Planetside Software Forums

Well, I finally figured it out: how to make shores look "wet". Let's face it--when waves are breaking on the shore, the waterline isn't completely dry as appears by default in terragen.

So here's what you do:

1. Create a fractal terrain for yourself, add a lake, and find a camera spot near a shore somewhere.
2. Create whatever surface layers you want. Sand, rock, moss, etc. I added fake stones too, just for effect.
3. Now create a surface layer and call it "wetness". Uncheck the "Apply color" box under the color tab. We don't need the color. The coverage should be 1. We don't want any places to be dry that shouldn't be.
4. Go into the altitude constraints tab and set the maximum altitude to whatever your water level is at. Set the fuzzy zone to about 0.5m (50 centimeters). Use less for calmer waters. You could also set the max altitude a little higher than the lake, if you wish, for very rough waters. Also, you'll need to check the "Use Y for Altitude" box.
5. Now click the Add child layer on the "Wetness" layer item in the list. Go to "color shader" and add a color adjust shader. Click the Gamma tab in the color adjust layer and set the gamma to 0.5. We want the color of the wet parts to be 50% darker than the normal colors of the shoreline. Water darkens the surfaces it wets. You can use more or less darkness for this part if you wish. Tweak it to whatever looks right in your scene.
6. Click the Add child layer button on the wetness item again, and go to "Other Surface Shader". Add a reflective shader as a child of "wetness". You might want to adjust the reflectivity and intensity to your scenes needs. Higher levels make the shine look sort of plastic.

You're done. Render away. Now your shores don't look so artificial. I exaggerated the levels of wetness in the example below just to show it. With such calm waters the rocks would not be wet so high up.

PS. You can also use this "wetness" layer with small amounts of coverage in a non-shore scene to make a rain-splattered effect. Use a very cloudy sky of course. ;)

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Excellent method! Simple and good. Adding a good fractal breakup, and some fuzzy zone on the wet layer could improve it further, by making the distribution of wetness not too straight.

Cheers,
Frank

But keep in mind when using this, the water is reflective, but the ground beneath it is now also reflective. This can result in huge render times (like my Moses scene), and strange lighting effects where you have more than one sun reflection.

In which case you could just set the Minimum altitude of the shader to a few centimeters below the water line. I thought about suggesting that, but I wanted to keep it simple.

Many thanks!

Hey, put this in the Wiki!   8)

excellent, this is exactly how I've been doing it, with more fuzzy like Frank said.  The effect is very good.

Here's a render I did with the "raindrops" smattered here and there around the map. It's the same project file as above. I just removed the maximum altitude from the wetness layer of the shoreline and reduced the coverage to about 33%. I also reduced the feature scale, lead in, and smallest size in the fractal breakup shader to about 3cm, rain drop size.

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The shoreline wetness method is similar to the one I use.  Reflection below the water can ruin some scenes.

I hadn't thought of the raindrops method; I.m away to experiment.

Quote from: calico on May 22, 2009, 08:02:19 AM
Hey, put this in the Wiki!   8)

I already have :P I've been trying to update the wiki a little and pull tutorials. 

From now on when I notice something useful I'm going to start putting it in tips and tricks or tutorials depending on what it is (if explained well - tutorial, if just concept talk of how to perhaps do something without a real guide - tips n tricks)

The darkness factor of the wetness layer doesn't seem to be showing up in the renders. I'm not sure if I used the color adjust shader correctly to darken the underlying layers. Can anyone make a suggestion?

As long as the person making the tutorial gets the credit, that sounds great.

Quote from: neuspadrin on May 23, 2009, 11:50:18 AM

I already have :P I've been trying to update the wiki a little and pull tutorials. 

From now on when I notice something useful I'm going to start putting it in tips and tricks or tutorials depending on what it is (if explained well - tutorial, if just concept talk of how to perhaps do something without a real guide - tips n tricks)

Quote from: calico on May 23, 2009, 01:22:01 PM
As long as the person making the tutorial gets the credit, that sounds great.

of course.  i didn't copy it to the wiki, i simply linked it too anyways, so people just follow the link and instantly can see who contributed it and such.

Not a completed scene and I can see ways to improve on it but here's what I got making raindrops.

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Quote from: Mr_Lamppost on May 23, 2009, 02:20:12 PM
Not a completed scene and I can see ways to improve on it but here's what I got making raindrops.

It occurs to me that one might also make a vein of gold running through rock with the reflective shader.

I'd like to see this kind of tutorial ultimately added to the Wiki in full, rather than just being linked to the forum thread. Great, simple technique btw.

- Oshyan

I know this thread is archaic, but it's what I found in searching to get me going on getting realistic water effects.

The reason for my reply is to add one tidbit of information that will drastically reduce render times.  In addition to defining a maximum altitude for the "wetness" layer, you should definitely set a minimum altitude to be at or slightly below the level of your body of water with a fuzzyness of 0.  This will prevent the rendering engine from computing reflectivity for the surfaces under the water, which aren't actually reflective.  I found this out by mistake when my 20 minute render turned into an hour and a half render when I added the wetness shader.  Restricting the wetness to a minimum altitude as well dropped the render all the way back down to 21.5 minutes, but I get the proper effect where I need it.

Yup. Adding a minimum reduces the render times greatly.  ;)

Very nice technique :)... I regret not seeing your post until just recently as I stumbled around for what could be considered 'longer than necessary' back in 2010 twiddling with my own very similar method (see attatched).

[attachimg=1]

Sorry for poking this thread but I'm excited that different people stumble across very similar techniques.

Mark

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Thanks about the settings......I gave up when the render times were so great.  Will try again.

Another way to darken the wet surface layer is by using a negative value in the shader's Luminosity setting.

Fallen down here at the first hurdle trying to use this technique on an object. Please would someone take a look at this testscene which is designed to study the effects of changing the 'wetness' parameters. In the scene I was trying to show create wetness and fuzziness on the lower part of the cone but have somehow managed to confine a gloss only to the upper part. I think I must have connected the nodes incorrectly but can't see where. Thank you in anticipation!

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For objects it's best to use Y and final position, but I'll have a look....

EDIT: maybe this works for you....

Thanks Ulco,
I should have said that I was able to replicate the wet stones like the tutorial but couldn't then get OBJ's to shade in the same manner. In the past I've found that TG native objects don't behave like OBJ's when texturing them - at least on my system. And now my computer is suffering from the after effects of an update - every simple change I make such as connecting and un-connecting nodes, crashes the program so I'm not able to duplicate your setup. - Depressed!

Try to keep the 3D preview paused when you are working with shaders, and be sure no other 3D Preview windows or renders aren't running. It may help with crashes.

Though I am still suffering default scene crash, even with 3D preview finished rendering and paused. 90% of the time I can't delete the starting nodes without TG crashing.

Thanks WAS! That is an incredibly useful tip - it worked first time. If even you are experiencing these frequent crashes, surely there must be a bug that needs fixing? Terragen is the only program I use that requires me to hire in 7 gossamer-clad virgins to slowly process sun-wise around my garden every third Tuesday, and muttering arcane incantations!

Quote from: David on October 21, 2020, 05:02:06 PMit worked first time. If even you are experiencing these frequent crashes, surely there must be a bug that needs fixing? Terragen is the only program I use that requires me to hire in 7 gossamer-clad virgins to slowly process sun-wise around my garden every third Tuesday, and muttering arcane incantations!

Lol

Yeah I suspect is a node network issue with it being the main drivers in all other planet shaders. While the preview rendering and deleting shaders is a cause of some crashes, and it seems we narrowed it down to that, it has been persisting, especially in latest versions, even with paused preview and doing nothing other than deleting the node shaders. Even if I go one by one, like starting by disconnecting the simple shape shader and deleting the fractal terrain first, poof goes TG.

Does that have to do with win 10?

Strange that obj's work differently from tgo's. I don't think they should.

Thanks to both your inputs I can report some progress! Putting the 'pause' button on full time makes a huge difference. Yes, I'm using Win 10 - I'm awaiting a features update so that my backup drive can work again. Currently I'm having to rollback an update just so that I can just backup. Not ideal.
The attached pics show that both native and imported OBJ's do seem to work the same. For the benefit of other beginners like me I thought it useful to show Ulco's node setup. I've raised the 'wetness' line for clarity.

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Quote from: David on October 21, 2020, 05:02:06 PMTerragen is the only program I use that requires me to hire in 7 gossamer-clad virgins to slowly process sun-wise around my garden every third Tuesday, and muttering arcane incantations!

Ha ha ha ha ha