Instances scale controlled by shader

[roman4ez]

Hi !
How can i control the scale of distributed instances with not only build-in random function, but with the shader, or image, or with the paint ?

I found strange that: you can control density in Populator v4 using shaders, but you can't control sizes using maps !

If i'm wrong, show me please the example, how can i control sizes of instances with image map, or with paint map, or with the procedural shader ?

Thanks!

[Dune]

You can't (yet). For different sizes, you can only use several pops of the same species, differently sized, masked by whatever mask is needed.

[roman4ez]

You can't (yet). For different sizes, you can only use several pops of the same species, differently sized, masked by whatever mask is needed.

Thanks. Interesting limit, anyway I can map color to instances, i can map density, but not scale.
Thanks for answer, has no questions anymore.

[dandelO]

You can scale individual population instances manually in all current versions of TG. If that's any help for selective scaling.

www.planetside.co.uk/products/tg3-product-comparison

[dandelO]

www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Population_Instance_Editing

[bobbystahr]

You can't (yet). For different sizes, you can only use several pops of the same species, differently sized, masked by whatever mask is needed.

Thanks. Interesting limit, anyway I can map color to instances, i can map density, but not size.
Thanks for answer, has no questions anymore.

I'm guessing you noticed the Scale tab in the populator? You can get a wide range of sizes easily that way.

[Dune]

I don't think randomness is what he meant, but it's good you mentioned it. It would indeed be handy to have something like a height influence on the tallness of trees, or making trees bigger inside patches of distribution (white distribution), and smaller on the verges (greyer). And doing that by hand is an awful job, only to be survived for a few instances.

[roman4ez]

Thanks, but Dune is right - i not mean just randomness. I try to explain:

My primary software is Side FX Houdini. I can do anything with geometry or points attributes. For example, i can scale instances by image map, by 4D noise, by sound, by attribute from another geometry, or by anything what you can imagine - is simplest thing that you can do. But why i start to learn terragen3 now ? This is because i'm here: because Terragen is landscape/nature oriented software. It has a lot of features especially for creating rocks, grounds, clouds. And the thing that i can't do in Houdini - realistic lighting, atmosphere, hase, and clouds. Also Terragen has a nice memory management.

But i'm confused sometimes with things like scale by shader. This is so strange When you can map color to instances, when you can map density, or luminance. But NOT scale!

Look to some my old unfinished "work in progress" Houdini pix. This is a points for trees instances. The bigger trees has a greater distance between points than smaller. This is because red color mapped to points density:


Red points color also linked to scale of trees (image show bound boxes):


This pictures is not for discussion, just example what i mean when say "scale by shader".
Thanks to all.

[Upon Infinity]

Mmmmmmmmm...size map.  You just blew my mind.  And, actually, a little surprising it hasn't come up before.

[roman4ez]

I don't think randomness is what he meant, but it's good you mentioned it. It would indeed be handy to have something like a height influence on the tallness of trees, or making trees bigger inside patches of distribution (white distribution), and smaller on the verges (greyer). And doing that by hand is an awful job, only to be survived for a few instances.

This is what i mean. Thanks.

[bobbystahr]

Mmmmmmmmm...size map.  You just blew my mind.  And, actually, a little surprising it hasn't come up before.

an aha moment for me as well. also surprised it hasn't even entered my mind.....maybe Matt's though...one hopes....

[roman4ez]

You can't (yet). For different sizes, you can only use several pops of the same species, differently sized, masked by whatever mask is needed.

I think, this is the a most full answer. Thanks.

[Oshyan]

We are certainly aware of these kinds of ideas and capabilities. Matt is a fan of Houdini, and though I've never used it, I know it is fantastically powerful and flexible. Hopefully we can make TG a lot more flexible in the future too. But there are always trade-offs. Flexibility often comes at a performance cost, for example. And of course there is always development time to consider. Terragen as it exists now is a product of specific decisions to balance many possible factors, including flexibility and render time, as well as many others. Over time we can find new ways to improve things, adding features while optimizing performance for example. But it takes time.

In fact the list of potential features to add is quite long, mostly because there are a lot of potentially useful features, and this is probably true for every major application out there. I haven't seen a feature suggestion that we haven't thought of (or hasn't already been mentioned) in at least a year, probably longer. Not to say we don't want to know what is desired by users, of course, just that there are few really new ideas. And since it's our job to keep our product competitive, you can bet we do our best to keep on top of the possibilities that exist and try to determine the best things to add and improve for future updates.

- Oshyan

[roman4ez]

Thanks for reply, Oshyan ! Of course, my first impressions sounds strange, because i'm "just from Houdini" user. But i really feel Terragen very useful software for nature environments creation. For example, in Houdini you can build yours own set of same tools, but you spend a lot of time before you get a good tools.
Because before you get, you need to learn many things: how the sun light scattered in clouds (and use PBR render with volume bounces, or MIE Phase Phunction described here http://mattebb.com/weblog/category/houdini/ , or learn rules how to trees grow on surface. Many many things. This is a really long way, before you can get a nice looking landscape. You spend a lot of time, for building own fractals, that you can use as terrain generators. Houdini has a huge procedural textures, this is cool, but this is a problem, also.

All of this tools ready up in TG3.
Also i see nice TG3 memory management on render time. TG3 can render a lot of hi poly trees and fit that process in 4 GB of memory. This is win.

Finally, thanks you for your work. I continue to learn TG.

[Oshyan]

We definitely appreciate the feedback and it's good to hear that Terragen's built-in tools save you time and energy when building and rendering environments. That's exactly what Terragen is for.

- Oshyan