This is called New Rocks because I started a thread about four years back about this general angle. I've removed the tgd from that one though.
Here's a couple of graphs which create rocks. They are quite mushroomed. That is just a feature of these particular graphs. In Rocks 7.0, it's Rock profile that will adjust that and the blend start and end also have effect on how the rocks surface blends in. The overhang form is controlled in the colour tab of a fractal. In Rocks 6.0 it's Low High profile that mushrooms them. The rock "stems" surface fractal has no displacement. This would break at the join to the ground.
I may work out a way of linking the Grow and Low High profile in Rocks 6.0 because those things would be better linked. It just needs to be done a certain way. "Growing" the rocks isn't as good as I'd like.
There are both completely different. I could make lots of variations. The way I build these all depends on the outcome I want. If I don't need it to have a certain feature I don't built that in. Various power functions hooked in at different places can alter the rock shapes. that's just a matter of the shape you want.
The names on the adjusters may not be entirely logical. Rocks 7.0 has "Strength". that's a power which tends to puff the rock out before clamping.
Some adjustments will break the graphs. Watch for that. Breaks in displacement blend will occur but these graphs are not fool proof shaders that can be used any old way. To explain where breaks may occur would take some time. Just watch for it. Don't apply displacement to the "stems" on Rocks 6.0 for example. Some settings will wildy change the effect of others. I don't know that the settings I have made are the safest to start with in this respect.
Rocks 6.0 can be clumped in their distribution. Rocks 7.0 doesn't have that. Rocks 7.0 is just not as integrated into a scene the way the Rocks 6.0 is but Rocks 6.0 is perlin based so needs a bit more control of it's distribution.
In general, Rocks 6.0 should be kept small (probably smaller than I have made them here). Rocks 7.0 tends to work better for increasing the rocks to much larger scale or taller. Rocks 7.0 can be more like rocks sitting on small hills of the surrounding surface, maybe eroded at their base. This all depends on how you tweak them. In general, l use Rocks 7.0 (or variants of it - some less mushroom effect) if I want larger rocks that don't mask off perfectly with the surrounding ground like the fake stones do. I may add other variants.
Rocks 7.0 general type of form (voronoi based) can also have another feature built in which I haven't done yet that would allow you to have rocks of variation in surface i.e. one rock has a colour and displacement of one surface fractal and another a different surface and lots inbetween. Like the way you can have colour variation on the fake stones. That requires the graph to get bigger though. I will also be building in a way to distribute the rocks more unevenly in a similar fashion to fake stones. Using a seperate fractal to laterally displace Rocks 7.0 seems to be quite cool. This is what makes them good for bigger rocks.
Here's another variant of Rocks 7.0. It's a bit more suitable for having more standard rock forms.
EDIT: tgd removed. A better one is on a later post. It's a slightly different graph but also has colour differences built in.
Here I changed settings in Rocks 6.0. No change to the graph though. Because these are perlin they can eventually all almalgmate into one rock covering rather than separate rocks.
Two more earlier variations on Rocks 6.0. The first is closer to fake stones territory but the perlin doesn't have the voronoi edges.
Another variation from Rocks 7.0. Just seeing what this looks like with water.
One feature of Rocks 7.0 is that they will pick up displacement from the underlying surface. This can cause them to look more interesting or can make it look worse depending on the surfaces used. The graphs can be swapped and mashed around in any which way. Try Perlin on Rocks 7.0 for example. There is also a way to altitude distribute the rocks so that they don't fade out with the surface layer distribution. I'll eventually branch off various ideas to more specifics.
My hero!
I was just playing (since one week) with your "old" rock clip file. It's a very interesting approach because there is no cahotic collisions between rocks, we can easily mix the surface texture, and it's not too heavy to compute (my PIII thanks you).
My goal was to deform the soil near the rock, to have more interaction between them... Basically like that:
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/maxxwellsmart/4241026157/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/maxxwellsmart/4241026157/)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/corica/5240870424/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/corica/5240870424/)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/danskiedijamcojr/8163653337/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/danskiedijamcojr/8163653337/)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/24562498@N03/8116785401/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/24562498@N03/8116785401/)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/chrisk1982/6919572624/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/chrisk1982/6919572624/)
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/borealnz/3313714500/ (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/borealnz/3313714500/)
And I was stuck here:
(http://f1evv.free.fr/tg2/advancedrocks.gif)
I'll see what I can do with your upgrated files... And be busy for a while. Thanks! ;)
Hi. I'll take a look at that graph. I think you get into difficulties if you mix up using scalars with vectors to do stuff here.
There are actually lots and lots of ways to do these things. On another file I have somewhere I have a slider which kind of flows another displacement around rocks but it doesn't touch them. I need to revisit that. It's not the same angle as here in what I was doing so needs patching around to have something definitely stone forms. For example, I think snow often melts around stones. That's the effect.
My feeling is that fake stones are great if you want the stones to look very separate from surrounding ground. Often this is the case in reality but often ground either rides up the stones or is different arround the stones. Blending the stones in other ways becomes problematic because you can't get what's inside. Also, these big boulders in Rocks 7.0 don't have to be big boulders. They can just be a slightly raised surface. Make them very large with less height and overhang.
I'm going to delete a previous tgd and add the one below because this rebuilds the idea of the graph in my first Rocks thread i.e. two surfaces can cover the rocks by various degrees. This time the whole arrangement works as a surface layer - rocks 1 and 2 surfaces and ground. This way you can add other surfaces into those powerfractals whatever way you want. I removed the smooth step and used gain for all the surface blending. Smooth step may be better for the eroded looking ones. I'll revist these different approaches.
Also attached is a screenshot of voronoi Cell and Diff. Notice the shape is the same as long as seed and size are the same. That means we can use cell to control masking of diff. You can use it to distribute the rocks as well as control the surface to get different blend levels of surfaces. I'm not going to do distributions with the cell here though for now because I'm working on simpler voronoi ground cover forms, not big rocks and I'll bring the cell blending in there.
Chinaski,
I'm not on my Windows system at the moment so can't check this out but in theory, fake stones should use the same shape as voronoi diff if you tweak them the same way hence it should be possible to simply get stuff to flow around the stones. That's kind of the opposite to what I'm doing here. This should be tested with fake stones if it hasn't been already.
One thing I'm not clear on about the fake stones is how they treat colour and displacement differently i.e. you plug a fractal in with colour and displacement but the fake stone has to treat those differently to blend with the ground. Does anyone have any clue on how that happens? There is no point in exactly recreating fake stone but that aspect of them feeds into some ideas with using the graph to also treat surrounding ground.
thanks for sharing these, looking forward to playing with and rendering these nodes, later.
:)
Here's a test where I loaded in a ground surface to show why I'm doing this with the rocks. The ground surface rides up the edges of the rocks. Maybe sand would be good if anyone has something along those lines.
I may test ways of still having a tight join to the rocks from the ground but increase of displacement around rocks. Avoiding rocks and swirling around is no problem but I have to build another graph. The ground surface is some added voronoi. I'm working on some low level surfaces that also clamp and distribute but that's a different topic.
Very kool rock experiments efflux. 8)
I'm just doing some tests to see what these look like in a better environment. Distributing them is now the key thing. I'm going back to a more basic format to test that. This render is basically the previous two files set up but with different surfaces. One is a voronoi surface I've worked on which is on the rocks. There is obviously terrain and the rocks surface layer is simply altitude distributed. That means the rocks fade out. I can make it so they distribute without doing that but that will come a lot later. The graph will get too big.
I replaced two of the earlier Rock 7 files. Colour is controlling lateral displacement. Colour was set to 5 then displacement multiplier to 1. I've reversed that. It's the same thing but probably more logical to have the displacement multiplier being where you displace.
A new file is coming which is another variant on the basic idea.
This one clumps the rocks with a perlin. I multiplied with perlin and ditched the power function. This method makes for nice clumping but maybe it's blowing the stones up too much. I actually didn't want to lose the effect that they are blending into the ground but maybe now I'll take it that direction anyway because this isn't like the fake stones at all in the way it distributes and shapes the rocks. I'll test some more ideas.
EDIT: tgd removed. 7.9 on post 33 is better.
Yo! Very cool work! Sorry for my silence, I was sleeping. Now, I'm going to drink my tea, and explore your "new new" file (7.4 & 7.8 version) and play with it a moment. ;)
Just a little precision about the graph I've shown here: It's just one of the many many many pathetic attempts I produced... There was worst and better things. I've also noticed the similarity betwen voronoi Cell and Diff and used it a lot.
I think my plan need to be:
1- Draw the cells.
2- Exclude the small ones (the darkest ones).
3- Tweak the remaining cells (same max value in each cell). That's the tricky part, because I want almost the same height and size for all my rocks. So I can't just clamp the values.
4- Apply my vertical dispacements (to deform the terrain) on a big part of the cell.
5- Build the rock with a smaller part or the cell.
6- Pray to obtain "rounded rocks" (voronoi cells gradient are not so round, and, by the way, we must apply huge displacements).
That would be much much easier if we had an other type of noise, which draws a radial gradient from the center to the border of the cell. And if we could calibrate the maximum and minimum size of a cell (smaller cells are so boring). :D
I can also try to work with a perlin noise.
nb: I really need to learn english... Try to explain something here is so long and painfull. Hope you understand. :/
Shazam! Here is where I stand.
(http://f1evv.free.fr/tg2/advanced-rocks-02.gif)
I deliberately didn't implement: lateral diplacement on the big rocks, micro displacements, surfaces mixing with voronoi Cells trick, or normals calculation (which certainly explain some strange dispacements), etc. It was just a rapid render of my "simple" rocks node tree WIP, build from your old scene. There is a lot of problems with undesired displacements, and because I work from the center of each cell, rocks seems very distant from each others.
The use of a Voronoi vector was a attempt to round the rocks. I'm not sure it was a good idea. Also, there is too much node, and use of too much strange values. I'm sure it can be simplier (with better maths capability) and improved. So I need to work on that.
The strange thing with this technic is that we work WITH a voronoid grid (rocks positionning) but also AGAINST the voronoi grid (rocks shape is influenced, and we are stuck in a cell for displacement effects on the ground). I dream of a radial gradient network, built from a veronoi grid. Like a bacterial colony. That would be fantastically usefull. But it's an interesting approach, thank you very much for your inspiring work! ;)
nb: I hope you can see the picture. I don't see it on Firefox (don't know why) but it's good on IE. :/
EDIT: About "radial gradient network, built from a veronoi grid" I was thinking something like that:
(https://machinesdontcare.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/screen-shot-2012-08-19-at-19-37-291.png)
(http://www.gimpchat.com/files/1428_Voronoi%20pattern.jpg)
I've been thinking about doing something like this as fake stones drive me nuts, so thanks, big time, for this as it will save me much time and mental effort. There is obviously much potential for a large variety of rock shapes here which should add to the quality of images no matter the theme, genre or style.
Hi mhaze.
Chinaski, Mojoworld has that voronoi you mention.
The problem is this (except it's only a problem at certain settings if you don't avoid them). We are clamping the voronoi. This is one method of distributing them. It's fine because it creates a different form from the fake stones which don't clamp. Clamping makes the stones distant like you say. That's just a visual feature of the look. You can them clump them with another function but the rocks still look individual. Also, the clamping is necessary anyway for other noise functions or fractals.
However, we get a blending problem if we want a sharp blend line. Because of a mismatch we need at least a tiny blend region or we get a step. I can solve the mismatch totally but so far I've done this with two fractals - one for colour and one for displacement. This means we can blend the displacement in but not the colour. That then looks like a sharper line which is exactly how we want one extreme of setting to look but without a step. This isn't so elegant though from an editing point of view. I haven't added a file here with that. Can we treat colour and displacement output from one fractal differently? I can't see how. Maybe there are other ways. It needs to be worked on more simply - just work on the blending issues to try to solve it.
Of course the idea with some of these files is that we do have a blending area so in that case it's not a problem. It does become a problem for users who don't know what is effecting what because they will have to tweak and see if it breaks. They won't know that the setting will break the form. I'm not really trying to make it unbreakable or more logical but I'm looking at various other ways to do things. It would be possible to design the shapes then decide, that's it, these are large boulders then fix it to create that style rather than having open ended breakable stuff.
Various ranges or values of various power functions will break things as well but they are still useful shaping functions. You'd have to set that up so it couldn't go beyond a certain range with another slider.
The fake stones uses a cell structure to distribute so no clamp. Clamping does however mean that we can use other noises for the shape. Perlin for example which can be effective to create larger flatter areas of rock. Here, I'm using the voronoi cell to make different coloured rocks. I'm not sure how fake stones does that.
Sorry, looked like i was just replying to mhaze in that last message. I've edited it.
Chinaski, I didn't get time look at your graph but have done now. What was it that you were actually trying to do? I take it you were trying to get the voronoi to sit within a kind of hollow or at least look as though it does even if the depression isn't that deep. It works in your graph as long as you don't set the bias and gain to create too sudden changes. That's the only reason for the tears you are seeing. If the biasing and gain create a vertical which they can end up doing, then you get that tear.
I found a weird file I did ages back. That's the first picture. I played with this basic idea and came up with the second. I had a version that retained the rims you see in the first picture. So the rocks sat in liitle hills with rims. I'll get that back again. No graphs because it needs serious adjustments. There are some nasties that you can see around the rocks. Usual blending difficulties which need to be solved. This file had adjusters that make the rocks either sit in depressions or rise up (still in small depressions of their own though). Unfortunately It will be a few days before I can get back to this. The rocks are voronoi 3D vector.
Hi
Firtst attempt to use rocks has thrown up some interesting problems. Firstly the distribution of the rocks is very patterned without the orphans that give a truly natural quality. Secondly although you can't see it here the rocks will pick up displacements from the underlying surface. Both problems I've no doubt can easily be sorted. oh for a random node! The attached pic shows how distribution needs more work.
mhaze. That looks good. Yes, the distribution gets a little patterned when seen from a distance. We can try to do something about that but your POV shows how the rocks most definitely have ground flowing between them. This is different from fake stones.
Chinaski, I was thinking that you should try to do your graph but use voronoi 3D vector for the ground. it just looks smoother for this efect but can you make the rocks voronoi diff? The graph is cool. I should try using those booleans. TG2 didn't used to have them.
Unfortunately I don't have time to do anything else now.Ii'll have to revisit this later.
Quote from: efflux on December 09, 2012, 11:03:44 AM
Chinaski, I was thinking that you should try to do your graph but use voronoi 3D vector for the ground. it just looks smoother for this efect but can you make the rocks voronoi diff? The graph is cool. I should try using those booleans. TG2 didn't used to have them.
Unfortunately I don't have time to do anything else now.Ii'll have to revisit this later.
Yep! That was the solution I was looking for (found it 3 hours ago, my computer running on it): "Voronoi 3D A vector" node -> "Length to scalar" node -> classic build. For the mix part you can use a 3D cell node or a Y to scalar convert. That's working perfectly, nice rounded rocks... For ground displacements from the stone you can use a X (or Z) to scalar to blend the "bump" and (by the way) simulate wind deposition. :D
I was hoping the "Y to scalar" node or the "3d cell" node can help me to normalize the values of the "Voronoi 3D A vector" (same max value in each cell), but it's not the case. Last problem to solve.
I'm posting the result when the render is done. ;)
Woot! First one with mixed textures. Second one without textures, but ground displacements are blended with a "Z to scalar" node.
(http://f1evv.free.fr/tg2/rocks-78-modif5-textures.jpg)
(http://f1evv.free.fr/tg2/rocks-78-modif5-sans.jpg)
Values are pretty extreme (the stones are deformed and I hit some cells border), but, this way, you can't miss the nice effect.
One last thing, I noticed a little issue in your rocks 7.8 build Efflux: If you boost the value of the "profile" node (to 0.9 for example, yes I'm the type of person who can do that) the perlin noise reappear. You can solve this easily by adding a "Smooth step scalar" (input: "divide scalar 01" node; Step start: "Density" node; Step end: a constant scalar value 1; Outpout on the "bias scalar 01"). This way this part of your built is unbreakable. ;)
I'll post the tgd file (which is actualy very messy) when it will be good enough. I'm out. Nothing else for tonight, because this is IronSquid (http://www.ironsquid.tv/) night! \o/
Nice work Chinaski. Better distribution in this one, added another perlin noise
"EDIT: About "radial gradient network, built from a veronoi grid" I was thinking something like that:"
Like this:
Nope, I need the same scalar value (black 0, or white 1) in the center of each cell. But your clip file is cool. :)
OK. I've got some time again. Looks like some cool work is happening here.
Chinaski, those look great.
Just one point about distributing the rocks, this can be done by anything, even a fractal a be used for that. If we can get the smaller area or rocks looking good and blended with surrounding ground then the rest will come reasonably easily. It's no different from other blending problems in TG2.
Another point is that although I started this with "rocks" because that's a kind of extreme use of the methods here, what's going on can be applied to any distributing of different surfaces with displacements but then you'd not need things like fractals controlling the overhangs because that would be less of a visible feature and actually create problems if thee wasn't much overhang. It also goes down to small surfacing details. Ity can be good to blends of different materials that are very separately distributed. The image where I added the extra voronoi surface is like that. The voronoi is layers of different voronoi but in places it suddenly hits the same smooth value since it's clamped.
The most crucial part of all of this is working out how the blend happens in relation to both colour and displacement. I haven't really solved that part elegantly.
OK Chinaski. That's great. I edited my last mail because that was before I looked at exactly what you mean. I've tried the smooth step thing before the profile. I think this solves our blending issues with the ground but I'll need to test further.
Quote from: mhaze on December 09, 2012, 01:57:29 PM
Nice work Chinaski. Better distribution in this one, added another perlin noise
mhaze. This is much improved. This is all we have to do - make more complex blending shapes. That of course could be done all sorts of ways. You could distort it as well. As I've mentioned, there is also a way to make an altitude blend for the rocks independent from the surface layer blending. What you can do is distort the altitude blending region with the actual shape of the rocks. What this does is make the altitude curl around the rocks so that they do not fade out. This is a little difficult to explain and the graph starts to get a little complex but I have a thread called Altitude Blend distorter. There are various ways to make the graphs but if you look at the pictures you'll get the idea. Take the rocks here - they would come in and out at altitudes but not fade into some other surface if you see what I mean. It's one step at a time though. Best not to post messy graphs. I have quite a lot of half baked graphs with stuff in them that I need to bring out and attach to other methods and simpler set ups. Chinaski has provided a fix for a previous file I have here. I'll post the new one soon and remove the old.
Quote from: mogn on December 11, 2012, 04:28:36 AM
"EDIT: About "radial gradient network, built from a veronoi grid" I was thinking something like that:"
Like this:
mogn, the shapes that graph creates are really cool. The only thing is that is creates nasty shadow problems. This always happens when you shift around position too much in TG2.
Here's the last file I posted with a better arrangement. My last graph wasn't ideal. I've added Chinaski's improvement. My graph was working sloppily after the divide. You will notice the render looks different from before but the rest of the settings are the same. This is just that the settings are now working over a different range. The old render had no faults with the settings in that version and in fact it might look a bit better with the particular settings it had but I didn't want to tweak the new file to have different settings. This version has more headroom for tweaking without getting problems.
I think we now have a totally satisfactory method of blending in the rock shapes but the surface displacements are another matter. They will still create problems and that needs some thought. Also, exactly how we are going to blend the overlying surfaces? This is a question of what look we want as well as the technicalities.
Probably these threads should be arranged differently so that the best files are put on the first post otherwise people might download more problematic files. I didn't really start this thread with that properly in mind though. I don't want to change all the files I've put here because some of the discussion relates to how they can be improved.
Guys, I think I found a big part of the solution. Max and min values are normalised. Now I need to mix that smoothly, and exclude the small cells. Thanks to mogn, your clip helped me a lot.
Hi
I've learnt a lot from this thread unfortunately I'm too busy(decorating the bathroom before family arrive for Christmas) to play, I should be able to get busy after Christmas and there are lots of ideas to explore here.
There are multitudes of ways to do things here. Do you want to rocks to smoothly transition from the ground surface? Do you want them to pick up all the displacement from ground or not? What profile do you want them to have? etc etc.
I've added another variant. In this one the rocks pick up displacement from the ground but the seam is a sudden transition for the rocks colour but not their displacement otherwise the displacement would be broken. I also hooked in a smooth step which adds to the step end. The actual extra constant scalar is not needed but adding values from 0-1 is around what you'd want which is what the slider does. Other things could be experimented with here. This can squash the rocks flat. It just goes on forever and there are still ways to technically tidy up these graphs. This whole angle deals with so many things but that's why I'm interested in it.
I have other files that play in this area but they need tidying. I'm a bit sick of this though. There are other angles I need to explore. Every area cross feeds into another though.
.
This thread seriously rocks!!! Awesome stuff to explore... Thanks!
:)
Always pushing the envelope, aren't you? This is still scratching scratching TG2's surface, and I see what you've pointed out. Keep on keeping on!
Modified tgd attached. much more random distribution and merging two graphs to give two rock sizes
Quote from: Xynedia on December 12, 2012, 05:12:41 PM
Hi Efflux,
Very interesting work, and the files with it.
Unfortunately, I can no longer do in TG2.
TG2 have the software, digital key and password access
for on Planetside completely erased.
TG2 is for me too complex and not user-friendly in the
World creation and render preview practice.
I would have made her file or a World Interesting
can do with these stones.
In German:
Hallo Efflux,
Sehr Interessante Arbeit und die Files mit dazu.
Leider kann ich nichts mehr in TG2 machen.
Habe die TG2 Software, Digitalschlüssel und Passwort Zugang
für auf Planetside komplett gelöscht.
TG2 ist für mich zu komplex und nicht Anwenderfreundlich in der
Weltenerstellung und Rendervorschaupraxis.
Ich hätte aus ihrer File noch eine Interessante Welt
mit diesen Steinen machen können.
Hi Xynedia.
TG2 is complex and I understand your frustration coming from Mojoworld. I have many gripes about TG2 as compared to Mojoworld but Mojoworld does have other problems. The UI is bad and unfortunately it's out of date. No multi core for example so to continue procedural landscaping we now have have TG2. I'm hoping TG2 gets a few changes eventually to open up more power as in Mojoworld.
Chinaski and mogn, you should make more threads on tweaking the noise functions to get different shapes because that goes across the board for creating any surface whether displaced or just colour - colour is more versatile because you don't even have to worry as much if the shapes have sudden changes. You know how to do these things.
As for that last file. The displacement and colour are separated from the fractal output so they get treated differently. I just used a colour mix for colour but bear in mind the merge shader is one way to separate colour from displacement. One can control colour and another displacement. There are probably a whole host of uses for this. I'd rather have more blue nodes controlling stuff in some of these graphs but they work OK.
That last file also strays a bit close to fake stones. It's questionable whether you'd use that rather than fake stones.
mhaze, I'm a computer that doesn't have TG2 so can't look at that tgd but in regards to creating different rock sizes. Here's my idea. Make different sized voronoi noises and blend them together. You could add or subtract constant values from different rocks to get them to poke through the clamping or not.
Just another thought about the multiple sized rocks and clamping. I'm talking without testing here but it might be a good idea to just set the clamping and have each voronoi rock have it's own control to poke through the clamping or not. This might be more intuitive.
Different angle here. I've gone for lower type rocks. No overhangs except what the surface displacement creates. These are voronoi piled on other voronoi getting smaller on the top layer. The surfaces can be blended from one to another. I like this one because of the inconsistency depending on the rock slope at the edge which changes at lot. Playing with the rock density and the blend region can get a lot of different results. There has to be a decent space between blend start and end values or bad displacement joins will occur.
This is file 21 but that doesn't mean I've done lots in between. It just came from a different folder with other files.
Just another point about the shadow problems. I noticed this when I tried to use shadows on mogn's file but it's not just that file, although it seemed worse. The more blue node vectors and scalars added the more the shadows problem occurs. I'm not sure what the technical problem is.
Last file has been changed. I left a redundant node in for some reason.
mhaze, I looked at your file. That's cool. I noticed you used the altitude blend thing. I also noticed you use the voronoi to alter the terrain shape unlike in my render files on the other thread where I used it for very small stones. Both is fine.
I've had some ideas to try to make a file with a few different stones sizes but I haven't got that right yet. You're method is fine and looks good. I think these larger rocks should be quite spread out as large boulders. Just a feature here and there or the exact opposite, very close without any distribution other than altitude. When you start to be in-between they look a bit unnaturally evenly spaced so then you need the extra distribution.
mhaze, I made some alterations to your file. I changed the terrain so that the two altitude blended terrains had more relationship although it doesn't have to be this way. I made the voronoi on the terrain small. That then shows how the lower merged terrain blends in because it has no voronoi. Also, there was a problem with the small rocks because the voronoi diff and cell had different seeds. Those have to be the same seed. I also made the perlin distributor a bit bigger but some experiments could be done on what works as far as it's size.
The altitude blending can be problematic in some instances because it's so regular. It's best use is actually for shorelines but I'm looking into ways to deal with messing it up.
Hi
Thanks I hadn't noticed the seed issue. It was not mean't to be artistic! just a test! but I like the changed POV, something I need to spend more time on in my work!
All in all a very useful little experiment, particularly for more extreme rock shapes.
I didn't try to improve the look much but I thought I'd add a proper atmosphere (just the default) and take a shot to show it a bit better because it has some useful combined things going on for people to look into. The rock files on this thread are a bit complicated and this needs more refinement but the terrain blending is quite easy and more people should try those things.
Feel free to modify my files anytime. every time you do I learn something ;) Mick
Altering each other files is probably a good way to do things. It also saves a bit of work. Since you'd put some textures in that file and played with some of those altitude blend things, I decided to tweak it to try to show what I'd done with stuff in other threads but not put together. That way this file is good starting point even if you ignore the rocks technique. It doesn't look completely bare.
I'll probably not be using TG2 for a while now. I get masses of enthusiasm for a bit then eventually it fades because I start getting ideas for music or something else. It's best to just keep it this way rather than struggling on.
I've consolidated quite a few things in this TG2 stint which will feed back in next time I get into it.
Thank you efflux ! :)
Of course you guys must know how fun this is for all of us! Thanks for experimenting in front of us you two!!
Wow, amazing tutorial thread. I totally missed this as I was music-ing all that year and hardly online. Glad I remedied not knowing this stuff, tho I'll admit the blue nodes continue to baffle me. Thanks for all the brilliance folks!