Masked water only showing in 3D preview TG3

[AndyWelder]

Searched the forum for this one but didn't find anything so I guess I'm the first one who stumbled upon this: When using the masked water setup developed by dandelO the water is showing nicely in the 3D preview but when an image is rendered no water is showing at all.
I'm using the well proven setup used in many of my TG2 projects to create water filled cart trails.... What is it that I'm missing? What's happening here? Any ideas anyone?
I did attach the gathered project file in case anyone wants to try this at home ;-)

[Dune]

The grey scale of your water mask is too dark to overcome the black or white opacity threshold, so add a color adjust, set its gamma to 4 and try again. Also set color of default shader to black or the mask won't make sense. Works fine.

[AndyWelder]

Thank you, Ulco, will do that. But now I wonder why this setting that always worked with TG2 is not working with TG3... So many little things changed here and there and no documentation....

[Dune]

The only thing that that has changed in this respect is that the masked off area is still visible in the preview, but doesn't render. So it works as it should, only not in the preview window, probably because that's multithreaded now. In TG2 you could see what you're doing, which I admit is better. They'll bring that feature back, no doubt, it's known at the alpha forum. But the dark gray ending up as black is still the same as it was, I always whiten the water masks before entering them into the opacity tab, unless they're really black-white already. 

[jo]

Hi Andy,

So many little things changed here and there and no documentation....

Any smaller changes should be documented in the Change Log. There are some things we're working on documentation for, but if you think there's something missing particularly we're interested to hear about it.

Regards,

Jo

[AndyWelder]

Jo, I couldn't find info on the fact the default sunlight strength has changed from 3.5 to 5... Nor did I find info on the fact that smallest value for PF's feature scale now is 0.01. That does kill some of my dirt road surfaces... These two are AFAIK not documented changes I did stumble upon.

[jo]

Hi Andy,

Both are mentioned in the change log, which can be found in the Documentation folder of the program installation. It's called changes.txt. The power fractal smallest scale change is specifically mentioned. The Sunlight change is not specifically mentioned, but is encompassed in an item which says the default scene has changed. I guess it was felt to be important to mention the specific scene changes.

Regards,

Jo

[Oshyan]

Updated change logs are also posted with both major and minor releases. Major release change logs are posted to the main website, e.g. http://planetside.co.uk/tg3-release-changelog where it says "Various default values have changed in Planet Atmospheres (both the node defaults and in the default project) and Cloud Layers presets on the "Add Cloud Layer" menu. The sunlight node in the default project is also slightly stronger and has a slight blue cast to produce a better white balance in daylight."

I agree it's important to document things but I honestly can't think of a significantly better way to handle lots of small little differences than with the change logs; they're meant to be read (though I'll grant that with major releases like TG3 the length can be daunting - just read it in sections!). Documenting the defaults and changes to them each time would be an arduous and largely useless task since the defaults are always visible in the default scene (and in the future you will probably be able to reset settings to default more easily).

- Oshyan

[Oshyan]

P.S. As Ulco notes, the issue where it doesn't show opacity correctly in the 3D preview is a known bug which will be resolved in a future update.

- Oshyan