It has been a while since I last posted anything! I haven't been using Terragen lately, as some other things have been occupying my attention.
I promised earlier to share the waterfall node network I came up with for the Iceland contest. I meant to really perfect it and make it as user-friendly as possible and produce some videos along with it to show how it all works, as it might be difficult to understand fully if you didn't develop it yourself, especially for those without much of a math background. But I find that I am just not getting around to doing all that. If I don't just share what I have so far, I'll probably never get around to sharing anything.
So here it is. It is quite imperfect. I am sharing three versions.
Early version: This one had certain flaws, but produced a rather interesting result. The file is a bit of a mess and is poorly labelled. It might be hard to sort out.
Iceland contest version: This one is the exact one I used in the contest. It is a bit of a mess and might be hard to sort out as well. Sorry about this!
Final, simple version: This version is much more clean, fairly well-explained and labelled, and somewhat simplified. It involves some slightly different methods. And frankly, while more mathematically "correct", it fails to produce some of the more interesting behavior of the earlier, kludgier versions.
The files all have the quality settings for the clouds set rather low to speed up test renders. Make sure to crank things up for final renders to eliminate noise.
Use them as-is or modify to your heart's content! Hopefully, you can improve the method!
I am afraid I probably won't be around to explain or support these files much. I might, if I find time, try to convey the basic idea here. But don't hold your breath!
Also, when you use these, definitely use the viewing planes I put in there. They are a huge help, speeding up adjustments a great deal. I put a note in the final version explaining how to use them. This sort of thing would be helpful in any project where you are working on shaping clouds. But make sure that when using them, you click the 'shaders' button at the top of the interface AND that you disable 'true lighting' by clicking the little sun button just above the 3D preview.
I hope these files are useful if for no other reason than to trigger better ideas!
