As I'm setting up the masks I thought I might ask for some feedback... As a lot of this model relies on the use of masks there is the potential for the network window to become quite tangled. To help alleviate this, and to help making things modular, I'm adding Null shaders to the internal network of the output nodes of key masks and settings. This should also help to make things modular, as I can make a clip for a specific feature e.g. night lights and include links to related masks e.g. rivers and lakes (no city lights on top of water), without having to include the related masks.
Separate clips will be interchangeable for key components comprising masks and images, terrain, scene parameters and of course the different shaders.
It does,however, make it a little slower to follow the links as you have to open a node to see where the link goes to but I think it will be well worth it in the end. Whether or not you follow that convention with your own tweaks will of course be up to you.
Any thoughts ?