Creating continents using image map shader?

[X_Joshi_X]

Hey everyone!

Is it possible to use for example a black-white texture showing different continent outlines to blend a fractal shader for continents by it? Already added oceans and scaled the power fractal to continent size.

Here is the texture on how I want the continents to be: http://i.imgur.com/0ZjDDsN.png

I already tried an image map shader to blend the power fractal but the settings don't seem to do anything :/

Thanks for all help!

[Dune]

If this can be changed into a spherical map you can, well, map it to the planet in a spherical way thru an image map shader, and use as a mask (output to mask input of surface shader). White for the oceans, obviously, and if you inversely mask a surface shader, you can add all sorts of textures and displacements as a child of that surface layer, building up your planet.

Perhaps you can add your tgd here, so we can check it out.

EDIT: Even in a simple setup it works with a Y projection, but for nicer continents you have to blur the image.

[Oshyan]

The simplest way to do this is just use it as a Mask (Mask input) on your Power Fractal. This will not produce ideal results, but should show immediate result that you can then consider if your map is setup right (does it need to be changed to Spherical Mapping for example, as Ulco suggests).

- Oshyan

[X_Joshi_X]

Thanks for the help both!

I'm still confused with the complexity of Terragen compared to other 3D software.

Here's my tgd so far: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0qdaxAxmY1lS0ZKenhES3N0VDQ/view?usp=sharing

I masked out a fractal terrain by the spherical image texture but it still doesn't seem right :/

[Dune]

That setup should work, though I haven't the png imported. Perhaps the mountain displacement is too little to see right for this whole planet view. What happens if you add a zero in the displacement of the fractal terrain shader? Then you should see at least something happening.