Quote from: Dune on Today at 02:08:57 AMIf you use a soft enough map the transition can be regulated through color adjust shaders, and you can use different seeds/fractals/displacement maps for bathymetry or dry ground, using that map as mask or inverted mask. Even use a third fractal for transition areas. So a lot is possible.
Also, displacement can also be fed by color, preferably unclamped. A (blue) smooth step can be used to 'flatten' peaks in a smooth way.
I wish I knew how to do any of that. Lol. I wish there was a tut out there on how to shape your landmasses the way you want them without sacrificing closeup terrain detail and cloud use. The biggest thing I can't get my head around is controlling displacement direction. It seems displacement will only go both ways along the Z axis. Is this changeable/controllable?
In other words if sea level is 0m, how can I get the default terrain displacement to only go UP, not down as well below a set limit? If this can't be done it's a major limitation that certainly needs to be on the list of enhancements. For a program this capable how can there be no way to limit negative displacement?
So let's say the seafloor is an average depth of only 304 meters for a small habitable moon. Is there a way to set the max negative displacement to stop the random seed from creating deep holes that far exceed that average? If so, how exactly is this done?
I've managed to get the basic look of what I want but this rig has a few major issues. The only way I was able to get the custom land shapes with the default terrain enabled was to use a grayscale displacement map in my landmass shape and crank up the displacement to 25000 meters. Go much lower then because the default terrain engine displaces up and down (which makes no rational sense whatsoever) the only way to get the landmass shape intact was a LOT of displacement that pushed up the default terrain high enough above the ocean sphere that it was all on dry land.
This creates a substantial issue with terrain detail and cloud functionality. Basically, making those useless. From my experimenting thus far it seems there is no controllability for procedural terrain max/min altitude beyond random seed that includes negative altitude displacement that cannot be turned off or limited. If this can be done please! Someone, for the love of the King and all that is holy give me a step by step or a link to a tut that explain this in detail!
Why is it so difficult to create custom landmasses in conjunction with the full procedural functionality of the software with a global ocean that has realistic depth falloff? Low orbit is really the pinnacle of success here. Creating beautiful terrain down low near surface level is easy. Creating gorgeous full planet views is as well. Yet getting a low orbit shot with all details isn't simple. The key is control over displacement direction within the PF shaders.
