Hi there, i'm a new member and a new initiate into the wonders of terragen. The problem i have is one faced by many many people it seems from this forum, which is that despite Terragen's plainly awesome capabilities, it's virtually impossible to know where to start and how to harness them. I have absolutely no experience in digital modelling myself so this is all very new (oh don't i sound like just the perfect rookie :P (actually, i have used google sketch-up but that doesn't really count)), though i have read the documentation available on the website, and so quite aside from anything particularly technical, i have a few basic questions about just the pure 'physics' as it were of the modelled environment.
First off, how big is the planet that terragen creates as standard? Is it calibrated to be as big as our earth? Can you change it? Also, i find the measuring system to be very dodgy with it being almost impossible to determine distances from 'ground level'- wherever i click, the point from which it measures always seems to be suspended in mid-air rather than the surface of the planet. Is there a way to change that? Is it possible to change the measurements as well to miles? Another big issue i have is how can i find, mark and preferably 'fix' the northernmost point as a benchmark from which to make said measurements?
Dr Death
Welcome! Most of us have come from using other 3D software. So that gives us an advantage. But here is a link to Neuspadrin's YouTube channel. He did some good tutorials which may help you get started.
http://www.youtube.com/user/neuspadrin88#p/u
Here's a link to Schmeerlap's excellent tutorial.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7733.0
@Dr Death
1. Yes, it is the same size as Earth.
2. Yes, you can change it.
3. Right click wherever you want the measurement from, then select Copy Altitude. It should work.
4. No, you're stuck with metric. Convert your measurements in miles to kilometers.
5. 0, 0, 0, IS the northernmost point. To get offworld without seeing nothing but the north pole, use the compass-thing and set speed to maximum and go backwards. Eventually you'll find yourself in space. I've attached a couple screenshots to show you what I mean. They're in GIF format to reduce the risk of having to jpg-compress them to the point of incoherence.
My advice, choose a single tab from the top (good to start with terrain) and start fiddling. If an option already exists, change around some settings. Hit the + (new) button and add new features native to that tab (if in terrain, Fractal Terrain is a good option) and then change around settings. See what effect it has on the preview. Best to familiarize yourself with the software.
Quote from: TheBlackHole on May 05, 2010, 09:57:45 AM
4. No, you're stuck with metric. Convert your measurements in miles to kilometers.
1.609344 km = 1 mile (exact)
0.621371 mile = 1 km (approximate)
Come to think of it, they still used the old English system on Star Trek TOS in the
23rd century. How did they ever achieve interstellar space travel? (I can poke fun
of Americans because I am one. A lot of things we do don't make no sense to me.
I think we lost a space shuttle and its crew because someone forgot to do a conversion
between these two systems :'().
Quote from: TheBlackHole on May 05, 2010, 09:57:45 AM
5. 0, 0, 0, IS the northernmost point. To get offworld without seeing nothing but the north pole, use the compass-thing and set speed to maximum and go backwards. Eventually you'll find yourself in space. I've attached a couple screenshots to show you what I mean. They're in GIF format to reduce the risk of having to jpg-compress them to the point of incoherence.
I just played around with TG2 and it appears that we are indeed using a Cartesian coordinate system relative to the planet. But instead of placing the origin at the center of the planet (which is the most logical place to put it), it is placed at the North Pole. This places the South Pole at 0,-diameter,0. It also means that, if you are planning to measure things relative to the coordinate system, it won't make a very good reference for orienting yourself locally. The Y coordinate won't give much indication as to what your altitude is. In fact, a combination of X and Z will be doing that when you are at the equator. You will have to remember that the origin is offset by the radius of the planet before making use of the pythagorean theorem to figure out where you are in a polar coordinate system. Since almost no one lives at the poles, I would recommend forgetting about relying on Y to estimate your altitude.
The origin of the planet is at the centre. Just open the planet-shader and check the translation settings. It says -6.378e+006 metres.
6.378e+006 is the radius of the planet.
The 0,0,0 coordinates happens to be on the north-pole (maybe?....if you have a sphere in space there's no reference to tell which side you are on ;)) but could easily be anything else.
It's just a choice if you ask me.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 05, 2010, 05:41:12 PM
The origin of the planet is at the centre. Just open the planet-shader and check the translation settings. It says -6.378e+006 metres.
6.378e+006 is the radius of the planet.
The 0,0,0 coordinates happens to be on the north-pole (maybe?....if you have a sphere in space there's no reference to tell which side you are on ;)) but could easily be anything else.
It's just a choice if you ask me.
Now we are getting somewhere! It all makes sense now. The origin of the coordinate system is at [0,0,0] floating out in space, even when you have nothing in your scene, not even the default planet. The default scene just places a planet right under your feet. And when you have eight planets in your scene, each has "Centre" X,Y, and Z fields to let you place each of them in space where you want them. So now we REALLY don't want to use Y as a measure of altitude. When you touch a planet's surface with the cursor, the software will tell you what the altitude is relative to the planet whose surface you have touched.
Hurray for Martin! This time it took all of us haggling and going back and forth looking through the software to finally figure it out. That is a good thing ;D
This exercise has done far more for my learning curve than a blind walk through another one of those "do as I do" tutorials. I love it!
Open a distribution-shader and look at the altitude settings. There's a box "Y for altitude" with a couple of options. That's how TG2 handles Y as a measure of altitude and shows you why it works.
Quote from: PabloMack on May 05, 2010, 06:00:30 PM
Hurray for Martin! See? It doesn't hurt to try to understand. This time it took all of us haggling and going back and forth looking through the software to finally figure it out. That is a good thing ;D
This exercise has done far more for my learning curve than a blind walk through another one of those "do as I do" tutorials. I love it!
Damn, could it be more belittleing :-[ If I would like to be cheered for I'll ask for it myself ;)
Quote from: PabloMack on May 05, 2010, 06:00:30 PM
This exercise has done far more for my learning curve than a blind walk through another one of those "do as I do" tutorials. I love it!
I think your mentality does not fit these forums dude >:(
maybe you should try one of those tutorials... they allows you to understand a lot of things, you know... and not only the technical stuff like planets' place in space but actually that could help you to understand the most basic stuff that you need to understand the way TG2 works...
Quote from: Seth on May 05, 2010, 06:14:27 PM
maybe you should try one of those tutorials... they allows you to understand a lot of things, you know... and not only the technical stuff like planets' place in space but actually that could help you to understand the most basic stuff that you need to understand the way TG2 works...
I'm about on my fourth tutorial. The "do this then do that" tutorials haven't explained very much to me so far. I feel like I just made a major breakthrough in the past hour with these threads but I seem to have offended TangleUniverse. I didn't mean to hurt his feelings. I really think he is one of the best guys on this forum.
any render to show ?
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 05, 2010, 06:12:17 PM
I think your mentality does not fit these forums dude >:(
This makes me sad. You have me convinced that doing well with TG2 requires active forum participation. Sounds like you are just telling me to go away and don't come back.
I think where we might be mis-understanding eachother is that 1) You think I haven't been doing the tutorials and I have been and 2) I think you are telling me that I shouldn't
try to understand the software and that is not what you are saying to me. Is this right?
Quote from: PabloMack on May 05, 2010, 06:20:58 PM
I'm about on my fourth tutorial. The "do this then do that" tutorials haven't explained very much to me so far. I feel like I just made a major breakthrough in the past hour with these threads but I seem to have offended TangleUniverse. I didn't mean to hurt his feelings. I really think he is one of the best guys on this forum.
Yes, you did, and you know very well where and how.
Quote from: PabloMack on May 05, 2010, 06:29:54 PM
This makes me sad. You have me convinced that doing well with TG2 requires active forum participation. Sounds like you are just telling me to go away and don't come back.
Don't be hypocritic/the funny guy please. I'm the last to say whether somebody should go away and I'm also the last who wants one to leave.
You're belittleing me (hurray, blabla) and more importantly many others by the way you talk about the tutorials here. Don't be depreciative/looking down on the people and their efforts here. Everybody has a lot of fun here with experimenting and exchanging everything. Respect that please.
I think there is just a clash of personalities happening here. I don't believe that PabloMack has deliberately tried to bellittle you, Martin. The way I see it, he's just had a *!BINGO!* moment, a sudden clarity on possibly quite a confusing issue on the basic coordinate system of TG.
I rarely ever read/perform the tutorials from other users, not because I think they are uninformative/unhelpful, more that I'd rather get stuck in and do something myself. Once you have the basic workflow/layout/etc. aligned in your own mind, Terragen becomes the most logical piece of software(for me at least) I'm likely to come across.
Take a deep breath, everyone, count to 10 and then begin again! ;) :D
Quote from: dandelO on May 05, 2010, 06:54:58 PM
I think there is just a clash of personalities happening here. I don't believe that PabloMack has deliberately tried to bellittle you, Martin. The way I see it, he's just had a *!BINGO!* moment, a sudden clarity on possibly quite a confusing issue on the basic coordinate system of TG.
I rarely ever read/perform the tutorials from other users, not because I think they are uninformative/unhelpful, more that I'd rather get stuck in and do something myself. Once you have the basic workflow/layout/etc. aligned in your own mind, Terragen becomes the most logical piece of software(for me at least) I'm likely to come across.
Take a deep breath, everyone, count to 10 and then begin again! ;) :D
Perhaps you're right. If so, my apologies. The context could easily have been either sarcastic or sincere. For both there's something.
I go to bed now and go over it again, fresh in the morning! :)
Cheers,
Martin
Listen.
What Martin tries to explain to you is that instead of asking for TG2 to change for this or this, to add this feature and change that one into this, blablabla, you should really try to achieve some scene, to do any kind of render and then post it and ask for further help from more advanced users.
You know, people in here are very very helpful and might give you a lot of their time to help. I personnally understand T-U (I'll call him Martin ^^) because i read the previous thread he wrote for you, giving you technical tips and informations. and as far as i know, he doesn't even know if the informations were useful or if you even read and understood them.
You are , like everybody, welcome in here of course. but you must understand that asking and criticize without bringing anything positive can be misjudge.
Maybe this is like dandelO said just personnality clash (it happens, believe me) but i am not sure about that and i truely don't want to speak for Martin.
I, myself didn't like the overall attitude you had but i kept my mouth shut because i can be a pain in the ass because of my lack of patience. I did one or two "do as i do" tutorials by myself, it took me a lot of time considering i am french and that i don't speak a very good english. so when i read your comment, believe me, i shout outloud behind my screen ^^
anyway, don't write stuff like "hurray for Martin" right after some argument in this thread or another because it could be misanderstood ;) like it could be taken ironically, you know what i mean ?
So of course you should try to understand TG2, but that doesn't mean you should ask for it to be different just because you don't understand it after just some hours spent on it :)
of course you should post in the forums, but if i can give you an advice (again) try to do some renders, post them, make some iteration, that is the only way to learn : practice practice practice...
hope i didn't sound too harsh and all...
I am not used to be the "calm down guys" man so i hope you'll understand my points... ;D
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on May 05, 2010, 06:39:24 PM
Yes, you did, and you know very well where and how.
Martin, I think we must have some kind of cultural clash going on here (I don't think it is a personality conflict) because I have read my previous words and I really don't know what it was that offended you. You could have said all those words to me and the "hurray" would have made me feel good. (The "see I told you so" might have "stuck in my craw" as Americans say but it would have put the point across without being offensive.) I think you are construing something that I was not implying. I see you are from the Netherlands. I think there is some idomatic meaning in something I said that wouldn't have come across if an American was talking to an American. Will you accept my apologies?
I have Dutch on my mother's side of the family and I have great admiration for your national heritage. I am not too distantly related to George S. Patton (which might actually anger some people since his foul language turned many against him even though he was a WWII hero). I also have great admiration for the South African Voortrekker/Afrikaaners and I love their accent. My wife and I visited South Africa one and a half years ago and we stayed with someone who runs a bee farm there. Their's was a small community of ethnic Scotish people surrounded by a much larger community of ethnic Dutch. They confided in me that they could not relate very well to the Afrikaaners and that Dutch humor (or the lack thereof in their words) was something they could not bridge. They said they really enjoyed our company if for only the fact that our form of humor was something they could appreciate. Well if 100-year neighbors cannot relate, then it is no surprize to me that you and I can say certains English things and there is a failure to communicate our ideas as you are sitting there (most likely) in the Netherlands while I am sitting here in Texas. Those South Africans lived side by side but they couldn't relate to eachother. The Scotish family we stayed with were fluent in Afrikaans and the Voortrekkers were fluent in English. The differences went beyond language. By the way, most of my family (both sides) are ethnic Scotish. My wife is ethnically German and English.
Sometimes we Texans have the same problem with "Northerners" up in New York and Boston. The English call us "Yankees" which is what we Southerners call those up in the North-east. It takes time to get to know what someone is really trying to say. Words can easily be mis-contrued when you are from different cultures. That's why my business partner doesn't like to write emails to people and he prefers to talk with them on the phone. You can say a lot to someone in the tone of your voice that is not in the words you write and vice versa. I think what we are experiencing is summed up in an expression you may have heard before (talking about the Americans vs. British). "We are divided by a common language".
Quote from: Seth on May 05, 2010, 07:13:46 PM
but you must understand that asking and criticize without bringing anything positive can be misjudge.
I thought my "hurray" was positive (it would have been among Texans) but it was mis-judged so
even positive things can be taken as negative. I can see how even we might say it to mean
"Thanks for stating the obvious buster" but I never saw it coming. I think that expression must be
used much more often with bitter sarcasm on the eastern side of the Atlantic. We don't take offense
for something like that even if it was meant how I translated it above. I truely was trying to thank
Martin for the information that finally made me understand what was going on. His reaction was like
a slap in the face. I have to admit that I was offended for having my "thank you" thrown back at
me like that. But the first thing I did was to go into his profile and see where he was from. Then I
realized it was a culture clash. We were both saying one thing but hearing another.
One thing is for certain. Martin learned English from the British and not from Americans. The British
(especially the English) use sarcasm far more than we do. Last year my wife and I went on a field trip to
Germany and the field trip leader was a German who learned English in Texas. That was a real treat!
His name is Martin Sander and he is a very famous paleontologist from the University of Bonn. I
absolutely didn't have to put my guard up with him because he learned all of the Texas lingo and
expressions at the University of Texas.
Quote from: Seth on May 05, 2010, 07:13:46 PM
Maybe this is like dandelO said just personnality clash
No. It's a "culture clash". It's like an American touching a
middle-easterner with the left hand. The Arab doesn't realize that we
use toilet paper so we are just as likely to use either hand to wipe our
behinds and we wash both hands after going to the bathroom so, to us,
both hands are the same. Americans don't realize that Arabs have no
toilet paper (its harder to get rid of it in the desert) so they use the
left hand for cleaning their behinds and reserve their right hands for
things like dealing with people. They have limited water in the desert
to wash their hands anyhow.
Quote from: Seth on May 05, 2010, 07:13:46 PM
So of course you should try to understand TG2...
I have and will continue to do so. But maybe I need to thank people more.
I'll just have to be more careful how I go about it. Personally, I don't feel
comfortable filling the forum up with my pictures. Besides avoiding taking up
more disk space, I would much rather get straight to the point in text. I am
much more engineer/programmer than artist.
Quote from: Seth on May 05, 2010, 07:13:46 PM
I am not used to be the "calm down guys" man so i hope you'll understand my points... ;D
You did a great job. Thanks.
A great place to start learning is the tutorial section. My first tutorial was the Wilderness tutorial. http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Tutorials (http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Tutorials)
Pablo, I certainly understand your frustrations and the importance of "Eureka" moments like you had earlier in this thread. As we've said, we're working on more extensive documentation, but it's not something that's in a time frame that will probably help you a lot in your early learning experience here unfortunately.
That being said, I do see Martin and Seth's point, and while I completely understand the methodical approach you are trying to take to TG2, I wonder even if detailed documentation were available if it would actually accelerate the process of *creating a good scene* very much. I think that's the point Martin and Seth are trying to make, that at least for many people, the creation of a nice scene (whether with a specific design in mind or otherwise) is the goal. It's a bit unclear what your goals may be, whether you are aiming for professional or personal use, but I think the common assumption is that the eventual goal is to make landscape scenes. Many people seem to learn a lot, and quite quickly, by just starting to do things, and they start posting their scenes and we see their progress, we give them feedback to improve, and watch as they do so, often remarkably quickly. You haven't been here long, so perhaps you just haven't had a chance to make anything worth posting or perhaps, like me, you have high standards (it took me a year or two to post my first image with TG Classic when I first started using that years ago).
In any case I don't mean to post an irrelevant ramble here, just trying to provide some perspective. What I'd really like to say that may be of some value specifically to you is that in actually just diving in and trying to create whatever scene you have in mind, you'll probably learn a lot while doing it (e.g. the coordinate origin thing should certainly be better documented, but seems fairly obvious given what *is* documented). Perhaps more importantly you'll run across a lot of these questions and issues in practical situations and be able to ask here, with more specific rather than theoretical scenarios, making the answers easier to come by. The coordinate origin issue is interesting actually, because it sounds like you've been really wondering about that, but it's fairly well known and is the kind of thing that seems like it would quickly come up and either be answered in a forum discussion, or become obvious from use of the software. Hopefully it goes without saying that we realize that's far from a substitute for documentation and is a very non-ideal situation, and as you know that's something we're working to rectify.
So while it may be counterintuitive to you just start creating before you know the foundation, given the lack of a complete documentation set that gives you the info you need, I think it's the most sensible way forward. I understand that it's not the way you're used to working and you may not be comfortable with it, but I daresay given the present reality it might accelerate your learning curve and reduce your frustration... maybe (I hope). :)
- Oshyan
ôO
I have to say I don't understand what happened (but maybe it's because I'm french and I mostly learned english on the Internet).
There's just one thing that caught my attention: the "'do as I do' tutorials".
I have to agree with PabloMack here: I don't really like these tutorials (before anyone feels offended, let me explain).
I need (and it's only a matter of taste) to understand what I'm doing in order to understand the software itself. When I see a tutorial that tells me to "change this value to 0.6125 and place the camera to 198.36 altitude and ...", the only thing I want to do is saying "ok, but WHY? What is this setting for? What difference between this value and the previous one? Why do you want me to change its value for this value? How did you decide to use this value?"
I know most people like these tutorials, so I really think it's only a matter of taste (and that's why you shouldn't be offended by my post :))
(I've written several tutorials for Terragen and WM before, so I know how time-consuming it is ^^')
I understand Rhalph but some people, like me for example, find it easier to understand by doing things and by doing variation on a theme. so when you "follow" steps during a tutorial, you can vary values and watch the difference between what the author did and your version of it.
understanding very technical matters usually just bring messy renders without any organisation and "soul" to them. I mean what's the point in understanding what "1/4 first samples" (stupid example, but i try to speak about something nobody talk about not to be rude) does when you obviously don't even know how you can change fake stones look ;)
anyway, Oshyan, as usual, explained far better than I'll ever be able to how I felt about this ^^
hope i've not been too rude too :)
Apologies to Dr. Death. This was your thread, not mine. I wish you well with your learning experiences.
Last word: I agree a tutorial that just tells you a number with no additional information is not as useful as it could/should be. So I think it's best to strike a balance, giving a suggested value with pleasing results, while explaining the general idea of a setting and what effects it could have.
- Oshyan
Well huge thanks to all those who replied- this seems quite a small forum but it's fantastic to see how quickly people respond. To the guy who sent me the link to the youtube tutorials- thanks especially, those were very helpful, and no hard feelings to the two of you who hijacked this for a bit of a bitchy argument- sometimes people have to vent.
Right- a specific question now. If i want to have a bar of mountains (using a heightfield) which girdles the whole planet along one of the lines of latitude, how would i achieve that. Rather worryingly, considering this system is supposed to be based on a globe, when i increase the size of my heightfield, it appears as just a bar perched on the apex of the planet rather than following it's curvature. Any solutions?
Dr Death
Hi Dr Death
You could use a height field, quite a lot of them to create a "bar" of mountains girdling your planet but may I ask first why you need this. A lot of people, my self included, often fall into the trap of trying to build an entire planet or scene and then look for the right place to place the camera. It gets worse! In your example you "could" create 50 or so height fields at very high resolution that do indeed encircle the planet. But what are you trying to achieve? For a start you cant see the height fields on the far side of the planet so they serve no purpose, dump them. Secondly, take a look at the satellite images taken of the Earth. At a height where you can see individual mountains, you can barely see the curvature of the earth. Even ten mile high mountains, higher than anything on this planet, would only just show up on a planetary scale.
So to a solution to your question. I would firstly think about the entirety of your scene, is it going to be animated, is it going to have populations, how close/far will the camera be from the point of interest in your scene. Get a specific idea in your mind about what you would like to achieve. If your going to have any populations these work best at the north pole (0,0,0). Therefore if your populations were to be on the girdling mountains I would recommend that the mountain chain runs from the north pole to the south pole and you place a "snow/ice cap" shader on opposite sides of the equator. This way you can control the populations, you mountain range encircles the planet, everything "looks" just right and only you know that you have "cheated" to create your desired result.
So back to your question again!! I would not use a heightfield. I would use a procedural mountain terrain (try three PF terrains stacked on top of each other with their scales a factor of 10 apart) and two distance shaders defining the maximum and minimum distances from the north pole.
Hope this helps :)
Richard
Heightfields wouldn't really be appropriate for encircling the entire planet since, as you've noticed, they still have some limitations when used far from the coordinate origin (on the other side of the planet in other words). You could however use a high resolution image map with displacement. You could either paint your terrain directly in a 3rd party application, creating a spherically projected texture for application in TG2, or you could simply create a mask to use for controlling placement of procedural terrain in TG2. Actually, if you use a Surface Layer and use Y as altitude, you could create settings that would limit something *procedurally* to a thin band anywhere along the planet, so you could use this to control procedural terrain if that will meet your needs. If you need explicit feature placement heightfields and/or a global image map are the way to go.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on May 07, 2010, 08:19:51 PM
Actually, if you use a Surface Layer and use Y as altitude...
Certainly you don't really mean "Y" do you? Don't you mean altitude relative to the "normal" of the planet's surface? On the equator of the default planet, the Y axis becomes tangent to the planet's surface (and horizontal relative to anyone standing on that surface).
I suspect a lot of the opinions presented in this thread deal with the "artistic" or not concept. I mean how does a true artist explain how he or she paints a masterpiece? Or a musician, or any other artistic endeavor? Some of us (me) fall into the "that is a computer generated image" sector and others are true artists.
[edit] That last sentence is confusing. I should have written "Some of us (me) create TG images that look computer generated, while the artists can get that natural look."
I think that's the beauty of TG2 -- that simply plugging in (great) numbers doesn't result in a masterpiece image -- that it's the true artist that can combine those numbers with camera angles, lighting, and everything else.
So, my point is that the artists among us should recognize there are many (like me) who work to the "I need to know why this works that way" to accomplish their TG2 endeavors and other who can put together a great image without having to have to know the exact effects of every input.
And doesn't mean they don't know a lot about TG2 -- just they've learned through hard work, study, and practice how to mix the various inputs to make that great scene (yes, I'm fumbling here getting the correct words down.)
I guess it's the artist/non-artist thing.
Quote from: PabloMack on May 07, 2010, 10:40:11 PM
Quote from: Oshyan on May 07, 2010, 08:19:51 PM
Actually, if you use a Surface Layer and use Y as altitude...
Certainly you don't really mean "Y" do you? Don't you mean altitude relative to the "normal" of the planet's surface? On the equator of the default planet, the Y axis becomes tangent to the planet's surface (and horizontal relative to anyone standing on that surface).
Sorry, I meant use Y for *slope* (not altitude) constraints. For example, zoom out so you can see the planet, add a surface layer, turn on Test Color, and check both Max and Min Slope Constraints. Then set Max to 90, with 0 slope fuzzy zone. Set Min to 80, with 0 fuzzy zone. You should see a band around the equator as in the attached image (turned off the atmosphere to see it better).
- Oshyan
Doing TG2 as a hobby I found I enjoy the way of learning by reading some threads, trying stuff out if I see something cool, etc. Dissecting any posted clips helped me understand how the node network worked, and get and idea of how some cool tricks can be done by arranging shaders and such.
Personally in my tutorials I try to avoid saying "Enter xyz in this field", and more just say "this is where you change this value to get these types of results" - as a lot of terragen for me is messing with the numbers finding a value that i feel works with the scene (which can take awhile sometimes ;)). I don't want people coming out of my tutorial with the exact same thing as me (as for example, my video tutorial has a horrible result as I didn't take the time to find the values that I would be satisfied with). I want them to know where the values are that do that general thing, and then find the ones that work with their scene spending a bit more time learning. And coming out with a unique piece of art.
I think one problem with new people is they need a way to know which values are the ones that are more important to change. With so many options available they get overwhelmed. But about 50-80% of settings on a given node will be ones you touch never and can basically ignore. They are the ones you learn what they do when you come to needing them, or when you feel like just seeing what it does.
Quote from: neuspadrin on May 07, 2010, 11:53:36 PM
I think one problem with new people is they need a way to know which values are the ones that are more important to change. With so many options available they get overwhelmed. But about 50-80% of settings on a given node will be ones you touch never and can basically ignore. They are the ones you learn what they do when you come to needing them, or when you feel like just seeing what it does.
Very good point.
Quote from: neuspadrin on May 07, 2010, 11:53:36 PM
But about 50-80% of settings on a given node will be ones you touch never and can basically ignore.
errr... ???
Oh, you are speaking for beginner users right ? ^^
Quote from: Seth on May 08, 2010, 02:16:36 PM
Quote from: neuspadrin on May 07, 2010, 11:53:36 PM
But about 50-80% of settings on a given node will be ones you touch never and can basically ignore.
errr... ???
Oh, you are speaking for beginner users right ? ^^
Yes, I'm talking the first few scenes you make until you can really learn the program they need to learn to ignore the advanced settings. But even then once you know the advanced stuff you won't tweak each and every setting in a given shader generally, its more of then knowing what it does so when you do need it you use it.
Maybe that depends of the users ^^
I usually tweaks almost every settings in several nodes (Powerfractals, water shaders, atmosphere, sunlight...)
Many thanks for all your replies. The project i'm actually working on is a 3d model of J.R.R. Tolkien's Beleriand, I've got a map which covers the area 1421.58km by 1421.58km but obviously it is going to be a challenge to get it all right (particularly on trial and error). So far what i've done is established an 'origin cam' at the north pole and placed a heightfield shader of the appropriate size on top centred on that on a power-fractal...ed planet and my tactic is basically going to be to 'sculpt' the landscape onto that. I'm quite intrigued by this 'painted shader' feature. What is it and will it be useful?
Dr Death
Quote from: Dr Death on May 15, 2010, 01:46:48 PMI'm quite intrigued by this 'painted shader' feature. What is it and will it be useful?
It basically gives you a paint brush to go crazy with drawing where you want things to be. It can be a lil finicky at times, and most definitely save up before using it. Most notably, it will cause issues if you try to paint the sky (issues == it crashes). Once you set it to use a painted shader, you can customize the flow and size of the brush etc. Then up near the pause/reset buttons above the render preview you will see a little paint brush icon to the right. You choose to start painting -> (pick your painted shader). Then in the render preview you will see a circle around your arrow showing where you would be painting. Click to paint. You can also switch to "eraser" mode using the same paint menu once you are in paint mode.
Good tip to speed things up: Before painting on your terrain, let the preview render finish (or get to 80 or so) of a good view of the area you wish to paint. Then hit the pause button. Once done painting, unpause it to see results. Otherwise it takes forever as it tries to render each stroke you do.
Dr. Death, are you familiar with the Middle Earth DEM (Digital Elevation Map) Project? http://www.me-dem.org/
- Oshyan