Hi all!
I have a question about the painted shader.
What I want to do is to paint some terrain with the painted shader. Not color, or any material, no!
I want to adjust the height and depth with it! (like the terrain editor from E-on's Vue)
I tried to connect several shaders, but I did not managed to do it.
I saw one(1) tutorial about painting a canyon on youtube, but it doesn't explain it good enough to understand
what the person exactly did..
Can anyone help me with this?
Thank you.
Hopefully, I remember this correctly, since I don't see it in front of me.
Once you paint with the Painted shader, you need to hook it into whatever shader will give you the displacement you want, though I've never tried this.
Is this even possible? Yoho! Anyone? Seems like it should work.
What you want to do here is make your paint shader the blending shader of a fractal terrain shader(make sure you also check the 'blend by' box as well as plugging the node into the fractal terrain node), now, that terrain will appear wherever you put a brush stroke.
It's not really a good idea to use only a painted shader to create the displacement as there is only one brush shape and hand painting detail would take forever, and ultimately will lead to an excessive memory consumption, a bug with the painted shader that multiplies the program slowdown with each brush stroke taken, even when using 'erase mode', as it is actually just painting with black, instead of truly erasing.
Ok thank you!
I wanted to create sort of valley's or canyons, and I hoped to paint them a little bit.
Any better direction for canyons or valleys?
Nothing stopping you painting a canyon, then painting on the walls.
Yes, of course. If you're only interested in making the general shape of the canyon then a painted shader would work fine.
I thought you were looking for a way to paint features onto the ground with different brushes and options, like Vue's terrain editor does.
Quote from: Oona on October 03, 2011, 03:15:24 PM
I saw one(1) tutorial about painting a canyon on youtube, but it doesn't explain it good enough to understand
what the person exactly did..
Can anyone help me with this?
Thank you.
I made that video on youtube and it is part of a NWDA package which offers a complete canyon.
The package contains the same Terragen file I used in that video, so without it the video is of no use to anyone. Deliberately.
However, the principle of how to paint a canyonshape is not too difficult and I'll try to explain briefly:
In your default scene go to the terrain tab, choose create terrain and then choose simple shape shader.
Inside the simple shape shader select square shape and give it whatever size you need, depending on the scale of the canyon.
Enable displacement and set the displacement factor to the value of your maximum canyon height. Say 200 for 200m maximum height.
Create a new camera and put it on the same position as your painted shader.
Set the camera altitude to something like 5-8km altitude and have it look down 90 degrees on the simple shape shader.
This is the camera you use for painting.
Make sure the preview uses this camera.
Create a paint shader and with white strokes paint where you want your canyon. For the first time, just try a simple S-shape.
Connect the paint shader to the blend shader port of the simple shape shader, as some others already pointed to.
Inside the simple shape shader make sure the blend shader is activated and that it is inverted. Very important!
Now the simple shape shader will displace the square shape 200m upwards, except where the white paint shader is, since you inverted it.
The advantage of creating a depression in a 200m tall structure is that the bottom of the canyon won't go below 0m.
You could also use a paint shader and displace that down on your default planet, but then you would need to use negative altitude things for everything which just doesn't work very nicely.
You now have an S-shaped depression which you can use as a base for your canyon.
You can play with the paint shader brush size and drop-off to control the steepness of the depression/canyon.
After you're satisfied with the shape you can compute the terrain and start adding more displacements, like redirect shaders and stretched fractals for instance to get interesting rock shapes.
"That's it" in a nutshell.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.
Cheers,
Martin
Hi, and thanks all for all the replies.
Martin, thanks for the small tutorial! I will seriously look into it and show the result!
At the moment i'm playing with some photoshop made road tracks, I managed to get the image on the right place,
now I need to figure out how to apply a heightfield on the terrain (not color, but like real tracks, 1cm pushed in to the ground).
I will open a new topic on that one!
Thanks TU.
Hi dandelO,
Quote from: dandelO on October 03, 2011, 04:22:19 PM
even when using 'erase mode', as it is actually just painting with black, instead of truly erasing.
Just to clarify, the painted shader doesn't paint "black" when it's erasing. It actually paints "nothing". You can paint black strokes and that's not the same as erasing.
You're correct that you're painting another stroke when you're erasing instead of truly erasing. An erase stroke basically stops any strokes that it covers from showing.
If you want to erase a whole lot of a painted shader it might be more efficient to clear the painted shader and start painting again.
Regards,
Jo
Quote from: jo on October 05, 2011, 12:45:14 AM
Hi dandelO,
Quote from: dandelO on October 03, 2011, 04:22:19 PM
even when using 'erase mode', as it is actually just painting with black, instead of truly erasing.
Just to clarify, the painted shader doesn't paint "black" when it's erasing. It actually paints "nothing". You can paint black strokes and that's not the same as erasing.
You're correct that you're painting another stroke when you're erasing instead of truly erasing. An erase stroke basically stops any strokes that it covers from showing.
If you want to erase a whole lot of a painted shader it might be more efficient to clear the painted shader and start painting again.
Regards,
Jo
hee hee...0(nothing)=Black in Terragen...sorry Jo, couldn't help myself . .. ...
Hi Bobby,
Quote from: bobbystahr on November 04, 2011, 12:24:27 PM
hee hee...0(nothing)=Black in Terragen...sorry Jo, couldn't help myself . .. ...
Generally speaking you're right, but there is a difference :-). You can paint coloured strokes with the painted shader. A black stroke is really not the same as erasing. In some situations it might give the same the result but in others it could make a difference.
Regards,
Jo
Quote from: jo on November 07, 2011, 01:42:52 AM
Hi Bobby,
Quote from: bobbystahr on November 04, 2011, 12:24:27 PM
hee hee...0(nothing)=Black in Terragen...sorry Jo, couldn't help myself . .. ...
Generally speaking you're right, but there is a difference :-). You can paint coloured strokes with the painted shader. A black stroke is really not the same as erasing. In some situations it might give the same the result but in others it could make a difference.
Regards,
Jo
actually jo, I've done some tests painting with a sort of gradient approach[white, 3 greys, and black] but the resource necessary to pull one off has so far choked ole slow poke 64...I will persevere though as it
was starting to show promise . .. ...
I'm a total noob so please forgive my ignorance. I too was looking for a way to make canyons but I just went to Terrain...Heightfield generate...'add operator' and selected 'Heightfield-make river'. I then placed the camera super high in the atmosphere,pointed it down and copied the coordinates for where I wanted the canyon to start and end and and made the beginning altitude for the river -400 and the ending altitude -400 and it did exactly as I wanted it to...am I missing something cuz it was easy...? P.s. Terragen classic has a really easy painter to create heights and valleys...didn't they put that in Terragen 2 as well?
must be a very old version you're using as Make River disappeared a few versions back IIRC
oh man that sux...what do you use now to do that kind of thing?
Quote from: jimmahbee on March 15, 2013, 01:12:47 PM
oh man that sux...what do you use now to do that kind of thing?
the Paint shader works well...kind like painting terrains in old terragen. Paint the river on the top down view and then in the terrain editor use the paint shader output in a displacement shader and displace in the negative.. ...
thanx for you reply...I'll have to try and figure out what and where the displacement shaders and input and outputs and all that stuff are...! lol
I think I figured it out...my computer keeps crashing so I'll try again late...thanx again...Jim :'(
Quote from: jimmahbee on March 15, 2013, 05:46:40 PM
I think I figured it out...my computer keeps crashing so I'll try again late...thanx again...Jim :'(
here's a sample project that if you inspect all the editors you'll see what goes where. Just extract the folder to where you keep your projects...image maps are pathed to that dir.. ...
Oh wow that's so cool of you...thanx...
Hi,
In case you haven't seen it, there's a guide for the Painted shader here:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Painted_Shader_Guide
There is an example project showing how you can use the Painted shader to create displacement.
Regards,
Jo
thanx so much again...I read the wiki but I still don't understand something...after I paint how do i tell terragen to use that paint to displace something like making a canyon...what are the steps...keeping in mind I don't know where to go to find all these shaders and displacement stuff...?
P.s. thanx for your help...I really appreciate it...I also need a tutorial about getting my lightwave objects into Terragen fully textured and colored and a tutorial about the rocks in Terragen...the ones I make look horrible but if I use the fake stone shader? it looks good...
Did you download any of the example .tgd files in the linked wiki page?
They include full example scenes that show you where to hook things.
~Micheal
oh ok I'll check there...thanx again
Hate to bother but I have a pressing question...I need to get my lightwave objects into Terragen or Terragen terrains into lightwave...if I send my LW obj into terragen the subdivided surfaces are no longer smooth (can Terragen handle sub ds?) if I import Terragen terrains, LW has a problem keeping the mesh looking good even if I bump up the sub ds to 50 in the objects properties. Is there a solution or should I use some other terrain generating software or can this be fixed by adjusting file output? Is there a tutorial I can watch on the subject? Thanx for all ur help...Jim
You can take your object through (free) Poseray (adjust stuff if needed, or not), and save as object (.obj), which I think is easier to import in TG2.
I believe importing an object from Lightwave should preserve fidelity, unless it's a limitation of the poly count in the geometry export. If you're importing to Terragen as LWO, perhaps the normals are not preserved and object smoothing doesn't work (or it is due to the limitation of geometry in a single LWO object file). I would suggest using OBJ. If you're already importing as OBJ, then it could be an issue with the OBJ formatting and the PoseRay suggestion from Dune could help.
- Oshyan
Thanx for your speedy replies...I really appreciate them...well nothing has worked so far...I've turned my model into triangles...exported them as objs, exported them as 3dstudio max files...everything I can think to do...I upped the smoothing in Terragen, upped the anti aliasing...nothing really worked...it's odd because I even opened them in vue xstream and nothing works...there's still this weird sharp edge...I've included the LW render of how it's supposed to look
Wait, so you're saying it doesn't work when exported and viewed in Vue either? Does the export look correct in *any* other application? It sounds like it might be a problem with the way Lightroom is exporting geometry. Did you try Poseray?
- Oshyan
yes neither Vue or terragen work...both won't import the model properly...I've tried every export method that Lightwave has to offer and nothing seems to work plus I've opened the model and exported from PoseRay and still it's not working...I'm sure it's just 1 setting or something I'm not doing...once again thanx for your help...it's invaluable
Unfortunately I'm out of ideas, but it seems to be more of a Lightwave issue than a Terragen one. Perhaps the Lightwave community would know how to solve it?
- Oshyan
Did you weld the poly's and recalculate (smooth) normals in Poseray?
trying to figure out how to do that...is it a simple step or complex?
Easy. You can choose the parts that need smoothing of normals by unchecking ones that don't in the left row of parts. If you want it all smoothed pick a degree (180 degrees is all extremely smooth, which you get by clicking smooth) or type in your own. First click weld, the recalculate... easy.
I really appreciate your help... unfortunately it didn't work...Vue likes MAYA models so maybe I can get my stuff into MAYA and export it ...we'll see thanx again..Jim
Once again thanx for all ur help...I found a way to make terrains work in Lightwave...I had to go into Vue and export a terrain @ 4096x4096 that took care of all the anti aliasing problems...now to get the texturing to work as well...you really answered my questions quick though...Jim
jimmahbee,
The problem is in the shadows, not the normals. You will need to subdivide your model further in Lightwave to produce a smoother surface.
Matt
oh ok cool thanx! I'll try that!
Wow it actually worked! I didn't even take it into PoseRay yet! I tripled it in Lightwave and then subdivided it using the smooth setting! I'll try subd ing it again and then take it into PoseRay to see what it does...THANK UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUu
P.S. I added a reflection shader...awesome...!