shader option like some of the others (although it will in future), but instead of this you can plug a mask into the fractal breakup input and set the surface layer's coverage to 0.5. It's not exactly the same as a proper blend/mask, but it's close enough for most purposes. For the actual mask, use a separate copy of your fake stones shader, with no inputs (unless you want to chain other fake stones shaders), and give it a white colour. That should give you a stones mask. You can invert this mask by using a function node after the mask (Function -> Inverse -> Complement Colour), or by simply enabling "invert breakup" on the surface layer.

Matt



was it this technique ?

FrankB

well, I don't remember the thread and posting either, it's so old it may have been deleted already. But here's the concept:

Use a merge shader, set "choose by altitide"  = "highest"
Plug one fake stone shader into the input port of the merge shader, and the other fake stone shader into the port "Shader A" of the merge shader. You can even scale that up, so like:
fakestone1 ==> input port merge shader1
merge shader 2 ==> Shader A port of merge shader1
fakestone2 ==> input port of merge shader 2
fakestone3 ==> shader A port of mer shader 2

... and so on, if you want to add even more fakestone layers.

Frank