Hi,
Hopefully everyone is enjoying the painted shader and exploring the possibilities it opens up. I've seen some pretty cool stuff in various threads which I certainly hadn't thought of when we first talked about it.
I'd just like to point out its usefulness for populations, in case it wasn't obvious :-). You can use a single painted shader as the density shader for multiple populations. By varying the parameters for the populations you can quickly and easily get mixed populations. As a simple example you can paint an area alongside a body of water then use the shader as the density shader for rock and grass clump populations to give a rocky and weedy foreshore.
If you decide you want to tweak one or more of the populations you can duplicate the painted shader, which of course duplicates what you've painted, and hook that up as the density shader for the population(s) being tweaked. You can then edit the new painted shader to refine the distribution of individual populations within the mixed populations.
You can also use the intensity of the painting to control the density of a population. Greater intensity (brighter white) will give give greater population density. I've attached a couple of images showing this. You see from the image showing the mask that there are more trees in the brightest area. I've painted around the white area with the brush using a reduced flow, and you can see that the density of the trees is correspondingly lower. You can also use the falloff to increase the intensity of the brush, a falloff of zero will make the brush into a solid dot while increasing the falloff will make it progressively softer toward the edges.
For the adventurous you can potentially use the function nodes to perform complex combinations of painted shaders. To what end I can't really think of right now, but you could certainly do it :-).
Regards,
Jo
So, you just need to use an object spacing of '1' and then, spacing can be controlled seperately with different levels of grey/white? Is that right?
Matt will need to chime in with the actual formula for this. However what I do is mess about with the spacing until it seems appropriate for the brightest part of the painting and then go from there, assuming darker tones will give less density. Just using '1' probably won't give you the results you're after. In the images I posted I boosted the scale of the object to 10, just to get it show up, and the object spacing was at 50.
Regards,
Jo
I'm having fun with the paint shader, but now I need a super computer for all the stuff I want to add. ;)
I have four paint shaders on this river test, thanks dandelo, for explaining the river displacements.
I comboed the river shader with the rock population.
I've added dandelo's no frills painted river example.
One of the things I've always wanted to do is to have a different surface beneath each tree scattered across a paddock. With the painted shader you can preview the instances of trees and then just dab a spot in the middle of each wireframe.
Not sure if this has happened to anyone else, but my painted shader won't work on a piece of terrain, and I have no idea why.
See the screen grab for what I mean. The whole left side is meant to be white.
Iain
I just unpaused the 3d view and this happened. :-\
Very unusual.
Iain
Tried going all around the camera with no luck. Does the camera have a boundry that things cannot cross?
Iain
What works for me is to zoom in or out so everything I want to paint is visible, then I let the preview render to 100% and then I pause it. That results in the smallest triangles that are painted, so better view of coverage.
That way the painting is precise and smooth, and well visible.
Whilst the painter shader is great I've found some instances where the more traditionally painted (bitmap in photoshop etc) method works better.
Hopefully PS will add a way to export painter shader bitmaps for fine tuning at some future date.
richard
Exactly. Here is a combination of image map and painted shader. While the original image map was cnnected to several colour adjust nodes for different masks it was quite simple to add the painted shader in. In this case I was painting black to remove the masked surfaces from the slopes. I'd also use the same shader to add minor tributaries where needed, where the resolution of image map is not adequate
Quote from: jo on November 11, 2008, 08:52:26 PM
Hi,
Hopefully everyone is enjoying the painted shader and exploring the possibilities it opens up. I've seen some pretty cool stuff in various threads which I certainly hadn't thought of when we first talked about it.
I'd just like to point out its usefulness for populations, in case it wasn't obvious :-). You can use a single painted shader as the density shader for multiple populations. By varying the parameters for the populations you can quickly and easily get mixed populations. As a simple example you can paint an area alongside a body of water then use the shader as the density shader for rock and grass clump populations to give a rocky and weedy foreshore.
If you decide you want to tweak one or more of the populations you can duplicate the painted shader, which of course duplicates what you've painted, and hook that up as the density shader for the population(s) being tweaked. You can then edit the new painted shader to refine the distribution of individual populations within the mixed populations.
You can also use the intensity of the painting to control the density of a population. Greater intensity (brighter white) will give give greater population density. I've attached a couple of images showing this. You see from the image showing the mask that there are more trees in the brightest area. I've painted around the white area with the brush using a reduced flow, and you can see that the density of the trees is correspondingly lower. You can also use the falloff to increase the intensity of the brush, a falloff of zero will make the brush into a solid dot while increasing the falloff will make it progressively softer toward the edges.
For the adventurous you can potentially use the function nodes to perform complex combinations of painted shaders. To what end I can't really think of right now, but you could certainly do it :-).
Regards,
Jo
Question: Can the painting of a mask be done for the purpose of creating selective placement and clumping of vegetation in certain areas on the 'Preview Window'; or, must it be done on the orthographic view of the entire terrain? If it needs to be done on the overhead view of the terrain; then, it is almost impossible to see where the vegetation needs to be placed. You just cannot accurately place vegetation where needed in this manner. Can you shed some light on this Jo?
If you just paint in the preview on the ground where the population should show up, you can then add the painted shader as blending shader for the populations density shader.
You can paint from orthographic view, or just from the camera position, whatever works best for you...
Quote from: Mohawk20 on December 04, 2008, 04:37:42 PM
If you just paint in the preview on the ground where the population should show up, you can then add the painted shader as blending shader for the populations density shader.
You can paint from orthographic view, or just from the camera position, whatever works best for you...
Thanks Mohawk20, I'll give this a try. A tutorial on this would be very convenient.
Using the Painted shader for ideal vegetation distribution is a snap ...so much, much better than working with the Distribution shader, especially on distant scenes!
Choronr, the best tip about the paint shader was from dandelO, just after I first tried it.
And that was to position the camera for paint, wait til it finishes the preview render and then hit the pause button so that it won't keep rerendering.
I'm having too much fun with the Paint Shade but I have a query...can cloud masks be painted...I can't seem to paint the sky except with over paint from doing a ground mask?...Help please.. ...
Never tried it Bobby, but maybe you can just paint the ground and use it on the atm.
I know it can be done, seen it here and done it myself, but I'm rendering atm so I'll have to get back to you on this. Keep playing and you'll trip over the right solution. One thing I just remembered is that you have to have the brush truly MASSIVE! :)
- richard
Hi,
one other way is to paint with black in the fractal view of the
cloud fractal;or you could take a plane object and rotate it so
that you can paint in the preview,just experiment and have
fun.
HTH,J.
Thanks all...as is my general practice when I need help I ask everywhere and some kind members at ashundar set me straight and I should have something decent soon.. ...
Quote from: Mandrake on December 25, 2008, 12:06:15 PM
Never tried it Bobby, but maybe you can just paint the ground and use it on the atm.
Here's my first successful attempt...I used the paint shader I made from the top down position for the cloud mask also as a means of displacing the terrain in the heightfield shader. To locate my clouds I rotated till I found them, saved the camera position and then also in the top down view I moved my terrain into the camera view. All textures are image maps masked in place with Paint Shaders...some for example the rocks one and the cliff wall also have grayscale displacement maps as well.
Quote from: jo on November 11, 2008, 08:52:26 PM
Hi,
Hopefully everyone is enjoying the painted shader and exploring the possibilities it opens up. I've seen some pretty cool stuff in various threads which I certainly hadn't thought of when we first talked about it.
I'd just like to point out its usefulness for populations, in case it wasn't obvious :-). You can use a single painted shader as the density shader for multiple populations. By varying the parameters for the populations you can quickly and easily get mixed populations. As a simple example you can paint an area alongside a body of water then use the shader as the density shader for rock and grass clump populations to give a rocky and weedy foreshore.
If you decide you want to tweak one or more of the populations you can duplicate the painted shader, which of course duplicates what you've painted, and hook that up as the density shader for the population(s) being tweaked. You can then edit the new painted shader to refine the distribution of individual populations within the mixed populations.
You can also use the intensity of the painting to control the density of a population. Greater intensity (brighter white) will give give greater population density. I've attached a couple of images showing this. You see from the image showing the mask that there are more trees in the brightest area. I've painted around the white area with the brush using a reduced flow, and you can see that the density of the trees is correspondingly lower. You can also use the falloff to increase the intensity of the brush, a falloff of zero will make the brush into a solid dot while increasing the falloff will make it progressively softer toward the edges.
For the adventurous you can potentially use the function nodes to perform complex combinations of painted shaders. To what end I can't really think of right now, but you could certainly do it :-).
Regards,
Jo
hmmm i cant seem to do it =/ any help or suggestions ? :)
You might want to check out this tutorial on cloud paainting from Mr Lamppost if that's causing you the confusion it caused me at first:
http://www.ironworld.org/mr_lamppost/TG2/guides/paintsky.htm
If there's more queries, please be specific about what you don't understand.. ...
hmm im not very good with words but. what im trying to do now is to control the density of the population with the painted shader.
but thanks alot ;D i found the way of controlling the population using the painted shader after a few times of trial and error
Quote from: j meyer on December 25, 2008, 04:36:18 PM
or you could take a plane object and rotate it so
that you can paint in the preview,just experiment and have
fun.
HTH,J.
This is something I'd like to know...just how do you rotate the plane object to perpencicular? You mention rotate so I'm assuming you know the trick.. ...
Perhaps a different subject; but, I the density of the screen mask is too heavy making visibility of the areas you want to paint hard to see. Could the gray color be less dense to produce better visibility of the preview screen?
That choronr, is something I as well keep forgetting to ask...thanks for bringing that up.. OT a wee bit...don't it just make you chuckle when the omnipresent spell checker pops up and tells you you've spelled your own, or someone who's name you know, incorrectly...LOL...the weak link that.. ...
Hi there,
it's a bit tricky and can be confusing sometimes,but basically you have to
use combinations of 1/0/1 or 0/-1/0 or -1/0/1 (hope you get the idea) for
the basic rotations.It helps to use more camera views,because the plane
has only one side,so sometimes it seems to disappear.There is more to
it (finetuning in small increments),but i haven't figured that out completely
myself as of now.
If you need exact settings as an example i can look it up later as i don't
have any examples handy right now an here.
J.
This is essentially what I did with the "Should we keep going" populations.
I splotched out an forest area made of 25% and 75% white areas to signify density. For trees, I left the painted shared as is, and switched up the seeds and spacing for different models.
For the vegetation, I inverted the shader so the areas with less trees has more ground cover/bushes/etc (less light absorbed from tall trees means more light reaches smaller plants).
Well I did mange to rotate around the World Y by putting 60 in the bottom middle spot but now I can't remember why I needed a perpendicular plane....I imagine it'll come back to me but hoo nose...LOL...thanx for your effort jo...much appreciated.. ...