Displace terrain with an object or mold object to terrain?

[luvsmuzik]

I made an object that I would like to butt up against a terrain, but I am clueless as how to do this.

Is there a way to copy the curve of a generated terrain? I think Dune did something like this with his road recently but I am no math wiz, so maybe not. Could you then.....apply such curve to a straight object?

Object is a displaced plane with an array of 16.

[Dune]

You could use the painted shader in a topview to exactly paint in where the terrain has to rise 'against' the curved thing. If the curve is procedural (from a warper and vector displacement shader), you could use the same curve in a simple shape, I guess.

[luvsmuzik]

I finally got it! A painted shader displaced on a surface layer with a water shader as a child.
Thank you DandelO and JimB (I think?)

Your mention of a painted shader got me thinking, Dune,

You could use the painted shader in a topview to exactly paint in where the terrain has to rise 'against' the curved thing. If the curve is procedural (from a warper and vector displacement shader), you could use the same curve in a simple shape, I guess.

..... and I finally got the right one!
Lots more to do to this but I did not want the water leaking behind the retaining wall so to speak. I plan to see if I can make an array of this object and then extend the river as well. May take a year, but I will try it.
Thanks all!

[Dune]

So you want a wall rising out of a sea, with land behind. Why not do this procedurally? Get position in texture, X to scalar, smooth step with 2 constants to create a slight softness, warp shader, warping done by vector to create an undulating separation between black and white. Then use this mask to raise the land (and add smaller displacements there. Then a compute normal, then a surface layer with fake stones, and minimum slope, and you've got the stoney wall. Add a sea and Bob's your uncle.

[luvsmuzik]

Thanks Dune.

To me, what I did here is like the old "carve a river" that was in the first TG2Beta.

We have all seen a creek or river or other water type that had say a stone edge or natural rock formation. With all these generous shares lately, so many possibilities.

I understand more each time I learn something new. I did not know you could displace with the painted shader, that is a cool feature. Now I understand a little more and I see how I could fill in behind that wall with a displacement. 

What was hard for me was that the circle SSS is so large, and I know why, that I was getting lost trying to work on the fractal terrain sometimes. Learning more stuff constantly.

[Dune]

Btw. here's what you can also do; very hard fractal to raise the walled terrain, add fake stones to that wall, and use the color adjust to mask any further displacements on land (or under water).
Old version of TG, but principle remains.

[luvsmuzik]

Btw. here's what you can also do; very hard fractal to raise the walled terrain, add fake stones to that wall, and use the color adjust to mask any further displacements on land (or under water).
Old version of TG, but principle remains.

Oh WOW! I just about missed this! Thank you very much! My mind does not do the logic yours does, but I can follow directions and experiment with an example. I appreciate this very much!

Edit: I spent the whole day organizing my downloaded TG files as that folder was get me even more scatterbrained. Thanks again.

[Dune]

Well, the logic is very simple; you raise a terrain folowing the normal of the planet (up), then you need to recalculate the new normals (of the vertical wall), then you can put the stones there. See what happens if you raise the patch size of the compute.... less refined calculation of that new normal.