Objects in a painted shader

[kevnar]

I didn't see any sort of search function in the forums, so I'm just looking for a quick tutorial on how to get objects to only populate within the bounds of a painted shader. I've tried about four different ways of doing it and the objects seem to ignore the painted shader and populate everywhere.  I can get a surface layer to only paint the colour inside the painted shader bounds, but when I plug that same surface layer as the distribution of the object population, it still populates everywhere.

What am I doing wrong? 

[domdib]

First off, there is a search function. Third on the left, right at the top. And an Advanced search function. Use that, and plug in "Painted shader". The Painted shader needs to be used as the Blending shader of whatever you are trying to populate.

[kevnar]

Yes, there it is, right in front of my eyes. D'uh. Sorry about that.

I tried plugging it in as the blending shader with no luck. That's why I got confused. I'll search around a bit.

[meldon]

Concerning the search, kevnar has made a good point, indirectly and unintentionally though it were.  From my experience in web designing, it's generally best to put things where they're "expected" to be.  Assume that much of your clientele come with a specific purpose in mind, and if they can't intuitively get where they need to go quickly, with little to no effort, they may decide to go somewhere else.  Much of this "intuition" is based on their experience of the web as a whole.  So if your navigation bar doesn't "look like a navigation bar" (i.e. what most navigation bars generally "look" like), people in a hurry for an answer/product/etc may get frustrated.  Sure, you have your "browsers" who don't mind looking in the nooks and crannies of your site, and your users who are quicker than most at adapting to a site's style.  But a good site tries to cater to as many as possible.

As it applies to this, almost every site I've seen with search capabilities has a text box, usually in the upper right.  Considering the very nature of a forum - a large repository of knowledge containing a few nuggets of gold buried in lots of silver, copper, tin, and hay - having the search function prominent is a must.  (Personally, regardless of where the text box is put, I'd prefer a search function on each board of the forum that defaults to searching only within that board, accompanied by a link to the advanced search.  If I'm in "Terragen 2 Discussion", I don't want to search for something in "Open Discussion".)

Having said all that, concentrate on developing TG2!    Just idle ramblings, this.

[jo]

Hi,

Yes, there it is, right in front of my eyes. D'uh. Sorry about that.

I tried plugging it in as the blending shader with no luck. That's why I got confused. I'll search around a bit.

Send me the project if you like, at:

jomeder@planetside.co.uk

Regards,

Jo

[kevnar]

...almost every site I've seen with search capabilities has a text box, usually in the upper right. 

Now that you mention it, that's exactly what I was looking for, a text box. I didn't see a text box so my brain automatically said "There's no search function!" even though Search is written right in front of me.

[kevnar]

I think I see what I'm doing wrong here. I created the painted shader first. Then I created a "tree distribution" surface layer and set the painted shader as the "Blend by Shader" element. Then I created the tree population and plugged the "tree distribution" surface layer in as the Density shader. There are more trees distributed where the actual shader paint is, but they're also peppered around more sparsely around the rest of the population bounding box. Is this what's supposed to happen?

[Henry Blewer]

It depends on the constraints used in the population. I tend to use a distribution shader with the painted shader in the blend by input. This gives great control of altitudes and slopes.