As I said, a WIP. This took about an hour to set up:
1) loaded Frank's fake stone pack
2) inserted my *not yet released* snowsurface
3) inserted Frank's clouds
4) adjusted scales of elements
5) rendered it with v2.0.2.1.
More to follow soon...
Thanks for stopping by!
Martin
wow - all elements look great together
folder
I am impressed !
i wish to see the final snow soon !
Ooo, nice snow! I see you have the "exploding rocks" problem. Have you tried Matt's recommended possible fix of disabling "blend as density" in the Fake Stones node?
- Oshyan
I like the blend at the edge of the snow.
I have my own stones shader in development now thanks to the bias node. No exploding rocks. When you see that effect it means that there is a kind of tear or hole in the seam between underlying surface and the overlying displacement. The displacement is stretching across this area. Whether this problem occurs in the stones shader itself, I don't know. Haven't experimented enough but I think I've seen it where it shouldn't be with fake stones.
Quote from: Oshyan on April 27, 2009, 11:54:06 PM
Ooo, nice snow! I see you have the "exploding rocks" problem. Have you tried Matt's recommended possible fix of disabling "blend as density" in the Fake Stones node?
- Oshyan
Thanks Oshyan, I'll take a look at it.
Quote from: efflux on April 28, 2009, 12:14:00 AM
I like the blend at the edge of the snow.
I have my own stones shader in development now thanks to the bias node. No exploding rocks. When you see that effect it means that there is a kind of tear or hole in the seam between underlying surface and the overlying displacement. The displacement is stretching across this area. Whether this problem occurs in the stones shader itself, I don't know. Haven't experimented enough but I think I've seen it where it shouldn't be with fake stones.
Thank you too Ryan. Can you elaborate a bit on your bias-node usage? If you prefer IM that's fine with me.
Martin
I have actually replaced bias node with gain now.
I'm still working on this and don't want to explain everything until it's finished. The basics are this. The fake stones are great for stones but there are some limitations. I've got a function that is like fake stones except you can use any function to create the stone shape, any function to create the pancake effect and you can alter the seam where the stone blends with the underlying surface.
This essentially means that it's not a "fake stones" function but a masking function for anything.
I need to work on this more i.e. use it in a planet to fathom all the possible blending issues. I could not do this until the new curved math nodes came with TG2. These are great.
Here is one render of early tests. You have all the functions that you have with fake stones and what I've described. You'll have to wait though until I have this tested fully which means that I'll build it into a planet. I don't want to start a thread that has mistakes and bad graphs.
(http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3512/stonestest.jpg)
Amazing! :o
Knowing you there must be some crazy function-node-network behind this :)
I'm really looking forward to see where you're going with this!
Martin
Someday soon. Right? :P
Quote from: efflux on April 28, 2009, 07:03:39 AM
I have actually replaced bias node with gain now.
I'm still working on this and don't want to explain everything until it's finished. The basics are this. The fake stones are great for stones but there are some limitations. I've got a function that is like fake stones except you can use any function to create the stone shape, any function to create the pancake effect and you can alter the seam where the stone blends with the underlying surface.
This essentially means that it's not a "fake stones" function but a masking function for anything.
I need to work on this more i.e. use it in a planet to fathom all the possible blending issues. I could not do this until the new curved math nodes came with TG2. These are great.
Here is one render of early tests. You have all the functions that you have with fake stones and what I've described. You'll have to wait though until I have this tested fully which means that I'll build it into a planet. I don't want to start a thread that has mistakes and bad graphs.
(http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/3512/stonestest.jpg)
TU, good job linking it all together. Hope to see the update here.
He he. Here's another and earlier version of the graph to tease you with which is not actually as good but it shows the more crazy side. This one has a poorer blending method. I want it to be easy to hook into anything. This is the point though. I think it should be really easy to use.
Martin, in theory this graph should be very good for the sort of things going on in the scene you did in this post.
(http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7317/morestones.jpg)
Quote from: efflux on April 28, 2009, 12:58:47 PM
He he. Here's another and earlier version of the graph to tease you with which is not actually as good but it shows the more crazy side. This one has a poorer blending method. I want it to be easy to hook into anything. This is the point though. I think it should be really easy to use.
Martin, in theory this graph should be very good for the sort of things going on in the scene you did in this post.
Perhaps that theory should be tested then ;) :P lol
The snow has got me thinking but I need to sort out the first graph. I think it should be possible to build in some conditions of altitude and slope so we can build a cool snow shader like a fake stones shader but to cover regions in thickness of snow. I don't how exactly you or other people are actually doing this snow. I have never tried it.
Quote from: efflux on April 28, 2009, 01:12:29 PM
The snow has got me thinking but I need to sort out the first graph. I think it should be possible to build in some conditions of altitude and slope so we can build a cool snow shader like a fake stones shader but to cover regions in thickness of snow. I don't how exactly you or other people are actually doing this snow. I have never tried it.
I'm afraid I don't really understand what you mean by "but to cover regions in thickness of snow"?
There are some problems with what I had in mind anyway. I think It has to be a completely different set up from what you see in these stone pictures I've done. The way you've done it is good. I had in mind to control the edge of the snow in fancy ways but it isn't entirely necessary. Snow just has to coat the surface rather than be a different shape.
With regards to make functional fake stones (ala efflux), I miss a "random shader", with input = feed and output a pseudo random number
a defined range, only depending on the seed. I know in can fake this with a noise function, but a simple random number function would be faster.
@efflux - I hope to see something cool from this and hope to play with it even if it's only a tutorial.
I've made this snow available through NWDA :)
Please checkout the link below for more:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6255.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=6255.0)
Martin
Sorry people. I had intended to work on this stones thing that I went off on a tangent here with. Unfortunately I got bogged down in other unrelated TG2 issues.
I badly want to get back to these things.
The snow looks cool.