There's been a lot of talk recently about tutorials and I'd like to talk out an idea. Its hardly even concrete yet but here goes.
There's two issues, peoples desire for a simple solution to their Terragen issues (how do I do this or create that effect?) and the easiest way to actually learn Terragen.
A lot of the time people seem to want a simple solution, "Oh just press that button" (simplified) but with Terragen we have a very open ended system, even the developers express surprise at some of the work that has been created. Hmm, I guess that makes it more akin to a render engine, MentalRay etc in a way. So when someone is asking how to make, say a beach, there are just too many possible ways, possible interpretations and final desired outcomes to be able to give a particularly useful answer. Some times a screen shot or even a simplified tgd file can help. And there is also a distinct desire NOT to do it for the enquirer; part of the joy of this program is finding ones own solutions, something I would not want to take away from the student.
The second part, what is the best way to learn Terragen, is also complicated by the same issues. Only knowing how to make a beach (one method), and then a hill side, add in a forest etc, all separate elements will still not enable one to actually "learn" Terragen. Although an intelligent raid of the File sharing section could I'm sure produce some great images. :) These are all good resources and very welcome but do not teach anything of the principles of why something is done. Learning is done by a kind of osmosis. If you like they could be seen as a teaching resource, the clay and paint. Even the tutorials fall in to the same category, they provide information but only to a specific goal.
To actually learn Terragen a set of principles must be learnt, an operating methodology, a "Terragen Modus Operandi" if you like.
Do you agree?
Some of these principles will be simple logic, understanding the flow of the node structure, some will be more mathematical, the dreaded blue nodes for example. And some will be of an artistic nature, rule of thirds for example. Understanding these (I'm sure there's many more) should be the backbone of a more specific goal orientated learning approach (like we have now with shared files files that do a specific job or tuts that teach a specific method)
So to a question, what would you say were the Primary Principles and Working Methodologies of Terragen, and what would be the best way to convey them.
Sorry for the ramble and please, no disrespect meant on the huge amount of work that has gone in to the resources already at out disposal. This is on a different tack entirely.
Cheers
Richard
Richard, I frankly don't understand what you are saying or asking with this post. It's either too late already for me to get it or maybe you can, hmm, say it differently?
cheers,
Frank
Ghehe, I've read it twice and I'm not sure too.
Just to answer your main question of "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies of Terragen"; I think that as you've said yourself due to the open end nature of TG2 this is a very difficult question to answer.
By The primary principles I think you mean the basic knowledge required? Like:
Understanding hierarchy and flow of data
Understanding types of data
Understanding the powerfractal
Understanding the surface layer and texture coordinate modes
Understanding the renderer
The primary working methodologies are very specific for everyone and is the toughest to answer I'd say.
If you did mean something like order of work I would tend to go for something like this:
Get your basic terrain (duh)
Position the camera and determine scale
Choose lighting and composition. Do both at once as lighting is key to composition and vice versa. So is scale actually.
Basic shading
Detailing terrain
Tweak shading
Clouds
But honestly I don't really stick to this at all times.
So Richard, probably after a night sleep, what do you mean? :)
Cheers,
Martin
I'm not particularly trying to say anything, just looking for another point of view. ;D
Both setups you illustrate above are exactly what I'm discussing and I'm sure there's other ways and other subjects as well, so you get what I mean. If you think its a trivial subject then fair enough, I thought it was an interesting topic of discussion :)
G'night
:)
Richard
I agree with what your saying cyphyr. The problem I see is that no one can do it by them selves. It would take a sort of culture to develop the way you can find hundreds of threads for photoshop topics. No one thread or topic is going to make you a master of photoshop, but when you take the totality of the photoshop community as a whole, everything you could ever need to know is there. Still, a new user would have just as much difficulty with photoshop in terms of sifting through the abundance of information. As a terragen user I would prefer the abundance of information problem for adobe products, to the lack of in formation problem as a TG2 user. But still, the point is I dont think it will ever get easy, but I am looking for faster!
My main over riding problem in using Terragen is the math in the shaders. In school,as a part of some screwy Canadian Social Experiment,I was split from my pals I went to elementary school with and not allowed to study Latin,Physics,Trig, et al and consigned to an arithmathetic level understanding of maths...basically board feet, pitch of a screw, mundane realities which do not help understanding of the "higher math" used buy Terragen.
I feel I'm not alone in being 'left in the dark', unintentionally I'm sure, by my lack of higher math skills.
If there was someway to 'translate' the 'math terms' into a 'layman's English', this would, in and of itself, make TG2 waaaay more accessible to many of us out here.
I totally agree with cyphyr.
I don't want recipes, I want to understand the ingredients.
I agree Richard. There is a eureka moment when you get to understand Colour Space and Displacement.
The math side of things can be very easy. For example, if I want a PF to mask another PF (ie only show PF2 where PF1 is), all you do is Multiply PF1 by PF2 (assuming you only need the colour information rather than displacement). The actual math in this example is as simple as 1 multiply by 1 equals 1, or 1 multiply by 0 equals 0 (where 1 is white and 0 is black). Sure you can us the Blending input of PF2 to do the same thing, but maybe you want several PFs to influence where PF2 is shown, so you may want to Add/Subtract PFs together.
Another simple example is having a bitmap defining a field, and another defining a road that will cut across the field, so you just Subtract the road from the field...
I had no understanding of vectors before using TG and now use them in most projects.
The problem is coming up with a definitive 'way of working' as there isn't only one way of doing anything. The node reference is to my mind all that's needed for your ingredients description, which atm is still being fleshed out, but it's mostly there.
Ghehe, well Jon there's a big hole/gap between being able to grasp PF masking by multiplication of 1 with 0...1 and be able to grasp vector calculation.
The first is easy, even for a "math-moron" like me, but the latter is over my head ;)
If only Volker were here to put this in perspective. He has a very good grasp of what works and why, as do many others here. But, I liked his input. :D
William Vaughan, the Lightwave evangelist, has this knack for making the understanding piece of LW come through and he makes it enjoyable. For one, then, I think we need someone who can do that with understanding...someone who makes it look easier and inspires others to learn by doing it. Oshyan is very good at this as is anyone in the Planetside staff. Franck and TU and Moodflow have all been good at it. Others have been more technical and hence more difficult to understand, but their contributions have been stellar.
I liked it years ago when a handful of people took the initiative to experiment and understand. I learned so much about so many things back then. This is the best way to learn.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 11, 2012, 07:39:43 AM
Ghehe, well Jon there's a big hole/gap between being able to grasp PF masking by multiplication of 1 with 0...1 and be able to grasp vector calculation.
The first is easy, even for a "math-moron" like me, but the latter is over my head ;)
hear hear...this is the main reason most of my tg2 work
has been so pedestrian so far. I get the first part like TU,but as a fellow
math moron, the use of a most of the functions in the list are as opaque marble when I read the names on the list. Not a clue is supplied to my brain by the name of the function as
it's a math term which in my education cycle I never ran into studying
shop math in trade school...which is where I wound up due to the previously mentioned social experiment.
I yet again plead for plain English descriptors that give the layman
some hint of what happens when a function is applied.
I fortunately wound up being a singer/songwriter for all my adult life so by and large higher maths were not terribly relevant and there was no incentive to even care about them till TG2 came along. As I was ejected from High School at 16 yrs old any job I wound up using to supplement my music earnings (very little at the best of times) and generally some form of manual labour requiring little or no brain function beyond the mechanicals of doing the physical part of the job, ie: silkscreen printing, making high quality leather objects (custom work_self created job)
I still maintain that an understanding of Math is *not* required to do a lot of great work in TG. A solid grounding in artistic theory, color, light, etc. is, in my view, more useful for most "average" scenes, in terms of creating realism and beauty. "Blue nodes", etc. are useful for doing creative, unique, new, cool things, but I do not often need them, and when I do I can almost always rely on a simple clip file someone here has created.
As to the original question, I do feel there is a fundamental basis of knowledge that is needed to really understand TG2 and that will help a lot in the *absolutely necessary* continued explanation that is based on that foundation. Frankly much of it is already covered in the basic documentation in terms of network data flow, etc. but there are definitely some missing pieces like clear outline of the data type conversion, explanation of node connection compatibility (why does a Heightfield Load not connect to other nodes but only to a Heightfield Shader, why are the Light Source nodes not connected to anything, etc.).
I don't know that this necessarily translates into a "working methodology" or "philosophy", but I suppose Matt might be able to articulate some kind of "philosophy" of TG. In past discussion this has more take the form of comparisons and references to other apps and approaches that exemplify certain principles rather than a ground-level explanation, but perhaps more can be forthcoming.
The problem is that this fundamental basis of understanding of how TG2 works still fails to actually allow you to "build a cool scene". The reality is that the skills and knowledge needed to do that are very broad and multi-faceted, and only partly to do with TG2 itself and how it works. I'm sure many of you have noticed how some people just take very naturally to TG2, producing excellent images quickly and seemingly without greater experimentation or tutoring than others, while others have labored either publicly or behind the scenes through many iterations, getting better and better, but more slowly. Why is this? Perhaps the people who "just get it" have some other useful knowledge that gives them a head-start on understanding TG, perhaps they just "think like Matt" (hehe). I don't now.
If I had the answer as to how to teach TG2 well, I would be doing a better job of it. There is certainly a lack of completion in the foundational documentation which we are working to address, but I fear even once that is done it still won't be enough for many users. I'm not blaming the users by any means, I just frankly don't know how to really solve the fundamental problems. It seems like a consistent theme that those who do understand how to use TG2 well can explain specific things in specific ways when asked a direct question, but still seem unable to really communicate a more holistic understanding that they may have. Perhaps this is just the nature of complex systems (I tend to think so) and only time and experience will solve it. Ideally experience on real projects, though (preferably) without deadlines. Admittedly a somewhat rare combination. ;)
I do think also that the tools TG2 provides can and will evolve to help users realize their intentions more easily and quickly. But that's a bit out of the realm of what I can address personally.
- Oshyan
For example Oshyan, I had to google scalar and radians and I still don't have a grasp on what the heck they do nor how to use them
It's all 'greek' to me....English as opposed to Math language is what I'm requesting...dumb it down a bit is another way of saying it.....
TG2 for Dummies
Quote from: bobbystahr on January 13, 2012, 04:01:05 AM
For example Oshyan, I had to google scalar and radians and I still don't have a grasp on what the heck they do nor how to use them
It's all 'greek' to me....English as opposed to Math language is what I'm requesting...dumb it down a bit is another way of saying it.....
TG2 for Dummies
When coming up with names for nodes, it's quite important that they're called what they really are Bobby, so that there is some synergy with the outside world, and that you can use that term to look up what a Radian is in Wikipedia for example.
Whether you actually want to get into trigonmetry is a completely different matter, and as Oshyan has quite rightly said, there is no need to use blues to get good results. But I'm glad they're there, because it adds a whole new level of working under the hood to get quite unique results.
If you want to.
What amazes me is that only five years ago, we would never have thought it possible to create a 3D world with such realism and depth and with such infinite possibilities that we couldn't grasp all of it due to your own imaginations. For me, this fact overrides whatever learning curve I've found here and, actually, have found that understanding most of this software product comes pretty easily with some experimentation using just the default values.
Has anyone noticed how much more creative you were when you first started using TG2 and didn't even understand the many nuances with so many possible nodes and formulas, etc.? I miss that and loved it when I was just experimenting.
But, for using TG2 as a professional tool, I think having a few intermediate to advanced "how-to" tutorials for doing some of the following would keep most of everyone happy and propel a level of professionalism to the rest of the movie / TV / animation / gaming tech community -
1. How do I use TG2 to create a skybox?
2. How do I use TG2 terrain in another application?
3. How do I take my animation into TG2 or the other way around (into my version of <application name>)?
4. How do I export planets to another application? (made this one up ;D)
These are just a few examples of solid tutorials Planetside could provide as starting material for many who come here just to do something in a movie, on TV, in an animation or to use for a game. I'm sure there are other ideas as well.
Quote from: Hetzen on January 13, 2012, 11:34:09 AM
Quote from: bobbystahr on January 13, 2012, 04:01:05 AM
For example Oshyan, I had to google scalar and radians and I still don't have a grasp on what the heck they do nor how to use them
It's all 'greek' to me....English as opposed to Math language is what I'm requesting...dumb it down a bit is another way of saying it.....
TG2 for Dummies
When coming up with names for nodes, it's quite important that they're called what they really are Bobby, so that there is some synergy with the outside world, and that you can use that term to look up what a Radian is in Wikipedia for example.
Whether you actually want to get into trigonmetry is a completely different matter, and as Oshyan has quite rightly said, there is no need to use blues to get good results. But I'm glad they're there, because it adds a whole new level of working under the hood to get quite unique results.
and that is what saddens me...without some understanding of these Blues I fear I will reach the end of what I can accomplish with out them...bad enough I am colour blind and am forced to use image maps to get anywhere near what 'normals' see in terms of actual (real) colouring of my projects...maybe a Glossary which translates to Layman's Language, this Math esoterica.
In Imagine 3D, my intro to 3D art, there was extensive use of procedural textures which as Imagine had a TDK available, 3rd party geniuses could create whole libraries of textures for the community(see Worley's Essence Textures...currently available mainly for LightWave and maybe C4D,and Richard J Jennings contributions as well)There's a link to the Imagine which he gave to the community when Imagine3D became AbandonWare in 2000.
I realize you likely won't be able to see them but the package illustrates the variety available...and all with an easily understandable GUI with either sliders or numerical input fields...I guess that's what I'd like for the opaque Blue Nodes. I learned a heck of a lot using those as they seemed to open 'doors of understanding' in simply being able to see what they did by applying them to primitives...in TG2 it would be either a generated or loaded terrain in place of the primitive...maybe I want the impossible but I think not as a lot of TG2 uses very similar GUIs for many parts of creation already ....I live in hope...
Here's that link: http://www.imagine3d.org/modules/wfdownloads/singlefile.php?cid=3&lid=254
and RJJ's page: http://www.shaders.org/rjj_textures/index.htm which shows all his offerings for a number of programs...Here's a page with the requestor GUI: http://www.shaders.org/ifw2_textures/sshots.htm
Honestly I think there's no single user here who's work with TG2 would be very inhibited because of lack of knowledge of blue nodes.
There's SO much you can do without the blue nodes.
The blue nodes indeed offer flexibility when you want "less procedural" solutions for some aspects of your work, but I do not believe at all they are essential for good work/results/understanding of TG2.
It just adds another layer, as Jon pointed out, but beneath that (or actually above, since the 'normal' nodes are a lot complexer than blue nodes) there's also a virtually endless amount of possibilities which, frankly, most here only just scratched the surface of.
Don't get me wrong, I do not intend to brag here, but I feel the need for blue nodes is only when the regular nodes don't offer enough flexibility and not when the user is limited by his experience or knowledge of the foundations.
Things get full circle then as it eventually is about Oshyan's previous post.
This is a difficult matter, but don't believe or let one make you believe that understanding blue nodes equals understanding TG2.
Indeed you don't need the blue nodes, but why put them in front of me and not tell me what they are. Or am I reading this thread wrongly?
Yes you are in my opinion. Hence the title. In my opinion blue nodes are not a key part of the "Terragen Modus Operandi" or "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies".
Quote from: Tangled-UniverseIn my opinion blue nodes are not a key part of the "Terragen Modus Operandi" or "Primary Principles and Working Methodologies".
Agreed ... although ...
The blue nodes do I believe describe and control a lot of what's happening "under the hood" so a better understanding of one leads to a better understanding of the other.
I could be wrong (that would not be a first!) but I believe that many of the effects created by "normal" nodes are in fact being created by what amounts to blue nodes hidden within them. Essentially, a Power Fractal, for example, is a bunch of blue math nodes encapsulated in an easy to use format. (Am I right here or did I just make that one up ?!?)
I know for example that the Power Fractal, Cloud Fractal and the Fractal Terrain and basically the same thing but with differing default values and biases on the sliders. I also know that Perlin Billows is the reverse of Perlin Ridges. These nuggets I have gleaned only through years of experimenting.
There's a word that Oshyan used, "holistic"; I was going to use it in my first post but thought better of it. I was also going to use the word "Meta". Both describe the kind of encompassing understanding that it seems only comes with years of trial and error. If we could work out a set of basic principles that would be understood right at the outset of learning Terragen I'm confidant the learning process could be sped up considerably.
Oh and Bobby, I hardly use the blue nodes at all. FrankB's advanced cracks (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6432.0) in the file sharing section is as far as I've got and hey, he made those! :) So whilst I agree it would be great to have a better understanding of them its by no means necessary.
:)
Richard
I see your point Richard, but if you look at my very first post in this topic, there I summed up a couple of things which I find a LOT more important to know first before getting interested in blue nodes.
You're essentially right that a powerfractal internally is a mathematical representation of a possible blue node network, although that even remains to be seen given the mathematical nature of fractals which you can't reproduce with blue nodes.
There are a number of levels to learning to use TG2. It also depends on exactly what it's being used for. You may be into heightfields and importing models or you may be into procedural planets or even animations.
1: There is using the UI and the various navigations etc. Then there is other basic stuff like rendering settings. After a few renders you know what that does. You will know how to make a terrain, put colour and texture on it and render it. It helps to have some documentation on these basics which is available but with trial and error you will find out this stuff pretty easily.
2: Creating scenes requires knowledge about what will look realistic or at least be somehow a believable scene. This takes a very long time. It doesn't matter what app you are using. You will look at your render and maybe wonder why that atmosphere doesn't look quite right etc. This requires a LOT of experience.
2: You may be able to make great realistic scenes but you need imagination and artistic ability to create a scene and make people want to get lost in it. I think ultimately this is the most important skill because at the end of the day without this, the end result will lack.
3: There are some technicalities to do with 3D thinking in terms of geometry and maths associated with it, for example trigonometry in particular. The maths of this is not rocket science. I just try to learn how to get the results as I go along. You do not need complex maths understanding at all to use blue nodes because most of the time you are simply using them to create a few simple effects, not constructing some incredibly complex geometry. Add, subtract and multiply and the ones you'll use most often. I guess you could construct very complex shapes in TG2 but beyond a certain point, any complex geometrical shapes would be handled in another app and brought in as a mesh. HOWEVER, this is my first critique. The blue nodes should have basic explanations about the maths functions they perform i.e. what a bias is, but it must be visually represented with how this would effect geometry. Something along these lines should be on the planetside site:
http://www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/maths_intro.html
4: This is the biggest problem. There is a lack of info about how TG2 really works in terms of how different data flows happen with various nodes and shaders. What input expects colour or automatically changes the data type etc, where are things getting coordinates from, what exactly does the warp shader do in specific terms of the shifting the geometry data etc etc etc. What the hell does "mix" mean exactly. I know I keep harping on and on about Mojoworld on this forum but I have to again here. I'm not using it now, it has problems but a manual is not one of them. There is a 447 page paper manual which scratches the surface of how to use Mojoworld and how all the nodes can be made to interact to get certain effects.
what are those blue nodes you are talking about ?! ;D
I disagree with Efflux on point 4. What he perceives as the biggest problem never was a problem at all for me. Mostly TG2 does the conversion of scalar/color for me unnoticed. It never stood in the way, it just works most of the time automatically. At some point you figure out that some shader inputs only take color or scalars or displacement, easy peasy.
Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.
Regards,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on February 10, 2012, 06:27:22 PM
Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.
This is coming in v2.4 ;) But you can still browse the Node Reference by hand:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Node_Reference
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Matt
Quote from: Matt on February 10, 2012, 06:36:22 PM
Quote from: FrankB on February 10, 2012, 06:27:22 PM
Also, Efflux, you may haven't noticed but nowadays each node dialog features a question mark button that takes you to the node explanation of the online node library. For most nodes, the explanations are not satisfying, but especially for the blue nodes, the explanations are quite good actually! Check out the bias node, or the modulo operator node, for example.
This is coming in v2.4 ;)
Matt
oops :)
got so used to that it appeared like normal to me!
Quote from: FrankB on February 10, 2012, 06:39:21 PM
oops :)
got so used to that it appeared like normal to me!
No worries. v2.4 has been in development for a long time. We are very close to release now!
The biggest problem in TG2 is displacements. If you use only colour or only very subtle displacements then it can be dealt with and things make reasonable sense. The modes to mix and mask things just work. Where it all falls apart into confusion is with displacements. Try working on a scene where you want to incorporate and carefully control displacements via various masking methods and TG2 descends into utter confusion. If you have used other apps, and I'm not just talking landscape but any app, then control of surfaces can not possibly be easily grasped. I understand the associated complications with surfacing a terrain as compared to just surfacing objects in an ordinary 3D app since landscapes have all sorts of position complications to do with colours and how they match to displacements but still, TG2 is very hard to grasp. In fact, it is my firm belief that absolutely NOBODY here actually fully understands how to use TG2. I am close but I still haven't grasped it completely. There are several things I planned on posting about but due to some complex technical issues I'n trying to get my head around, I haven't managed to finish anything, including several planets I'm working on which are the best I've done yet.
As for connecting to the net via TG2. I never do this. My Windows system goes nowhere near the net (Windows + net = disaster). Not that this is a major issue except that I have to have boot into a Windows partition just to use TG2. Everything else I do is done on Linux.
Also, I would suggest there is another part of the learning curve which I didn't touch on. You may have all the other points mastered but there is also the knowledge of how to use fractals and noise functions i.e. what kind of settings will get certain effects that look like something real. This is really the same skill no matter what app you are using. This is a bit simpler in TG2 because it is limited in this respect but still, it does matter.
The basic problem is that what we are doing in TG2 is extremely complicated. There is no way around this it's just the nature of what an app like this does. This huge learning curve can be really offputting for new users. Anything that helps this is very important. It's inevitable that we'll end up with a handfull of people who master how to do things and it will be frustrating for newbies when they get very slow progress.
Just one thing I think we need is default planets. I've been messing with ideas recently where I've been setting up simple arrangements of blue nodes that effect each other i.e. you have all the technicalities of how things relate as blends but details like surfaces etc are simple and left for later. You move one feature or change the terrain etc but everything else follows. This way new users would be able to adjust the artistic bits but the whole arrangement of the planet or scene would not break when they change something if you see what I mean. However, I'm still bogged down with some difficulties.
Just another point about blue nodes. Blue nodes are in fact the easiest part of TG2 because you know what you are doing with them. I'd prefer TG2 to be blue nodes only in essense but it isn't because the power fractal is a red node. If TG2 was only blue nodes I'd be so far ahead with it now because I can build an entire planet with blue nodes no problem at all.
If the fractal had been simply the fractal as a blue node with no other functions built in you'd have got all the Mojo users over here and TG2 would have been so far ahead in the work produced. This is a fact and new users could have picked up how to do things because even although it would be more complex, there are people who would have known how to do things. Red nodes could exist but the fractal should not be locked inside a red node. The other option would be to at least open up the fractal node to more choices.
efflux, you have certainly done great work in TG2 and it clearly displays a deep understanding on your part about fractals and math and everything. That's great.
However I for one am quite happy that there are the red nodes. They are great times savers and make things a lot easier to work with. The last thing on earth that I'd want to do is wire an entire planet based on low level functions. I have that unnamed feeling that most other people are happy to use the high level nodes and not the blue nodes for everyday tasks. Just like most programmers don't use assembler language anymore to program stuff, unless they really have to.
I also tend to disagree with your statement that displacement is hard to grasp in TG2. I can't follow your thoughts here. Maybe you have an example?
I do agree with that it would be nice to have more fracal choices, though.
Regards,
Frank
I actually have little understanding of maths. It's more about manipulating values so whatever I am channeling is sending the right data. This is really just very simple arithmetic but of course it can be hard to think about. I am not really very good at this. Mostly I work it out as I do it then go back to the file later and totally forget how I did it but with a bit of time I see it again. Most operations simply involve getting values back to 0 or 1 and clamping various levels and ranges. I see we have a smooth step function now. This is extremely useful. What makes it harder is not seeing the whole node network in very clear terms and most importantly not being able to change the mode of where various textures and displacements are getting their positions from i.e. position, position in texture etc. This is obviously all achievable with blue nodes. However, since this is not completely controllable in the red nodes you have to work around it. I understand why certain things in the red nodes are the way they are but any limitation on what you can set ultimately leads to some brick wall somewhere down the path where you need something to be different.
Some good points Efflux and I'm the same as you in terms of my math skills. It's more about logic and getting number ranges to fall between 0 and 1 to drive other functions/masks/blending, than hardcore trigonometry.
This is all from your perspective of course Jon and Efflux :)
I clearly remember how many times you tried to explain your blue node networks to me Jon.
I really suck at math, or better said 'blow', since if I'd suck it then it would get in to me which obviously does not ;) lol
Of course it is Martin, and I appreciate that different people have different approaches to solving similar problems.
But some problems need to have a low level approach to solve, like flattening a road along it's width and smoothing it's length, or getting a wave to break at a certain altitude, or modulating an altitude constraint in a surface layer, or getting clouds or water to animate without ease in out keyframes, or change seasons over a frame range, or create an interesting fractal to change population colours over it's area.
These all need blues to some degree to solve, and some of them are in fact very simple, like the cloud animation discussed in the other thread.
I think working in colour space has far more flexibility than purely using displacements, so an understanding of getting things to work between 0-1 is essential for getting more advanced effects out of TG. Even if you are just explaining what a mask is.
I know it all sounds very dry and off putting, but one of the major attractions of TG is its open architecture, which shouldn't really scare people away. Although working through someone else's logic can lead to very dark places....
Eflux, hopfully there will be some default shaders and enviroments in later versions, kinda like the ones in terragen 0.9
I started writing this massive essay that was a reply here on my thoughts about TG2 other apps, what is different about TG2 compared to Vue and Mojo, the problems with this etc. I think I'll put a hold on that for the moment.
I'm actually looking more into trigonometry at the moment. Now I know why most people here don't learn this stuff at school or just forget it. It's because of the dire way it is taught. I was never interested in this stuff at school either. There are numerous terrible youtube videos. Mostly it's just do this and this and get this result without any underlying theory or even history of the purpose of trigonometry. Get your calculator and press cosine etc. To learn anything properly you have go through the same process of discovery as the initial person who thought it up otherwise you are learning by rote. lots of visuals are also important to understand it because it's not just about numbers. You have to visualise it without specific numbers.
As for blue nodes and red nodes. This sums up my problems with it. There are two questions. Lets leave aside complex use of blue nodes. This will always be reserved for blue nodes because you can't package everything up into red nodes. The basic ideas are about manipulating the profile of terrain or blends of any sort, masking things in any way you need but this is specifically linked to where these forms are getting their position from. Sometimes you dont want a texture to line up with a displacement, sometimes you do or rather you want total control of this any which way even using altitude and slope. Why no slope node just for example? Yes you can create a slope function outside of the distributer but there should be get slope nodes.
The first question is. Can you do all things explained above but with only red nodes? The answer is no but you should be able to. The other question is can you do all these things with blue nodes? The answer is once again no because the fractal is in a red node.
This sums up the problem whether you use blue nodes or red nodes.
Maybe I'll get around to mapping something out in inkscape. How trigonometry effects things and exactly how it works. What you are doing when you slice through a fractal etc. These are the basic things we are doing in TG2.
The way everything is taught is pretty absysmal. I had to completely map out a system in music to do with circle of fifths and musical modes because NOWHERE on the net was this done for all western music modes. Incredible. That is a wallpaper in AVLinux now. I have hundreds of pages on this stuff primarily to do with guitar because the way the whole music system is taught is terrible. No wonder people don't learn stuff at school.
Efflux, You can make red nodes work from different texture coordinates by using a Warp Shader and displacement shaders, but it's a bit convoluted. (I can give you an example if you'd like.) Would it help if every shader had an optional "texture coords" function input, such that plugging in Get Position in Texture would be the same as plugging in nothing, but you'd be free to input anything you like? The graphical syntax would be different from how you'd use noise functions like Perlin 3D Scalar, because the texture coordinate wouldn't be coming in as the main input, but at least you'd have the same abilities. I'm trying to think of a general solution that doesn't involve making "function-like" duplicates of every shader, although that might not be a bad idea and could theoretically be done.
Matt
I would love to see a Power Fractal have a Get Position input. It's pretty frustrating trying to re-create a PF from perlins (and I have tried to do that a few times now). It wouldn't need the displacement side of things either.
Using Warps on PFs really hit render times, especially in clouds.
Quote from: Matt on February 17, 2012, 07:59:53 AM
Efflux, You can make red nodes work from different texture coordinates by using a Warp Shader and displacement shaders, but it's a bit convoluted. (I can give you an example if you'd like.) Would it help if every shader had an optional "texture coords" function input, such that plugging in Get Position in Texture would be the same as plugging in nothing, but you'd be free to input anything you like? The graphical syntax would be different from how you'd use noise functions like Perlin 3D Scalar, because the texture coordinate wouldn't be coming in as the main input, but at least you'd have the same abilities. I'm trying to think of a general solution that doesn't involve making "function-like" duplicates of every shader, although that might not be a bad idea and could theoretically be done.
Matt
I think that that would be a great extension.
It comforts me that there are things in TG that even you guys do not fully, get. ;)
Hi Matt.
Yes. Any solution along those lines would be extremely desirable. This is a problem I constantly encounter and have to try to work around:
"First, in a typical Terragen 2 scene, Position in Texture is set by Compute Terrain or Tex Coords From XYZ to provide a consistent value between displacement contexts and colour/lighting contexts for any shaders that are computed after those nodes."
Just on a side note which demonstrates the problems. I've been in Blender's mat and texture nodes. There are absolutely no restrictions at all. It is hugely powerful because Blender also has a big stack of fractal and basis function power. Obviously Blender is limited in other ways because of poly counts and the current internal renderer (although it's very fast) but especially since I've been recently been messing with various trig functions, I am able to arrange materials any which way I want. Get values to blend things by slope etc. It all makes sense but isn't dumbed dumb or hard coded in any way. In fact if I kept working on it I'd probably come up with some pretty impressive simple landscape scenes. I'd rather use TG2 though for obvious reasons.
I'm guessing that the workaround to change coordinates is to reverse them with the warp shader but this is too much of a work around.
I honestly think that the idea of making "function-like" duplicates of at least some shaders is the answer. That way if you don't know exactly what to do you just use red nodes (I do understand the point of putting the red nodes in there) otherwise you use the "function-like" nodes. This would make TG2,s node network basically like how others generally work but especially more like the Mojoworld one.