BMP greyscale for distribution in Surface Layer?

[MooseDog]

That seems like an odd setup. You're feeding the Image Map into a Surface Layer which then goes into your Base Colours node. What result are you expecting? I would think you'd put the Surface Layer below Base Colours as normal and then use the Image Map as the Breakup Shader as you already have it. That ought to work.

The Fractal Breakup settings like in your Surface Layer will also matter though. The behavior of the Surface Layers is definitely an area that needs some further explanation, and I'll be doing that in the docs shortly. But basically if your Coverage is at 1, the Fractal Breakup won't generally have much effect. Put your Coverage to 0.5 and Fractal Breakup at 1 and you should see something more like what you're expecting. I will agree this is not particularly intuitive.

- Oshyan

yep!  exactly what i suspected:  user error .  thx for the explanation and your time, much appreciated.  no less than us stumbling users, i'm betting you're looking forward to the day when you can just say "chapter 3, page 26.  explanation and examples provided "

your settings worked exactly! as expected

[Oshyan]

Yes, "user error" perhaps, but as I said it's not terribly intuitive at this point so it's no surprise that it was hard to sort out on your own. I do indeed look forward to when a full manual is available, but it's a long road of writing to get there.

Cajomi, I did try it and it worked just as I said using the steps I outlined.

- Oshyan

[cajomi]

Got it working now.

The size of the heightfield must be set, by adding the "heihgtfield resize" operator !!!

Put the map into the input channel of the surface layer "Breakup shader"
The size of the map must be the same as the size in the heightfield resize operator
Disable the "Gamma" in the image map shader (uncheck "Convert to linear")!!!
Projection to plane y
Check position lower left

Coverage of the surface layer to 0.5 (as was said)
Check "Only breakup colour" !!!
Breakup-Slider to one or greater

[Oshyan]

Yes, the size must of course equal the terrain size. TG respects the .ter size/point spacing so if you can see the terrain size in Geocontrol (I'm sure you can), then you can just use the same value in the Image Map shader. As long as the position origin is the same it should have the same area coverage as almost everything is measured in meters in TG2.

- Oshyan