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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: treddie on September 06, 2017, 03:38:59 PM

Title: Surface Layer Color problem with Unwanted Displacement
Post by: treddie on September 06, 2017, 03:38:59 PM
Hi again.

I am tearing my hair out on this one.

I have been working on this project, adding new surface layers, objects, etc.  Then, when I added a 14th Surface Layer, this problem cropped up.
I have been adding more and more SL's, some with displacement and no problems have come up, until this 14th layer.  This layer is different in that I am projecting a noise pattern as a color mask, roughly perpendicular to the cliff faces.  The texture is altitude limited to just the cliffs.  But when I apply the color, I get strange displacement "spikes" as shown in the attached image, even though displacement is zero.  I want projected color through the mask, nothing else.

I had read a few threads that talked about surface layers interacting with compute normal, so I tried a test by putting this layer before the compute normal, and that almost worked except that what got projected was very strange...like bright red and yellow colors even though the image was grayscale.

Please see attached image with explanations and settings.

[attach=1]
Title: Re: Surface Layer Color problem with Unwanted Displacement
Post by: cyphyr on September 06, 2017, 04:34:11 PM
Hi Treddi
I'm not sure if this will help but ...
I don't see the need for the distribution map shader is since it is only repeating the settings of the surface layer.

Try removing it.
Title: Re: Surface Layer Color problem with Unwanted Displacement
Post by: treddie on September 06, 2017, 05:57:29 PM
And didn't even see that!  Thanks for pointing that out.

I removed it because like you said, it's redundant.  But the problem still remained until I tried Surface Layer > Effects Tab > Intersect Underlying, and set those sliders really really low.  Not sure why that works, but the test I am in the middle of doing looks like the problem is gone, when I do that.
Title: Re: Surface Layer Color problem with Unwanted Displacement
Post by: treddie on September 06, 2017, 06:57:13 PM
Well, it KIND of worked.  It painted the masked color onto the cliff, but the color did not obey shadow areas.  It was like I just went into photoshop and painted opaque 1-color splotches over the cliffs.  The color was also not what I dialed in at the Surface Layer.
Title: Re: Surface Layer Color problem with Unwanted Displacement
Post by: Dune on September 07, 2017, 02:35:00 AM
Intersect underlying is taking the terrain before any compute terrain and smoothes it (if smoothing is checked). That may result in weird spikes if not used carefully. I suggest not using that setting or at least turn off smoothing.