Quote from: BPauba on January 05, 2007, 02:27:55 AM
1) is creating a terrain with pure functions realistic? Or will I have to implement procedural terrains and whatnot to get a good looking terrain.
It's difficult at the moment, but that is due to the lack of noise functions, TG2 does not even have a decent stand alone Perlin function. When we get more noises, either with TG2 or though third party add-ins then the worlds your oyster.
Functional terrain are procedural terrains, it's just the function node network is written in C++ and disguised as shaders :-)
I would imagine that many of the people who have tried to use functional terrains are MojoWorld users too, I know Calyxa and efflux are, well Calyxa's a bit more than just a MW user
, MW can be used that way too, its called the 'pro-ui' .
Quote from: BPauba on January 05, 2007, 02:27:55 AM
2) if creating final terrains with functions is not realistic, what are the advantages of knowing how to do it?
It's the difference between able to change the oil and being able to strip down and replace the engine.
What you can do with Power fractal is amazing, but I want to be able to use or change the fundamental
algorithms that it uses rather than just change the settings.
It also allows you to do things that you can't do using Power fratcal, Glen5700 is working on a Dry Mud Shader for example
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=284.0 and efflux has also created some nice textures
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=151.msg1043#msg1043 both of these use the Voronoi functions,
I would also say it encourages use of the Node Network, with is where the real power in TG2 lies.
Quote from: BPauba on January 05, 2007, 02:27:55 AM
3) is there any good reading material that will help me understand functions?
No, it's all guess work at the moment.
I'd advise you to download planetGenesis or World Machine and have a play, then both export ter files that you can load into TG2 to render. I know more about pG than World Machine (because I programmed it). It's much simpler than World Machine but it does allow to play with how a few choice noise function can build very nice terrains.