Sub-surface illumination & Procedural holes and tears

Started by jritchie777, November 13, 2009, 04:48:05 AM

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jritchie777

I'm only an amateur at this so any gurus will probably want to skip this. :)  Anyway I screwed up following the instructions on the wiki site for "smooth and sexy terrain" and stumbled upon a neat side effect.  A shader that tears holes and shears in your terrain that you can adjust with slope and terrain height.

1) open the tgd file attached and look at the Shaders tab.  I have a shader that is called Holes Surface Layer.
  a) Use slope and altitude to control how much to rip into the landscape and the key is to use a negative displacement multiplier.  Don't go too deep since render time increases quite a bit.  Crank the shader up enough and it will turn the terrain into swiss cheese.  Disable the lake in the water tab to see the terrain for what it is.
  b) I adjust the altitude just enough to get some holes in the base of the mountains in the distance plus the luminosity setting up a notch and it gives a nice glow along the surface of the water.

2) I tried embedding a light in the surface (sub surface that is) but did not like the effect.  I stumbled upon a post that suggested lower surface lighting.  On the Shaders tab - the shader called Underground Light Source controls this effect.  What I'm using to give the phosphorescent algae.  Again if you turn off the lake you will see the raw color of the shader, mostly blue and white which you can control mostly through the Luminosity setting.  The neat thing I found using the Altitude constraints and the strength you can get neat effects of the landscape, even parts that don't break the surface show a glow making this a nice low effect for low light scenes.

One other tidbit about the Holes Surface Layer shader, it too is basically controlled with the Luminosity on the top level with a power fractal to help give it substance and blend into the terrain.  Hope anyone that reads this finds it interesting.

Happy rendering!!
JR