Hello.
Some of you know, I write science fiction stories and create the environments for my stories with World Creator and Terragen but I would like to go further!
I would like to make my environments more realistic and I am new to the world of 3D environment so I need help.
My main objective is to make my textures more realistic. What do I mean by that? When I work on an environment, I create my terrain, apply a texture and then I make a rendering but in the end, my terrain is "flat", it has no relief! I have the color of my texture but my texture is not in 3D, I don't know if you know what I mean?
How can I fix that ? If I want a "salt desert" type soil ( or other ) , how can I get relief textures?
Do you know of any tutorials (with terragen or World Creator) to do this?
Some people told me about websites like megascans, quixel, substance designer, poliigon but I don't know what I need to do and how, especially on Terragen ( or world creator )
Same problem. any guidance is much appreciated.
I'll try to get my Salt Falts (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25898.0.html) project to Danny over at NWDA that you can inspect. I created a salt flats texture based on a grayscale displacement (which means it can be orthographically project and exported easily) and apply subtle colouring. I've never tried doing tutorials before, and not sure how my PC would handle recording Terragen but maybe I'd give it a try if there was interest.
Same as the terrain is built with displacements, you can use smaller displacements for smaller relief and terrain features. Mixing several types and coloring those by using masks (which can either be procedural, like PF's or simple shapes, or drawn in painted shader, or imported greyscale tifs or so), will get you the smaller reliefs on your terrain. It takes experimentation or reading older posts, downloading tgc's or tgd's to find out what you need.
Those smaller displacements are best done after the compute terrain, which saves render time (computing costs, and more nodes costs more). There are fake stones, you can make fake grass with fake stones too. Lots of examples to be found here.
I hope this helps a bit.
The First Scene tutorial talks about color and texture. You use the same basic tools, just with lots of layers, mixed in various ways, different noise flavors, different levels of coverage, etc. And displacement where it is needed, but you can do a lot without it too.
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorial_1:_Creating_Your_First_Scene
- Oshyan
Quote from: WASasquatch on December 09, 2018, 12:03:14 AM
I'll try to get my Salt Falts (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25898.0.html) project to Danny over at NWDA that you can inspect. I created a salt flats texture based on a grayscale displacement (which means it can be orthographically project and exported easily) and apply subtle colouring. I've never tried doing tutorials before, and not sure how my PC would handle recording Terragen but maybe I'd give it a try if there was interest.
Yes, please make a tutorial.
Quote from: Oshyan on December 09, 2018, 01:48:58 AM
The First Scene tutorial talks about color and texture. You use the same basic tools, just with lots of layers, mixed in various ways, different noise flavors, different levels of coverage, etc. And displacement where it is needed, but you can do a lot without it too.
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorial_1:_Creating_Your_First_Scene
- Oshyan
Is it possible to be more specific? I've gone through it and still have no clue. It doesn't address it.
Quote from: Dune on December 09, 2018, 01:40:32 AM
Same as the terrain is built with displacements, you can use smaller displacements for smaller relief and terrain features. Mixing several types and coloring those by using masks (which can either be procedural, like PF's or simple shapes, or drawn in painted shader, or imported greyscale tifs or so), will get you the smaller reliefs on your terrain. It takes experimentation or reading older posts, downloading tgc's or tgd's to find out what you need.
Those smaller displacements are best done after the compute terrain, which saves render time (computing costs, and more nodes costs more). There are fake stones, you can make fake grass with fake stones too. Lots of examples to be found here.
I hope this helps a bit.
If you could take this one step further to illustrate it, it would be great. An example would definitely do. Thanks in advance.
If you are using Surface Layers for your color, you need to plug something into the Displacement input of a Surface Layer to get displacement ("relief", as you called it). The easiest way to do this as a start (though not necessarily the best), is to plug the Fractal Breakup shader that you already have with your Surface Layer into the Displacement input of the same Surface Layer. Initial results may be quite rough (the default Roughness in the Fractal Breakup is fairly high at 5), but you can either reduce Displacement Multiplier in the Surface Layer to 0.1 (to start, experiment from there), or you can reduce Roughness in the Fractal Breakup shader on the Colour tab to around 1 (again, adjust to your preference).
If you are already using Power Fractal shaders instead of Surface Layers for color, then literally all you need to do is go to the Displacement tab and check the Apply Displacement box, then adjust Amplitude, Roughness, and other settings to your preference.
There is a lot of experience and skill that goes into creating good surface shading, but that is the way you start to add "dimension", "relief", etc. to your textures.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 09, 2018, 11:55:19 PM
If you are using Surface Layers for your color, you need to plug something into the Displacement input of a Surface Layer to get displacement ("relief", as you called it). The easiest way to do this as a start (though not necessarily the best), is to plug the Fractal Breakup shader that you already have with your Surface Layer into the Displacement input of the same Surface Layer. Initial results may be quite rough (the default Roughness in the Fractal Breakup is fairly high at 5), but you can either reduce Displacement Multiplier in the Surface Layer to 0.1 (to start, experiment from there), or you can reduce Roughness in the Fractal Breakup shader on the Colour tab to around 1 (again, adjust to your preference).
If you are already using Power Fractal shaders instead of Surface Layers for color, then literally all you need to do is go to the Displacement tab and check the Apply Displacement box, then adjust Amplitude, Roughness, and other settings to your preference.
There is a lot of experience and skill that goes into creating good surface shading, but that is the way you start to add "dimension", "relief", etc. to your textures.
- Oshyan
Thank for your help Oshyan.
I tried something with the" Fake Stone Shader " and voilà !
[attach=2]
I feel like it's really interesting results! Is it possible to place a different colour on these "stones" ? Different of terrain colour ? Or create a mask to apply the rocks only on this mask ?
(I would like to point out that I have placed my fake stone shader above the shader of my terrain, maybe with other settings or another configuration we can do more interesting, more accomplished things )
Quote from: iaminonsiner on December 10, 2018, 04:53:49 AM
I tried something with the" Fake Stone Shader " and voilà !
[attach=2]
I feel like it's really interesting results! Is it possible to place a different colour on these "stones" ? Different of terrain colour ?
(I would like to point out that I have placed my fake stone shader above the shader of my terrain, maybe with other settings or another configuration we can do more interesting, more accomplished things )
I'm having trouble posting pictures here lol
[attach=1]
This image is my planet " Sama " without without the " fake stone shader "
Another test :
[attach=1]
I just see another shader like " Surface shader glass " so, can we put this shader only on the rocks I create before with the " fake rocks shaders " ? Or another configuration to have differents results ?
Fake stones usually go under the compute terrain, after the base color you can add a surface shader which carries stones as child. There you can color stones and mask them (either by masking the surface shader they are child of, or the stones themselves).
Quote from: Dune on December 10, 2018, 05:56:38 AM
Fake stones usually go under the compute terrain, after the base color you can add a surface shader which carries stones as child. There you can color stones and mask them (either by masking the surface shader they are child of, or the stones themselves).
Thank.
for those who want to learn how to use stones, here is a tutorial that I am following absolutely awesome! :
https://martin-brunker.de/index.php/terragen-tutorials/fake-stones-tg-2.html
For example, this is what I have in 10 minutes :
[attach=1]
If someone here had the time to explain how to put stones in a specific place ( with masks), if they didn't hesitate to do so, it would help me a lot and it would help other people.
I tried with someone on a Discord and I took him a lot of time and I have a lot of difficulty to get a result and I don't want to take all of her time so... It would be really cool.
On my side, I'll run some tests to see if I can do it alone but I doubt ;D
Thank you guys.
Here's a very simple, basic way to mask distribution of stones.
Quote from: Dune on December 11, 2018, 01:17:20 AM
Here's a very simple, basic way to mask distribution of stones.
I see the results and I see what I need to do but I don't know how to do, it's a problem. I understand all the elements but I can't understand how to mix them and get a good result...
@iaminonsiner - Not to boast myself too much, but I have made some really nice-looking rocks in a not-too-distant past:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,24085.msg243325.html#msg243325
I am sure I saved them as a clip file somewhere. I can share it or send it to you if you're interested.
Indeed, it is a good result! I have worked a lot on the stones on my side and I manage to have beautiful stones like the others, my new issue is for the masking and succeeding to put stones in one place and not on the rest of my terrain, just this.
I quoted myself by error and I don't know how to delete this post so... ;D
Stones can simply be masked with a use of a painted shader if you prefer to hand-pick place them. You can also use one of the SSS variations - these also offer good masking and a great deal of control. However, it is tough to decide which of these offers the most realistic results. ;) Sometimes even a painted shader may offer more natural solutions despite generally being most artificial!
A tip on the stone coloration if I may suggest - It is good to have several, varied power fractals to do colors but each power fractal should only have one color enabled. Why? Because if you have two-colored power fractal, then it will completely cover all colors beneath and you will need to use mask to leave some empty spaces.
If you have a one-colored PF, then other, lower-laying colors will show through the empty spaces without you having to use masks! First you apply, say, gray and only gray, then black, then brown, then bordeaux etc, etc.
If you are generally happy with your stones so far, these tips should not be black magic to you. You may save them for a future use though. ;) And of course, let us know what else do you need.
Also of note, NWDA has some nice stones setups:
http://www.store.nwdastore.com/surfaces
- Oshyan
Are stones the only way to create details? How do I get a small scale displacement at the terrain level that I can take out of Terragen as part of the heightfield and still see it when the heightfield is imported in another software
No, any displacement will do. But exporting small details will need a huge and very detailed exported file. If at all possible, that is.
Is it possible to get a screen print showing the node to use and where to place it (network view), the values (properties windows) and a render.
Only for the small level displacement, nothing else, just the default scene + the displacement.
Quote from: lookdev on December 12, 2018, 04:06:08 AM
Are stones the only way to create details? How do I get a small scale displacement at the terrain level that I can take out of Terragen as part of the heightfield and still see it when the heightfield is imported in another software
This is exactly what I explained earlier in the thread:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,26069.msg258995.html#msg258995
- Oshyan