This is my first real TG2 image, although working with the alpha maps still is not very comfortable.
The river valley is really sloped, so that the river has a heightdifference from start to end of 400m. This is a simple masked river (as the whole shading is more simple). The erosion is a new algorithm of the GeoControl2 alpha.
Rivers are really not so easy. I first had to create a sloped part in the terrain, where a more or less continious slope down is created. I realized it with the isoline tool (new in GC2). Greatest problem for river creating is, that a good fractal creation algortihm tends to prodcue the opposite of a conitinous sloped part. This forces lakes. To avoid here lakes, which break the river line, I used additional the vector tool (also new in GC2) to produce a mostly flat area. I think I did that a bit to much, so the valley looks a bit to flat and the rivers flows a bit to straight. But for a first test (I am the coder, so I had definitly not much time to really work with my "child").
The river itself is created with a special river tool, which forces a flat watersurface and an absolute continious slope down.
When TG2 water transperency is build in, it will be visible, that the river tool does not only form the watersurface, but also the river bed, the underwater parts.
Nice Terrain!!
Yes. I saw this on Renderosity. Very nice.
Yep, I saw it at ReRo, too.
And I am the guy who downloaded the program today, ehh this week, eehhhh month? ;D ;D
About 15 years ago I read a book about river and lake creation on fractal landscapes - and it was quite easy. Just use one of your flow maps, get 1 starting point and go downwards, adding displacements. ,-)
Hi Volker,
well, it is one thing to write in a book, how easy it is to create rivers and another one, to really code them. In the idea you are right: Erosion and rivers have something in common - they both need a starting point and then it simply go downwards.
And that is exact the point, where the commons end.
Why do you think, none of the terrain generators have a river tool, which can work on an imported terrain? Even MojoWorld can do that only on a self generated terrain (where the river network is part of the generation), with an algorithm of James Bardeen, a famous physician.
Well, the book was a guide for programming Terrains and shading it. And the rivers and lakes were coded - on heightfield and planetary scale.
It was very good but slow (I think I had a 286 or 386 then).
I should have the book somewhere around.
Volker
I am sure, everyone here would be faithful, if you write a river plugin for TG2. Should be not as difficult, as you wrote.
LOL - no chance Dude ;D ;D ;D - I have to render nice Pics :)
But I really do not see a problem to create a river from a heightfield. Look at the luminous Flowmap you used on your image ... when masking it, blending it, you have a river - and I can see a lake, too.
What is the main difference, that I can make up my mind?
I really appreciate your effort and after checking GeoControl, I just bought the full version. It is worth its money!
Well,
great to here, that you have bought GC1. How about showing, that you can make better images with rivers? Register to the GeoControl forum (www.cajomi.de/Forum), and you can test GC2, no joke!!
I do not want to speak about all problems, and mostly not about the solutions. I need 6 weeks only for that algorithm, and there is still a lot to improve. This is the maximum time I ever needed for a single algorithm. A good erosion needs about 2-5 days for the base (that is where the river and lake algorithm is - the base) and one week for getting the best out of it (with a lot of testing), and 1 days to full implementation (including slider values, saving and so on).
One great problem in opposite to erosions is, that water has itself a height. So the water is not only floating to the lowest point, but also to the second lowest point. Now simply imagine, how often a flow can be splitted into two flows, and you get a astronomical number for flows.
Another difference: If the water reaches a lowest point it creates a lake and then flows out of this lake. Let us assume, you simply took the lowest point of the lake border. But now the flow stops soon again, because the direction was a dead end, and you create again a lake, which now grows into the first lake. If you look from above with human brain, you would see at once, where the water should flow, but a algorithm has some simple rules to follow, and now this process can take really much time, just because there a really many deadends. Of course this dead ends may split in between, create a third lake or fourth, before running into the final deadend.
The results of this two problems are hanging machines, fast runnings out of memory or, when you begin to avoid the hangings, soon stopping flows.
The better the terrain, the more fine details, the more chances for such problems. A real fluid simulation for water on terrains, to find the river, are at time not possible. What may work, is a real fluid simulation in an before generated river bed, like GeoControl can produce.
on the GC2 website it says its coming this summer....when is the actual release date???
The presets of GC are yummy ;D
And while you wrote your answer I came to the same conclusion. When having a dead end and raising the diplacement planar, there are many intersections to be considered. Meening ... many.
I'll go for your river ... promised.
Hi, Cajomi -
It looks like nice work. I'm going to have to try and play with GC.
Yes I saw this at Renderosity. Nice work.
I rarely ever used the Mojo rivers plugin. It completely sapped computer power.
@dhavalmistry
The final release will take from now on 2-4 months. So I have decided to make a pre-release, in about 2-4 weeks.
Good to know, Cajomi. How do we get to try it out?
There will be a "beta"-demo, time limited. But first access will have all owners of GC1.