Controlling When Shaders Update

[julian.bleecker]

Small annoyance: I start typing a new value in, for example, a field to adjust the amount of smoothing with the Heightfield smooth operator. As soon as I start typing, Terragen 2 wants to start updating things, with modal dialogs appearing and, sometimes rather slowly, adjusting my model. Thing of it is? I haven't finished typing in my number. If I want to adjust to "30" and hit backspace to clear the field — bang, update. Then I type the "3" — bang, update. Finally, if I'm patient, I get to put in my "0" and it'll do the update it should've waited for to begin with.

Is there a setting somewhere? So that I can tell it to wait until I give things the all-clear?

Julian

[cyphyr]

Just hit "Pause" on the 3d preview, should do the trick.
Richard

[julian.bleecker]

Okay, huh. Is this the Preview window that typically appears in the upper right? Pause there doesn't seem to stop these updates. Although, I am now admitting to Newbie status. I'll continue to fuss, but if anyone has additional suggestions, I'm all eyeballs.

[neuspadrin]

I think he's talking about some of the heightfield operators, such as erode, which automatically bring up a dialog and start generating the second you touch it.

[Seth]

even if auto-generate is off ?

[julian.bleecker]

Ah, turning auto-generate off sounds promising. *Sigh* I can't seem to find an "auto-generate" setting to turn off. Pointers for a humble newbie?

Julian

[littlecannon]

Hi Julian, it's to the left of the Generate Now button... Terrain tab, inside heightfield Shader, on the Heightfield Genertate shader, bottom left.

[julian.bleecker]

That explains my befuddlement...I'm loading a Heightfield rather than generating it. But, still get this "Progress" pop-up stuff.

*shrug*

Julian

[Oshyan]

This is simply a limitation in some of the current heightfield operators. Many of them, for example the Heightfield Make River, are fairly experimental and may be problematic. In the future we will be fixing some of the issues with the core operators, and probably moving some of the less polished operators into more clearly labeled "experimental" categories.

For now, to work around this, unfortunately you have to type the values elsewhere and copy/paste them in.

- Oshyan