Failed Canyon

Started by Henry Blewer, April 23, 2010, 09:43:41 PM

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Henry Blewer

Failed Canyon Fix.
Here's what I did.

Deleted the merge shader. It did not have any inputs, so it is not necessary.
I added a strata and outcrops shader. The hard layer altitude was changed from 0 to 100. I am not sure how this works.
In the strata and outcrops shader I changed the hard layer depth to 250. This is the spacing vertically between hard layers.
The hard layer spacing was increased to 1000, four times the hard layer depth. I read somewhere that the hard layer spacing should be about 4x the hard layer depth.
I increased the hard layer steepness to 3.6. This make the walls more vertical.
I also increased the plateau buildup to 0.9125. This flattens the top sections of the hard layer spacing.

I added a redirect shader. This using a power fractal for the x and z shader inputs. This shader causes the displacement to be directed on the horizontal parts of the landscape. The y shader inout will alter the vertical direction, which in this case was not needed.
The power fractals feature scale was change from 1 to 100 and the lead in scale changed to 500 from 1000. the feature scale is the size of the overall structure of the power fractal. The lead in scale controls how spaced out the structure is; sort of an oveer all distance.
I changed the samllest scale from 0.1 to 10. I wanted the features to be larger for smaller displacement to be added later.
In the displacement tab of the power fractal, I change the displacment amplitude to 50. This stretches out the features. The displacement offset was changed from 0 to 5. This adjusts the vertical offset.

When you get to the Shader tab for the coloring and smaller displacements, think of the surface layers as enviroments. The rock faces are part of an enviroment, hard and vertically oriented. Using slope contraints works well here. Adding a new surface layer for the sands makes a different enviroment. Again slope contraints work well. This time the max slope should be low. Think of an egg timer and how sand behaves. How much slope until the sand falls down the face. Then adjust the slope to fit how you think the shader looks best.

I hope this helps. Have fun!
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