Terrain Gain

efflux · August 03, 2009, 07:41:28 PM

This uses the gain node to shape and blend terrains.

It's just a basis of the idea. Not played with much yet. There are lots of things to experiment with here. Gain and bias are extremely useful.

The nodes involved with colour are simply a visual aid.

rcallicotte · August 11, 2009, 05:53:48 PM

Looks like floating pillows or rubberized landmass. Nice.

Gannaingh · August 11, 2009, 05:59:09 PM

This looks very useful, thanks!

efflux · August 11, 2009, 08:48:26 PM

Bias and gain are great nodes.

Just look at the shapes and how they are adjustable then imagine how those shapes are useful for taking any 0 - 1 value and curving it in controllable ways. For example you can think of it as a terrain profile.

Volker Harun · August 14, 2009, 05:51:23 AM

This can be really usefull for blending anything ... good stuff!

glen5700 · August 14, 2009, 03:01:40 PM

This is definitely some excellent stuff you have going on here, I will have to work more with this.

Thanks for sharing,
Glen

R3igN · September 04, 2009, 09:20:01 AM

Nice job...

I read the tutorials about the add scalar, constant scalar, complement scalar and gain scalar...But cant understand
there purpose..

What did they do in your work? I tried to duplicate your work but i seem to be missing this 4 functions...
I cant seem to differentiate there purpose from each other..I wish someone could explain this for me...

Thnx..

Elegy · September 08, 2009, 03:53:29 AM

I believe Add Scalar takes two inputs and simply adds them together. A Constant Scalar is just a number. So if I plugged two Constant Scalars set at 3 and 9 into the inputs of an Add Scalar, the Add Scalar would output 12.

Complement Scalar performs the function 1-x, where x is the input. So if you plugged 0.2 into a Complement Scalar, it would output 0.8. If you input -0.1, it would output 1.1 etc...

The Gain Scalar is slightly more complicated. Look at the graph for the Gain Scalar near the beginning of the thread. The X axis of the graph represents the input (what is plugged into the Gain Scalar) and the Y axis represents the output (what comes out of the Gain Scalar). If the Gain Scalar value is set at 0.8, then low input values close to 0 are made even lower and high input values close to 1 are made even higher but any input of 0.5 stays at 0.5.

If the Gain Scalar is set at 0.2, it's kind of the opposite - inputs close to 0 are pushed higher and inputs close to 1 are pushed lower. Essentially, just read off the graph. The same is true for the Bias Scalar.

R3igN · September 15, 2009, 08:42:48 AM

how did he manipulate the color? the lighter color and the dark color..?

efflux · October 07, 2009, 07:29:57 PM

Hi I've been away with no net connection so couldn't answer or add to this.

The colours are that way because they are controlled by two different fractals that also control the terrain. It wasn't actually meant to be an intrinsic part of what I was doing here - just a visual aid. You can merge two fractals in various ways where they influence different parts of the terrain. If you then send this merged value to mix two colours then obviously each colour will effect the related parts of the terrain that were shaped in the displacement. It's not quite so simple though since TG2 uses colours, scalars and vectors. I don't have this specific file open at the moment but play with things and try to work out what happens and why.