Every time I make one, I feel like I get a little bit better at it. This is still very much a work in progress, so critique and suggestions are extremely welcome!
0001.jpg
I'm pretty proud of the mid-distant areas of this one, I think I need to make a higher resolution build in World Machine for the foreground, though. Still haven't quite gotten the hang of getting realistic layering for the colors, but I feel like it's a good deal further than I was before.
Let me know what you think!
I like where you've taken this, maybe some colour shaders will spur inspiration to a new iteration.
Very cool terrain shapes. It's unfortunate that the position and view of your camera shows the flat background though. I think you should either fill those in with procedural terrain (something basic but with a bit of color to it), or move your camera more into the canyon so you don't see so far into the distance. The terrain that you're working with is definitely worth further exploration!
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on December 30, 2019, 03:08:08 PMIt's unfortunate that the position and view of your camera shows the flat background though
Maybe make the flat background an ocean? Cool canyon!
Thanks everyone! I've got another build going in World Machine for the background that's just the same terrain built on a much larger scale (80km instead of 8km) at a lower resolution so that it should (theoretically) fit without looking too fake, it's just taking a long time to build (which was expected). That being said, I'm sure if 80km will be enough to fully cover the visible planet, so maybe I will end up moving the camera around, we'll see!
Not bad blattacker as far as the terrain sculpting goes. Colour variations should indeed be implemented, just like Bobby suggested.
That looks very nice already. Have you tried horizontal displacements yet? Not necessarily the strata and oucrops shader, but for example a horizontally stretched power fractal; that might work very well on top of these shapes.
To be honest, this is pretty much directly out of World Machine, even the texture is just the raw export. I want to try some lateral displacement, but I've never quite been able to get a handle on it as far as using it on a heightfield. Should I be plugging the shaders directly into a redirect shader, or is there a step I'm missing?
I mean a simple stretched power fractal, nothing out of the ordinary. That gives a more canyon-like effect. Just an idea. :)
René, that is probably the single most useful project file I've ever downloaded for a project like this! Every time I've tried to do strata coloring in the past, I've piped a strata and outcrops shader into a displacement to vector converter to make a mask which...worked, but wasn't the greatest. Your method is way easy and has much better control, thank you so much!
After a bit of lateral displacement and work on the colors (as in, actually using Terragen shaders to color, rather than just using the exported texture from World Machine), this is where it stands.
0003.jpg
I want to add several more strata layers, and then add in some sand/gravel/talus debris on the lower grade slopes. After that, I think it'll be time to add some sparse vegetation and start working on the atmosphere!
A nice improvement! Looking forward to seeing this continue to evolve. :)
- Oshyan
Echo Oshyan!
Already quite convincing surfaces and structures in the rocks!
Quote from: blattacker on January 01, 2020, 02:04:49 PMRené, that is probably the single most useful project file I've ever downloaded for a project like this! Every time I've tried to do strata coloring in the past, I've piped a strata and outcrops shader into a displacement to vector converter to make a mask which...worked, but wasn't the greatest. Your method is way easy and has much better control, thank you so much!
After a bit of lateral displacement and work on the colors (as in, actually using Terragen shaders to color, rather than just using the exported texture from World Machine), this is where it stands.
0003.jpg
I want to add several more strata layers, and then add in some sand/gravel/talus debris on the lower grade slopes. After that, I think it'll be time to add some sparse vegetation and start working on the atmosphere!
You're welcome, and glad I could help.
Plugging away at this a bit more, I've added a fractal warp shader to add a bit more detail in the terrain, and then got to work a bit more on the actual texturing of the terrain. René, again, I cannot thank you enough, your method has made coloring strata layers, which was previously the bane of my existence, an absolute joy to play around with!
I seem to have some weird undulation in some of the strata layers (though, strangely, not all of them), which has previously been a goal of mine, and while I kind of like it stylistically, after looking at a ton of reference images, it seems that doesn't actually happen in real life, or at least not very often and certainly not to the level I'm experiencing. Trying to dial it in, though, I can't seem to figure out where it's coming from. I never know with using power fractals as color shaders, should I have "Apply Displacement" checked or unchecked? What practical effect does it serve in texturing?
Another problem I've been having is trying to add the sand/talus on top of the terrain. I used to know how to do this, but I seem to have forgotten. I've tried using fake stone shaders, redirect with a distribution mask, and a couple other things I've forgotten at this point, all with disastrous results. Looking back at previous posts that I've done (I could have sworn I got the answer to my troubles here, but I must have gotten it in some kind of video tutorial at some point), people have suggested using a simple shape shader to smooth off coastal areas. I never quite figured that method out, could someone possibly explain it in greater detail (even if it's not quite applicable here, I'm sure I'll learn something useful for down the road)? And failing that, if anyone has suggestions for adding sand and larger form gravel onto a heightmap based terrain, I'm all ears (or, rather, all eyes)!
That being said, I seem to always say this about my current projects (which I guess is a good thing, since it implies progression), this is shaping up to be, in my opinion, one of my best looking projects to date!
0004.jpg
If you just use the color of a PF, it doesn't matter if displacement is checked or not, but if you plug the pf into a child input, then it will influence displacement of course. Using the 'distort by normal' will have influence, and may be interesting for you to experiment with. A small value, like -1 to +1 would give a subtle breakup of that color onto a displaced terrain, e.g.
Applying a sand/rock surface to a talus area would need a mask to distinguish those areas from the rest; then just add sand and rocks and colors to a child of a surface layer masked by that mask. If that's what you meant to ask.
That is very helpful, and I'm definitely gonna be looking into the distort by normal feature, it's been suggested before, I'm just not quite sure I fully understand it. No better way to learn than by trying though!
As far as the sand/rock, I guess the part that I'm getting stuck on is less masking the area out and more of actually making it look like there is sand/gravel on the surface, rather than just sand/gravel colored surface, if that makes sense? I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job of explaining it. The heightfield that was exported from World Machine has a talus mask, but the lateral displacement added in Terragen has essentially made those areas just look like more rock, as far as surface texture. I'm trying to find a way to either smooth out the masked area, and/or add new displacement information on top of the masked area.
Update on the weird undulations, though: After literally an hour and a half of trying a frankly embarrassing amount of things to try to fix it, I happened to stumble upon a combination of colors and settings that showed me the strata layers weren't experiencing weird distortions, there were just a lot of dips and rises in the actual terrain that I didn't quite recognize the perspective shift on. So that's one mystery solved!
If you don't want lateral displacement on your talus, then mask the laterals out by the inverted mask. Then you can apply any sand/rocks on those taluses, masked by that mask.
I appreciate the help, but that still isn't quite what I was trying to ask. It turns out, though, that I'm just a big ol' dummy, and wasn't actually applying displacement to the areas I was meaning to. I was applying a mask and then checking "Apply Displacement" in the pf for the mask like that was gonna do something. Adding displacement to the actual surface shader (and also adding displacement functions) turned out to be exactly what I was trying to do. Trying it next with a fake stones shader plugged into a transform merge, since that's where my mind is taking me.
Quick question about applying a pf to a transform merge shader though: If I have a color applied to the pf, does that essentially force the mask that it applies for displacement to a non-white value? For example, if I applied just a straight black and white pf and adjusted the displacement to where I wanted it, and then made the high color of the pf, say, a dark brown, would I then have to adjust the displacement settings to get the same amount of displacement as when the high color was white?
Alright, I've got a couple possibly weird questions now. I've almost completely reworked the shader network, so you'll see that the terrain has changed a bit. That being said, I'm experiencing some weird pinching, swirling, and/or spiking of the terrain when applying transform merge or redirect shaders. I've highlighted a few problem areas in the second image, but does anyone have any tips on how to avoid or minimize that effect? I'm starting to wonder if I should be building my World Machine terrains at lower resolutions before bringing them into Terragen so that there's less detail to get distorted in odd ways, since I'm doing a lot of terrain modifications in Terragen. Any thoughts on that?
0006.jpg 0006_problemAreas.jpg
Onto a slightly weirder question, I'm also in a conversation on the World Machine forums with a guy who's given me tips on achieving a more realistic looking surface, but the level of detail in some of the examples he's showing me is insane. One thing he mentioned is I might have too low of subdivisions to achieve that effect. If I remember correctly, Terragen doesn't use traditional subdivided polygons for renders, so I'm wondering if the micropoly detail setting is the end-all-be-all for surface detail, or if there's a setting I'm missing/neglecting somewhere? I'll admit, when it comes to detail level, I'm much more experienced in something like Cinema 4D. I always tend to do large panoramic scenes in Terragen because with my current knowledge level, the details kinda break down when you get closer to the surface, but that is something I'd like to work on, so if anyone has suggestions or resources for that, I'd love to hear!
You ask complicated questions, and I don't understand where the transform merge shader comes in. That only shifts/rotates/resizes any input and merges those together again. So adding a color and displacement PF will just merge those where one is altered. Good for more variation but not as masking per se.
A color applied to a masking PF will reduce coverage indeed with the amount of grey that color constitutes. So answer to second question is yes. But I would not make the high color dark brown to begin with, certainly not for masking purposes. If you need to use dark colors for color mixing better use the low color anyway, and perhaps uncheck high color.
Pinching and whirling is hard to control if using lateral displacements with very small sized fractals or rough fractals. It's best to build up the terrain big to small, so big displacements first, with less roughness in displacement (or bigger smallest values), then smaller displacements for finer detail.
And yes MPD mainly does the ground detail.
Sorry about that! I'm not that great at Terragen, so as a result I'm finding it hard to describe issues I'm having.
The transform merge shader is a result of the .tgd that René provided, and is adding some indentation in the terrain as well as color. I have since split it off into separate displacement and coloring, with the displacement happening before the computer terrain node. I've also discovered that adjusting the gradient patch size in the compute terrain seems to give me higher detail in the surfaces? Should this be happening?
All in all, I think I'm gonna benefit the most from starting from a fresh project and working from the ground up, utilizing everything I've learned here. The node network is starting to get a bit messy ahaha
Edit: After playing around with it a bit more before fully resetting the project, I don't think the gradient patch size affected the surface detail, I must have upped the micropoly detail at the same time and forgotten between then and now. Sorry for any confusion!
Your artifact issues are most likely related to extreme, possibly overlapping displacement. Multiple displacement shaders should be used care and displacement amplitude is best ramped up a bit slowly so you can see when it starts to create artifacts and dial it back. Noisy or high contrast displacement functions are also a common culprit.
Patch size *can* affect the fineness or scale of displacement, yes. One might call this a form of "detail", but it's not strictly a "detail" setting (i.e. "quality").
Regarding overall detail, that is definitely a complicated question, and for a couple of reasons. The most important issue, I think, is that different people mean different things when they use the word "detail", and/or they perceive "detail" (as-in render quality) when in fact it's more to do with shader complexity or just well-setup shading. A good, simple example of this idea is imagine that you have an "infinite" detail renderer with a bunch of high detail rock objects covering the ground. But the only shading is a neutral gray. Many people might say it "lacks detail", even though it's being rendered with "infinite detail". In a more descriptive sense it lacks accurate and complex shading, and changing the actual "detail" level wouldn't help.
That's obviously a very extreme example, but the same misconception or confusing word meaning often happens here too. People want "high detail" and hope that by increasing detail settings (like micropoly detail) they'll get that, or more "realism". But that's seldom the answer. Nature is complex and so complex shading (not necessarily complex in terms of the network setup, but the actual shading effects) is generally more realistic, even (and perhaps especially) when the complexity is subtle (e.g. multiple subtly varying shades of green depicting moss of ground cover, rather than just 1 color that is just distributed like moss).
Having looked at the examples I think you're referencing in the WM forum thread, I would actually say your images are *more* "detailed", but in a fairly noisy and chaotic way. Increasing micropoly detail will render your very sharp, noisy displacement areas with more "fidelity", more "accuracy", but I can all but guarantee that won't make it look better, or at least won't achieve what I think you are wanting. You should be able to get very nice-looking quality (and detail) with Micropoly Detail set at 0.7 or at most 0.8. With the newer Defer All rendering mode you generally need less micropoly detail as well.
I think you're on the right track starting over in a clean project and building from the ground up, piece by piece. Know what effect each and every displacement shader has as you go and you should have a much easier time tracking down any problems that happen down the line. And ideally do follow Ulco's advice to build from large-scale to smaller-scale displacements, top-to-bottom. Don't necessarily try to do too much with one node/shader either. You can have a very simple Power Fractal with just a few octaves giving you the basic macro shape changes you want, and then another below it adding smaller-scale detail. The amplitude settings for these may need to be very different to work well, and may need different displacement directions, etc. as well.
Oh and one more thing to consider: if you do want complexity, with multiple scales or types of noise or something happening in a single displacement step, consider building up the displacement shapes in *color* (grayscale) first by merging together multiple color shaders of various types, and then feed the output of that into a single Displacement Shader. The advantage of this is you completely avoid overlapping displacement occurring between the shaders that are driving the Displacement Shader. It doesn't mean that Displacement Shader will definitely not cause overlapping or other discontinuity errors when applied to a terrain with *other* existing displacement, but it definitely reduces the chances quite a lot and makes it all more controllable and less interdependent.
I hope that's helpful.
- Oshyan
A very helpful reply Oshyan, thank you! I have to admit, I think I'm gonna have to go through some kind of remedial class on how displacement works in Terragen, cause the more intentionally I try to do things, the less it actually works, which means I'm very obviously doing something wrong. I am frustratingly stuck on this right now, and I might have to move away from it a bit to clear my head, it's gotten to the point where I'm almost yelling at my screen ahaha!
I really do think I have a fatal misunderstanding of how to apply displacement to a heightfield, because nothing does what I think it will do. I think I still have some older (from Terragen 2, I think) tutorial vids hanging out on my hard drive somewhere, so I think I'm gonna hunt those down and start from the basics and try to get my feet back under me.
Alright, so it's a little while later, and I have had several moments of "Oh! I've been doing it wrong this entire time!" Rather than bang my head against the wall trying to figure things out working on a fairly complex heightfield, I tried just going in and making something from within Terragen itself. I started with a simple shape shader and just went from there, adding things and removing things until I got a feel for what was doing what. I now have a much better understanding of what certain parameters and nodes do. I've been using pf shaders completely incorrectly, they were not at all doing what I thought they were. Or, rather, they weren't doing things in the way I thought they were. Displacement shaders are a new concept to me, and I don't know how I've gotten some of the results I had before without using them. I'm still not quite sure what the "Lead-in scale" does, though I have my theories that I'll be testing after posting this, but the "Smallest scale" parameter is another one that I have completely misunderstood. Understanding things a bit better now, I'm really looking forward to testing some things out. I'm especially curious to see if some of my ideas involving function nodes end up working out. I know some of the things I'm discovering might seem a bit elementary to everyone here, being long-time users of the software and all, but to me, this almost represents an entirely new way of thinking. The limited few tutorials I've seen out there did a great job of showing you how to get specific results, but I've yet to find one that really explains what it's having you do, why you're doing it, and what exact effect it's having. Or maybe it's explaining it, but not in a way that quite stuck in my head as a "Sure, you're using it to do this right now, but, the way it works, you could also use it to do that."
In any case, I probably won't update this topic again until I start working on the canyon project again, since I'm definitely getting off topic now. If I have any further questions, I'll probably start a new topic unless it relates directly to the project this topic was originally started for. Thanks again for everyone's patience and explanations! I'll leave this reply off with the weird (though I personally think it looks pretty cool, considering what I started with) melty rock that I ended up making while learning things from the ground up (no pun intended).
Weird Rock.jpg
Hmm, the Lead-in and other scales are clearly outlined in the docs on the Power Fractal. Have you found that yet?
https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Power_Fractal_Shader_v3
I'd also highly recommend going through Geek At Play's videos, both the TG3 and TG4 sets. Both are applicable to current Terragen.
http://geekatplay.com/terragen-tutorials.php
- Oshyan