Ok I dont like posting this but these three bugs are about as old as me!!
Bug1:
Open a new scene,
delete the "Heightfield shader 01",
add a Power Fractal.
Bug is, you cant see it anywhere :(
(Ok you can add a power fractal and then delete the Heightfield shader but you should not have to and this will definitely throw new users)
Bug2:
Sphere population still don't work, I assume this is also true of planets
(solution: just remove it from the population list)
Bug3: Not so much a bug as just unfinished
The number of faces in the rock object when used in a population dose nothing
These are old bugs that really should have been thoroughly squashed by now.
Richard
Hmm, the heightfield delete bug seems to have slipped through, but we had intended to fix that for this release. Sorry about that. That and the other issues should be resolved in a future update.
- Oshyan
The added Power Fractal is actually "inside" the planet object, but without connection to the compute terrain node or the surface shader input of the planet.
I can only speak for myself, but you can get around this with creating your own default file to load at startup with only a power fractal. Which i would suggest also for "better" settings to start with.
(Also, however, i don't really understand why the default settings have a heightfield instead of a nice power fractal.)
In my opinion a good startup is without any heightfield. In my default is only one PF for starting the Terrain and one for the surface (deactivatet, as the compute terrain node) and the athmo samples are set to 8. Also i deactivated some other settings to get more performance on test renders that only should display how the terrain looks like.
If anybody wants to take a look, i can post this file. ;)
This probably won't impact most users but this little bug is still there.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5488.0
Did you ever try your test with the decay distance set to something huge. If the the next thing a ray of light bumps into after it leaves the camera and passes through you glass object in the Background sphere then a decay distance any less than that distance will render a black cube. I'm not too sure this is a bug, annoying certainly, but rather a consequence of how transparency was implemented, it was after all intended for water in streams and oceans.
:)
Richard
The various tests I did and showed in the original bug report show that the problem is definitely related to the amount by which the object is scaled. The effect is completely independent of the fade distance.
This one as well has still not been addressed:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5553.msg58325#msg58325 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=5553.msg58325#msg58325)
It has Ryan...
"Some of the built-in objects have an adjustable displacement tolerance parameter. This can be used if you find that large displacements or spikey surfaces are causing errors at tile/bucket boundaries or gaps in ray-traced shadows. Be careful not to touch this setting unless you need to, because it can dramatically increase render times. The default value for most objects is 1, but lower values can be used to render relatively flat surfaces more quickly."
Fakestones are not one of the "Some of the built-in objects". Or if they are I cannot find the displacement tolerance slider. It is under the shader tab if you create a sphere, but not the stones.
Hi Ryan,
The object you need to change here is probably the planet. I haven't implemented this setting per shader.
Matt
Thanks for the explanation Matt, I'm not sure why but I don't think I would have ever looked in the planet node even though it makes sense now.