Future Implimentations

[CCC]

Branch Noise Flavor.

Examples of this noise can be large scale canyon networks digging into the terrains. Smaller canyons then can be added onto other large scale terraced layers along with rivers at the base of the canyons which again can use the same noise but the only difference being is that it is clamped to be made narrow/thin. Other examples say the noise were displaced on inversion can be weird dunes and hilly structures. This does not have to be a complex l-system, just rather basic. Turbulence can be added to control uni-directional and or more omni-directional patterns as well as over all smoothness or rigidness of the winding channels. Perhaps a taper can be added where the channels become more narrow as they end.

An example below of what such a noise can do. Imagine layering this noise several times and altering the look of each noise and including rivers. If the seeds are the same then the multiple channels can follow one another per layer.

[cyphyr]

Great !!
Is this something your working on or a feature you'd like Planetside to implement in a future update. If the latter I suspect we'll have to wait until the SDK is released. If the former ... "Bring it on ...!!"

Richard

[Henry Blewer]

This is good news. I tried using 2 color L systems from ChaosPro, but it did not work out well. It ended up being easier to let Terragen 2 cut the river/s into the height field.

[CCC]

Great !!
Is this something your working on or a feature you'd like Planetside to implement in a future update. If the latter I suspect we'll have to wait until the SDK is released. If the former ... "Bring it on ...!!"

Richard

Heck no. Terragen 2 can not produce such a noise but i'd rather have them or someone create this noise with the SDK. I'd do it myself but i am no programmer and have a tough enough time understanding terragen.

[CCC]

Speaking of an SDK. A multi-pass rendering option would be nice. It's good for those matte painters out there.

http://www.asilefx.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=112

[Volker Harun]

I have an idea about this ... not the time now, but.
The base idea is to modify the 'Get position in texture'. When it reads for example X=100, Y=0, Z=20 you can exponential increase these values with functions. Doing a power of 2 will give you values of 10.000 | 0 | 400.
In other words, the farer you get from 0|0|0 the smaller steps are. On the other hand: if you have an output for a displacement you can divide by the length of that vector, so farer distance, smaller displacement.

Now, you only need to control the what and where

Volker

[CCC]

Then there may be hope yet.     

[Henry Blewer]

It is an interesting concept. Please keep posting! I seem to learn about functions better when you do stuff. I've a couple days off to play, so maybe I'll have something cool to show.

[Volker Harun]

Attached is a simple Mandelbrot that feeds a Voronoi Diff Scalar ... and the shader preview.

You might want to go into a direction like this

I have no idea how to blend areas properly for now.

Volker

[cyphyr]

Great work VH, thanks for sharing
Richard

[Henry Blewer]

Thanks Volker. I saved the image so I can see what's up. The preview image looks intriguing.

[Volker Harun]

Here is a quick, dirt render.
The nice point of using those formulars is that the falloff is not symetrical and gives nicer patterns close to 0|0|0.

[Henry Blewer]

Can the large patch be centered anywhere? The rest of it would make great pavers, or dried mud.

[Volker Harun]

In the upper post with the node network: Send the get position to a transform shader and give those results to the X- and Z-scalar.
You can change the origin inside this transform shader.

Beware, this Mandelbrot-distortion is only 2-dimensional - on far away distances the scale of the Y-axis is relativly large.

Volker

[Henry Blewer]

A distance shader with constraints multiplying by scale may fix that. Thanks!