Several Terragen2 questions

[duke]

I felt like playing around a bit this weekend with TG2 for the first time in a year, and i'm really impressed! The render times might be long... until you start tweaking, then you can hammer them right down. Here's a bunch of questions:

a) How can I move a camera relative to my planet? I don't really care about absolute co-ordinates, I just want to move it along my planet (1.7m up from the ground below me - eye height, 100m over to the left, etc.).

b) With a Default Shader set to white, the render has a yellow tint - is this because of the sun?

c) Can I group my nodes like macros in World Machine? I'd love to make a function and just stash it away so my network doesn't get too messy (I assumed this would be there with the Internal Network option).

d) What's Patch Size in Compute Normal / Compute Terrain?

e) Why would I need Compute Normal when I can use Compute Terrain? I understand, I think, that the only reason I need Compute Terrain is once, to compute the actual terrain, but also to feed normals to any shaders AFTER that. So I may others within my network If I want to add 3D displacement (so if I have a large noise and then want to add a cliff face that should be perpendicular to the cliff normal). So when should I and shouldn't I use Compute Normal over Compute Terrain?

I may add more questions when I think of them

[mogn]

c) Because you cannot access the input parameters to a userbuild functions, this is not possible in tg2.
The node documentation says this about the rotate y function

This group of nodes rotates the Input vector around the respective axis. You can set the angle of rotation in degrees.



The following is a rough guide to help you conceptualize the rotations:



The effect of the Rotate x node is similar to changing the pitch or tilt of the vector.

The effect of the Rotate y node is similar to changing the heading or yaw of the vector.

The effect of the Rotate z node is similar to changing the bank or roll of the vector.



The vector is rotated about the origin (0,0,0).

It is not possible (using the internal network) to build a rotate node with the following specfication:

  Name of node "RotateY"
  The note contains two inputs: Input = vector, Input A = rotation angle.

e) If you generate non normal displacement, before the "Compute Terrain", you might have to use the "Compute Normal" node.

[FrankB]

d) ... this is the best read about the subject you can ever get: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1249.msg12539#msg12539

Cheers,
Frank