Suggestion to the documentation site

[Sp34k]

Hey guys, yesterday I made a topic about what the water settings did and I got some really nice help.. What came to my thought was how nice it would be to look in the documentation site and read about what the different settings does, an example from the topic I made:

roughness; default 0.2       I once did a render with 0.3, the water looked vary rough.
wave scale; default 10       It's a good value. It makes the waves tighter or wider.
smallest scale; default 0.1  This is what gives the ripple effect. This is also normally a good value.

Reflections
Master Reflectivity; default 1     This makes the surface reflect objects, sky and clouds. For murky water turn this down.
Index of Refraction; default 1.33 This is the way light is bent while traveling through a transparent/translucent object. It is a scale with various mediums having different values. Water's is 1.33. Glass is 1.67+/-. Diamond is 2.37 (I think)
Horizon Shift; default 0.5           I think this is a variable which controls how the waves are smoothed into the distance. The reflection becomes less chopped up by the waves the further away he water is.

This explanation help me alot to understand what these settings was all about.. So it would be cool if someone felt interested in writing about "atmosphere settings" and so on..
I don't know if my idéa is a waste of time but I know a rookie like myself would appreciate it alot

Cheers,
Mike

[Hetzen]

Fully agree with this idea. I've been given bits of info from Matt and Oshyan which would have been very easy for me to add to the documentation had I had access.

I've also thought that we could set up some topic titles like "Documentation - Transform Shader", where people chime in with what knowledge they've discovered on this particular node, not just black and white detail, but some further suggestions of settings for example.

[Sp34k]

I couldn't agree more..
Ofcourse we will learn from the "black and white" details, but if someone discover a good idéa and/or something special then it would be cool to login and share it..
Myself, I don't know much about how to work with the notes and specially I don't know how to create good terrains to work on.. So just an example here:

Oshyan decided to explain about terrain, how it works with notes and what the settings does and later Matt decides to explain how atmosphere works and how to work with the notes and what the settings does, then we can combine them and learn from it

What I am looking most for is explanations to what the different settings does, I have no clue what 80% of them does so I just try a random value and see what happens.. It would be nice to have some guidelines telling what the settings does..

[dwilson]

Stuff like that should be added to the wiki.  The wiki is basically user created documentation.  It is a way to store and organize the ideas developed here on the forums and elsewhere.

[rcallicotte]

I'm pretty sure that Planetside knows their product well enough to document it well.  It'll just take the needed time.

I agree with dwilson about the wiki.  That's its point.

[Sp34k]

oh, I didn't know about the wiki, I only knew about the documentation site.. Hm, kinda nice to know there's also a wiki x)
But I dont know, do you guys think that anyone would participate in this "project"?

[Hetzen]

I didn't realise I can access and edit the wiki with this log in. The other issue, is that I'm not sure that I might cock it up.

Is copying and pasting someones message on the forums acceptable?

[Tangled-Universe]

If I find time at all and especially for figuring out how to properly use the wiki-system I will try to write some stuff on atmosphere, clouds and other stuff which I'm pretty confident to write about it.
In the meantime the search-function should provide all the info, though in bits and pieces which makes it a bit time-consuming.

Martin

[Oshyan]

Definitely make use of the Wiki! What you describe is exactly what it is good for. You should of course obtain permission for reposting anyone's messages to the forums (or simply learn from it and write your own version of the information).

As for the official documentation, the node reference in particular, once completed, will provide a good sense of what each setting does. But recommendations for "good" settings are not really something we intend to provide. The defaults in the application are essentially the only recommendation we would make, and beyond that there are just so many versions of what "good" is to different people! People documenting their particular favorite settings with screenshots and clip files would be a great use of the Wiki.

- Oshyan