Is this a bug?

[MGebhart]

Is this a bug or am I using the Painted Shader incorrectly on my initial attempt?

I was revisiting Ben McDuff tutorial by John and I decided to place a population of trees in the scene.

I created a Paint shader 01 in the Shaders Tab then painted the terrain the way I wanted the trees to follow the terrain. Then I created a tgo population and placed it at the coordinates and re-sized it to to cover the paint shader. Then checked,  Use density shader, and selected Painted shader 01 and selected populate now. The population would fill the entire object population boundary and NOT follow the painted terrain. See Sample Image Sample_01

After this I deleted both the object population and Painted shader 01 from their respective headings and tried a different approach.

This time I  went directly to Start and stop Painted Shader paint session and painted the terrain. (I DID NOT put the Painted shader 01 in the shader tab as a entry). I then created the population tgo and positioned and rescaled over the painted terrain and  then checked , Use density shader, and selected Painted shader 01. I hit populate Now and the tree population follows the painted shader perfectly. See Sample Image Sample_02.

I'm kind of confused.

Marc

[Henry Blewer]

I place the object area first, then map with the painted shader. To create the painted shader, I make it with the Blend by Shader input.

Mostly I just use a distribution shader. I constrain this by altitude and slope so things basically grow where I need them. I use a high density for the population (lower values = more objects). Then use the coverage of the distribution shader to reduce the amount of the population. This makes nice clusters. The fractal breakup helps also. This helps with the clump sizes.

[MGebhart]

So, there is a couple ways to do this and get the same result?

I'll try your technique and see what happens.

Marc

[Oshyan]

The first approach you tried should work properly. Can you reproduce the problem? If so, please save the TGD and post here or send to me.

- Oshyan

[MGebhart]

Oshyan,

Here is the tgd file using the first method. Should you require more information let me know.

Thank you,

Marc

[Matt]

I haven't looked at the TGD but I think the problem is that you have connected the Painted Shader into the main chain of shaders for your planet. It needs to be a separate shader without any other inputs (as seen in the Network View), so that it passes through black wherever you have not painted. Any inputs to the Painted Shader will generate colour and be seen by the Populator as density information, which of course is not what you want.

You can create new Painted Shaders from the paint menu on the 3D Preview, or through the right-click/context menu in the Network View, or by the green "+" button on the appropriate parameter of the Populator.

Matt