How would one go about populating a simple shape with all attached shaders?
So if you wanted an effect (say a spire (or whatever you like) and you used a simple shape to mask the base terrain so that the terrain raised up only in the borders of a simpShape (with some fuzz), and you wanted to populate that effect with a little variation (just scale/size maybe), say about 100-200 times, how would you do that?
As of now all I can think of is to copy the SimpShape mask and all plugged in nodes and paste them the number of times that I need. And then adjust them individually for location and settings.
As usual this is a specific thing I am stuck on, and I cant think of another reason right now why others would want a way to populate a simple shape (or any other non-object node). Curious if anyone else has tried to do something in a way that it would be useful to them to populate a series of nodes?
In this case I don't mind too much doing the copy and paste, as moving the simple shape is pretty easy can can be done wile the preview is paused. And in that way I can really design my terrain layout. But the problem is I end up making a repeating specific effect look well distributed from only a few POVs. Where as a populate method would randomize and distribute in a better way.
Hope this makes sense, if not, read it again.
The spire example above was just any easy example. In my case I am layering masked terrain effects (via SSS as a limiting factor) over other masked effects.
I've read it a few times, but can't understand what you really want. Can you draw it or post a tgd?
This might do some of what you want:
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Shader_Array
Matt
Quote from: Matt on November 08, 2014, 05:05:57 AM
This might do some of what you want:
http://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Shader_Array
Matt
QuoteThe Shader array creates an array, or grid, of shaders. You might think of it like a populator for shaders, although it works on a regularly spaced grid rather than random locations like a populator does.
Well, thats got to be about the most perfect first sentence of a link to the wiki, in responce to one of my questions that have ever read ;D ;D
Thanks Matt, never looked at this node before. Based on the description it sounds like what I was after.
The only issue (if I can make it work) would be that its a grid. But I may be able to use that anyway. Will try to learn this node.