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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: jmadden on November 07, 2019, 05:21:48 PM

Title: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: jmadden on November 07, 2019, 05:21:48 PM
I'm trying to use populations for the first time and I've run into an issue that the tutorials I've seen can't help with. 
I've attached an image of what is happening. Essentially my populations are sitting on some other surface underneath the topmost terrain. 
I've tried linking the other shaders to the populations but nothing works. I've also tried toggling between 'Sampling terrain...' in the seed tab but that doesn't work either. I reduced the issue down and saved a version of my project if you want to mess around with it. 
I'm running version 4.3.18 on a 10.12.6 Mac

PopulationExample.tgd
Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 5.00.30 PM.png
Title: Re: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: Hetzen on November 07, 2019, 07:10:45 PM
Looks like you need to put the Compute Terrain after your displacements, so TG knows where the surface is.
Title: Re: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: Matt on November 07, 2019, 08:49:25 PM
Quote from: Hetzen on November 07, 2019, 07:10:45 PMLooks like you need to put the Compute Terrain after your displacements, so TG knows where the surface is.

You only need the Compute Terrain if you need the updated texture coordinates and normals (although often you do).

There's some other reason it's doing this. I'm investigating it now.
Title: Re: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: Matt on November 07, 2019, 09:35:35 PM
It's the rotation on the planet. It works correctly when I uncheck "Rotate textures with planet" or set the planet rotation to 0. If you don't need that rotation, there's the solution. But that's a bug we'll need to fix.

If you need that planet rotation you may be able to recreate it with a Transform Input Shader between the displacement shaders and the populator, but I would want to move the planet so its centre is at the origin first, as that will allow the transform to be a simple rotation.
Title: Re: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: Hetzen on November 08, 2019, 09:41:16 AM
Quote from: Matt on November 07, 2019, 08:49:25 PM
Quote from: Hetzen on November 07, 2019, 07:10:45 PMLooks like you need to put the Compute Terrain after your displacements, so TG knows where the surface is.

You only need the Compute Terrain if you need the updated texture coordinates and normals (although often you do).

There's some other reason it's doing this. I'm investigating it now.
Ahh ok, I only looked at the screen grabs and didn't look at the scene file. I just assumed there was some further displacement happening after the CT node.
Title: Re: Populations showing up under terrain help
Post by: jmadden on November 10, 2019, 09:36:19 PM
Thank you Matt!