Coverage question

[kevnar]

When you throw down a surface layer and want the coverage less than 100%, how do you make it so the surface layer is a more hard edge instead of a fuzzy blur? In other words, I want the surface colours to be distributed as solid patterns, like an alititude constraint with a fuzzy zone of zero. Can you set the fuzzy zone of the coverage setting to zero? I asked this a few months ago and someone suggested the painted shader but I don't want to go and draw every little vein and speckle of colour in every little rock. 

Thanks in advance.

[dandelO]

Make the contrast and roughness in the blending shader high, that'll do it.

[kevnar]

Make the contrast and roughness in the blending shader high, that'll do it.

And if there is no blending shader, add one? What kind? What settings?

[dandelO]

Well, I'd normally use a power fractal. Set it to a high contrast and roughness and then the coverage slider would apply information based on that pattern.

The coverage slider is then kind of like a colour adjust shader, or the colour offset setting seen in fractal shaders.

[kevnar]

I think I figured it out. I added the powerfractal in the Blend By Shader box. And then I adjusted the "white" pattern to whatever I needed by playing with the color offset setting. Then I slid the coverage of the surface layer up to 100%. You're basically using the colour offset of the blending shader as the coverage adjust. The more white, the more coverage. Then you can set the pattern with the scale and noise settings.

That's exactly what I needed. Thanks, Dan.

[dandelO]

It works much the same as a cloud layer v2's coverage slider - when no density fractal(essentially just a blending shader) is used then there will be a complete, foggy coverage that only increases/decreases in overall coverage/density when adjusted.
Once you use a density fractal, though, the cloud surface layer then has something to read as a blend shader and controls coverage based on the density fractal, instead of a completely foggy coverage.

It's just the same idea for a surface layer or distribution shader's coverage.