a week of learning and this is what i have come up with from what i have learned, its only after the high quality renders do i see there were little issues that i never noticed, i included the project file in case anyone wants to dissect and give advice. that being said, i wasn't aiming for photo realistic here, what i WAS trying to go for was the look and feel of some of those voltron planets, if anyone has seen the netflix series they should know what im talking about, thats the reason you can see mountains high above the cloud line, how ever the atmosphere covered a large chunk of the surface,and i think the atmosphere too... anyway, please lemme know what you guy think and any additional advice you have, i am open to any and all inputs.
this was rendered in about 11.5 hours with a mac pro 3,1 i found in the garbage lol, the cpu is xeon x5460 and theres 12 gigs of ram, would upgrading the cpu to xeon x5492 or the x5482 make much of a difference?
This is, pretty much, just what I have uploaded to the forums at the very beginning of my "adventure" back in 2014. ;) See here:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17748.msg171946.html#msg171946
While I don't have time to look into the project file, I would agree with your own and make a bit more of the surface visible. Otherwise it's a nice-looking world.
Quote from: N-drju on April 29, 2020, 02:18:33 AMThis is, pretty much, just what I have uploaded to the forums at the very beginning of my "adventure" back in 2014. ;) See here:
https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17748.msg171946.html#msg171946
While I don't have time to look into the project file, I would agree with your own and make a bit more of the surface visible. Otherwise it's a nice-looking world.
I was skimming through the forums and i stumbled upon a post where it was like ice in rocks, it was a Martian ice cap, anyway, i was trying to figure it how it was done and i don't even know where to begin, leaves me feeling excited and exhausted lol at the thought of how far i still need to go to be able to flex sumtin more creative, i made some modifications to this project and it's currently rendering, I'll post it once it's done
I had a 10 minute go at your setup and changed some things.
Ice caps are easy to make. All you need is either a simple shape shader or even a painted shader to create a mask. Then, proceed by adding details as necessary.
icecap_base.tgd
Yeah, forgot that. Adjusted with N-drju's additional icecap.
so this i what i ended up redoing it to, this was closer in line with what i was thinking of. with a better understanding of compute normal im going to try and make the ridges using a painted shader instead, but i do have a question pertaining to the "stretched" look of the terrain afterwards, in this fashion the side of the mountains look smooth, but when i tried a painted shader and displaced it to these magnitudes, the sides have a stretched look to it, can anyone explain how i go about avoiding that stretched look or ho wi can "subdivide" it or sumtin?
upload.jpg
Quote from: N-drju on April 29, 2020, 03:26:00 AMIce caps are easy to make. All you need is either a simple shape shader or even a painted shader to create a mask. Then, proceed by adding details as necessary.
icecap_base.tgd
ah i see, i was able to dissect and understand, but i came about a different issue, i tried to give the ice cap some height but the walls of it turned out to be stretched and chiseled, and i ave no idea how to go about fixing that issue? can you describe what to do to add texture to the wall of it?Screenshot (187).png
First the stretching. See it as paint being smudged in one direction; you get stripes. That happens when you displace a terrain heavily. In order to get smaller unstretched displacement onto those stretched sides, you need to recompute that terrain, which can be done by an additional compute terrain, after the first big displacement. If you then add smaller displacements (or fake stones), you'll see much nicer mountain sides.
The icecap; you used offset in a power fractal to displace it up, which takes the whole of the masked area and lifts it up. And apparently its sides are not soft, so you might have to take a look at the masks used.
The chiseled look comes form the roughness of the fractal warp. If you decrease that it's warps will be softer.
Maybe this simple file will give you a better idea how things work.
Quote from: EdgeFx1 on April 30, 2020, 08:08:29 PMi tried to give the ice cap some height but the walls of it turned out to be stretched and chiseled, and i ave no idea how to go about fixing that issue?
When you have a terrain, or a shader, masked by a SSS (simple shape shader) it is prudent to apply a smooth edge profile in SSS's settings. This lets you add some smooth, natural falloff for the colour generated by an SSS.
What Ulco says is also true - if you warp with a fractal shader, roughness can easily become a problem if you fail to control it. My example was really basic and good enough to view from orbit. You need to remeber that it might be a good solution to drop some details (like I did) when they are viewed from a very large distance (orbit especially) and add details only when close by. Think of it as LODs.
Adding displacement to a vertical or near-vertical surface is a loooong topic with lots of variables to take into account. Don't get me wrong - it's not that I don't want to help. I'm just getting ready for travel and don't have too much time. ???
Quote from: N-drju on May 01, 2020, 04:43:44 AMQuote from: EdgeFx1 on April 30, 2020, 08:08:29 PMi tried to give the ice cap some height but the walls of it turned out to be stretched and chiseled, and i ave no idea how to go about fixing that issue?
When you have a terrain, or a shader, masked by a SSS (simple shape shader) it is prudent to apply a smooth edge profile in SSS's settings. This lets you add some smooth, natural falloff for the colour generated by an SSS.
What Ulco says is also true - if you warp with a fractal shader, roughness can easily become a problem if you fail to control it. My example was really basic and good enough to view from orbit. You need to remeber that it might be a good solution to drop some details (like I did) when they are viewed from a very large distance (orbit especially) and add details only when close by. Think of it as LODs.
Adding displacement to a vertical or near-vertical surface is a loooong topic with lots of variables to take into account. Don't get me wrong - it's not that I don't want to help. I'm just getting ready for travel and don't have too much time. ???
Quote from: Dune on May 01, 2020, 02:24:35 AMFirst the stretching. See it as paint being smudged in one direction; you get stripes. That happens when you displace a terrain heavily. In order to get smaller unstretched displacement onto those stretched sides, you need to recompute that terrain, which can be done by an additional compute terrain, after the first big displacement. If you then add smaller displacements (or fake stones), you'll see much nicer mountain sides.
The icecap; you used offset in a power fractal to displace it up, which takes the whole of the masked area and lifts it up. And apparently its sides are not soft, so you might have to take a look at the masks used.
The chiseled look comes form the roughness of the fractal warp. If you decrease that it's warps will be softer.
Maybe this simple file will give you a better idea how things work.
ah dont worry about it literally everything you said is more than enuff to help guide me, this past week an a half trying to teach myself has felt like trying to find up from down while floating in space with no sense of direction, any thing you guys can tell me, how ever great or small has been enuff to settle me and guide me in any type of direction, and now, back to trial an error with new knowledge, thank you guys so far :)
so i really took the time to go over the file that
@Dune posted up, i turned off all the layers and turned them on 1 by one until i saw sumtin happen to the 3d preview, from there i click node son an doff and made changes to each node and screen shot the render and flipped back and forth to see the difference, and i made notes to help me remember what each thing did. this was immeasurably helpful and is probably really beneficial to alot of beginners who are just starting out, and so i want to say thanks for this, maybe i can post this in the correct forums so beginners like me can find this some how? anyway, this is very helpful but then another question is raised, if i wanted to add another mountain or even a valley, how do i "connect" them together into one scene? another way of putting it is, i have the planet, i put the mountain in, how do arrange/group/layer everything if i wanted to add another mountain into the scene? i added a visual representation of what i mean, if i wanted to make two mountains that have nothing to do with each other, how do i add them together...
Screenshot (229).png
00000000000000000087.jpg
You can add stuff in several ways, but I added a few so you can dissect again. Little 'problem' in the basic was that I added the fractal warp in the left line down, so a line like the color adjust to the stream would not be affected, or you'd have to copy the same fractal warp and insert it in the same line. Another disturbance in the parallel lines is the compute terrain, which also creates different results in the left and right line down. Maybe it's getting too complicated already :P So, for the additions I took at least the fractal warp out. If you insert it again, you'll see what happens.
The colored lines will tell you what each section does. I hope it's clear enough.
Quote from: EdgeFx1 on May 01, 2020, 11:24:46 AMah dont worry about it literally everything you said is more than enuff to help guide me, this past week an a half trying to teach myself has felt like trying to find up from down while floating in space with no sense of direction, any thing you guys can tell me, how ever great or small has been enuff to settle me and guide me in any type of direction, and now, back to trial an error with new knowledge, thank you guys so far :)
Had no time to answer you as I should, but thank you for some nice words. TG is a spacious book to read indeed. Little by little, you can read through it.
One piece of advice that I was meant to give you... I noticed that you do have a tendency towards huge values. ;) I've seen this in your fake stones as well as, more recently, in one of the planet shots here. My advice would be to always start with moderate, small values. Be it displacement, warp amount, cloud size, whatever. Only then, increase the values if you think the effects are not sufficiently pronounced.
In TG it is easier to make less into more than the other way round.
@Dune this was a doozy to dissect but i feel like i definitely learned alot about how to add additional elements, i got a project coming up that i really want to attempt, and im building the battle ground in terragen. its just a personal art project that i have been wanting to do for the longest, the idea is pretty straight forward, good me vs not so good me. the battle ground takes place in a sink hole type of location, and the clouds above are suppose to look like y our in the eye of the hurricane, i only now feel like i have enuff puzzle pieces to try and create a scene for this story board (that im still working on) and
@N-drju your absolutely right, most of the times i seem to be working on these titanic planetary scales lol, i think my problem is, i dont realize that im dealing with a 3d space, and so i dont have a sense of scale, only sight, for this project coming up im going to import an obj of a person and set it to 6 ft tall so i have some reference of what im doing lol
https://www.deviantart.com/edgefx1/art/Rival-Universe-Rage-Against-the-Light-841450810?ga_submit_new=10%3A1589244316 <--- thats the photoshop i did that is the idea this story board is based on.
if anyone has any recommended reads on height fields would you care to share? i know at some point i need to learn that too :-X
Cool artwork Edge. And a reminder that it is high time for me to sit down and make an artist page of my own. ::)
To be honest, I never use heightfields, as I consider them limiting. But they are quite easy - these are just fractals contracted to a certain area, that's all. You can then use operators to alter their look.
Heightfields do have some advantages though most notably the native erosion operator. Which is just impossible with procedural terrain.
so this is the battle scene that i have so far, i put an obj of people so i have a reference point to fall back on, currently im trying to add texture to the sides of the crater wall, but for the life of me i cant figure out how to do it or even where to place it, i thought i was suppose to use a fractal warp on it to make it pop out a bit, but i dont seem to understand how to get it to stick onto the walls... suggestions? i added the people obj in the zip if that helps. you know what the worst part is, if i try to start over, i cant recall how i got to this point either :'( like im literally un able to retrace my steps and understand what my train of thought was. and then terratuts on youtube released a painted shader tut, an they used a surface shader, nd that totally threw me off.
I added some (simple and fast) stuff to get you going, and learn. Check out what each node does and how it's attached to eachother.
From the first glance I had on your setup (and if I understand correctly that you want to warp the shape of the arena), you should plug #5 directly into #7. This will warp the mask which only then can be attached to a desired terrain. Currently, #7 warps a #6 terrain which has an unaffected mask attached to it.
And careful there - the values are humongous once again. ;) With such a powerful fractal warp, you'll see your arena shape sail away.
Yes, that's why he probably set it to final position, to keep it steady. But that might also be a lucky accident ;)
Quote from: N-drju on May 14, 2020, 02:36:42 AMFrom the first glance I had on your setup (and if I understand correctly that you want to warp the shape of the arena), you should plug #5 directly into #7. This will warp the mask which only then can be attached to a desired terrain. Currently, #7 warps a #6 terrain which has an unaffected mask attached to it.
And careful there - the values are humongous once again. ;) With such a powerful fractal warp, you'll see your arena shape sail away.
so my fractal warp is over sized?, i will take a look at that then, what i was trying to do was just add some texture onto the walls cuz it looked way to smooth, but then when i edited the "3 modification to inside sink hole shape" it literally changed the shape from a circle shape to some weird non circular shape, so then i disconnected that first group and turns out it did nothing to the environment so thats when i realized i might not have needed it, i thought that "the sink hole shape and terrain of the planet surface" group controlled the inside of the sink hole but i guess not..., so my current project goal is to just add texture to the inside of the walls to avoid those extreme shear lines, and to make it interesting. i think in the end result ill throw a slight bokeh over it, but lemme not get ahead of myself here lol
Quote from: Dune on May 14, 2020, 02:38:06 AMYes, that's why he probably set it to final position, to keep it steady. But that might also be a lucky accident ;)
yes i do believe that was a lucky accident of me clicking things on and off see what it does lol, and the question mark that brings you to documentation online ot read is just a blank
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on a side note it would be nice to have a shortcut that turns off all selected nodes, that way one doesn't have to shut them off one by one, and as for documentation it would be awesome if they did more of those little movie gifs that shows the changes in the nodes, also in case anyone is wondering why im naming the nodes the way i am, its to help me organize myself, they are reminding me, sequentially, what i did in what order, also to exactly describe what i think it is doing lol :P
Quote from: N-drju on May 12, 2020, 08:53:06 AMCool artwork Edge. And a reminder that it is high time for me to sit down and make an artist page of my own. ::)
To be honest, I never use heightfields, as I consider them limiting. But they are quite easy - these are just fractals contracted to a certain area, that's all. You can then use operators to alter their look.
Heightfields do have some advantages though most notably the native erosion operator. Which is just impossible with procedural terrain.
if you have any work you want to share please do so, i love seeing what others create be it terragen or anything really, art shouldn't go to waste by not being seen by everyone lol, also if anyone needs Photoshop help that the billions of tutorials on youtube cant help you solve please feel free to ask too, since thats the only area i can my offer my skills in 8)
@Dune just so im understanding this correctly, the group in red creates the multiple rock layers inside the sink hole, it covers the ground and "some" parts of the walls? and the color adjust shaders is used along "multiply compliment scalar" shader to effectively wipe out the rock texture on the ground by turning the black and white patterns that dictates the nature of the rock layers, into pure white so there is no differentiation in shade, therefore making it flat? and because of the edge profile in "1 sinkhole shape" the walls are left with the rock textures that were created by the group in red?
That group is masked by multiply complement scaler, which masks (white) the sides of the walls. So it textures the walls only. The later group of stones (besides the note, after the disabled compute terrain) is doing the ground inside the walled circle, and is masked by the minimum amount of white of your first SSS circle.