Jakub´s newbie topic

Started by JakubCech, November 19, 2016, 07:30:53 AM

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JakubCech

Hey there,
first of all I would love to say that I have been looking at Terragen for a long time now but worked in different parts of 3D field...
Now I have time and with come of Terragen 4 finally installed and tried it and... I am blown off, I am in love already :) ! Its amazing what is can produce out of the box, and love these fractal maths crazy calculations. Beautiful tone mapping as well, doh this is rocking, congratulations!
I have already watched almost all GeekAtPlay´s free youtube tutorials and went trough almost whole documentation and would love to ask a few questions and establish this topic as my newbie´s questions pool.
I am working on a personal project where my clouds goes along my terrain - something like your "Clouds Following Terrain Tutorial". I managed to create clouds I would love to use with Easy cloud node - see attached, I was blown away by Terragen!, bless you guys haha! - and as I need to wrap those along my terrain, I need to use Altitude Function which is not present in Easy cloud node. So I tried to switch to Generic node (Which I believe is Cloud Layer v3 - how can I know what the type of the node is????) but was not able to tweak the settings (mainly fractal) to look just like Easy ones I created - so my questions is, what settings should I put into the Cloud Layer v3 to look just like Low Level Cumulus Large (Easy node) in my case?
Is there any cloud look reference for how different fractal settings apply? (in documentation I can see only terrain application)
- Lead in, scale (cant really understand it completely so far) and different flavours
Is there any cloud look reference for taper thing? What is it? Seems documentation is not there yet.

Thanks, Jakub

bobbystahr

Welcome to our love affair with TG4...have you searched the File Sharing for clouds follow terrain? seems to me there's some info there on that and maybe even a clip(.tgc) file.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

zaxxon

Are you are asking how to use the V3 Cloud nodes to exactly reproduce the results from your Easy Cloud results? That's a good question indeed. Unless someone has already 'reverse-engineered' what goes on in the Easy Clouds architecture and not shared the information (which would be very helpful if they did!), then we'll probably have to wait until Matt reveals the set up.

Welcome to the Forum! Your initial results are very good, and we'll all look forward to what you do with our favorite app.

Oshyan

The cloud shapes that come from the Easy Cloud setups are not easily exposed or shared, unfortunately. We're working on adding more flexibility to those nodes. In the meantime if you want to duplicate the look with a normal cloud layer (yes, that would be v3; you can look at the node name either by hovering over the node in the node network, or looking in the title bar of a node's properties when open in a separate window, the part in () parentheses is the node type) then you'll need to spend some time studying complex cloud setups in Terragen. This usually involves multiple noise functions blended together, or influencing each other in other ways (such as warping). One approach is to create large shapes with one fractal with a focus on large features and minimal number of overall octaves of noise, then add in smaller features on top of the large ones with additional noise generators.

There are lots of forum threads here with people talking about various approaches to cloud shape development, as well as example files at NWDA and Luc Bianco's site.

- Oshyan

JakubCech

#4
bobbystahr - I am still browsing forums and have not seen file sharings, will browse, thanks!
zaxxon - thank you.
Oshyan - Thank you for pointing me. I am going to play with more complex fractals, and probably maybe try to visualize it in 3ds Max with Bercon noise node using Corona rendering engine as thats my setup. I bought NWDA Cumulus_Pack V2 but I am having troubles. When rendering these presets in Terragen 4, results are different compared to what is should look like - see attached comparison between proposed render, and actually render. I already got in touch with Daniel Gordon to resolve this issue - and it comes down to changes in Terragen 4 which result in different result in the render - so its not back-compatible - is there something possibly to do about it? I guess the shape differences are because of Power Fractal v3 wherease this package used v2? Just guessing.

bobbystahr

Quote from: JakubCech on November 21, 2016, 03:10:34 AM
bobbystahr - I am still browsing forums and have not seen file sharings, will browse, thanks!


It's accessible from here
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

JakubCech

Thank you. Another question - how can I feed Alpine fractal shader v2 into lattitude function of clouds where there is no color in alpine node?

bobbystahr

Quote from: JakubCech on November 21, 2016, 12:56:58 PM
Thank you. Another question - how can I feed Alpine fractal shader v2 into lattitude function of clouds where there is no color in alpine node?

I don't think that's possible but will watch this thread to see what others have found.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

bobbystahr

Just tried this out. I created the Alpine Fractal in the terrain tab, disconnected it and moved it to the Atmosphere group and used as a Mask for the Density fractal, with Invert mask in the Density fractal enabled..see attached .tgd
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Oshyan

According to Matt, the developer, the look of the TG3 render should be achievable in TG4. It is not due to a difference in noise functions used (e.g. "v2" and "v3"), but rather to a bug fix that was made to how clouds read "get" nodes. Unfortunately the cumulus pack was made before this fix, so it looks different. But it should be fixable, as I understand it, and we are working with NWDA to try to make that happen.

- Oshyan

Dune

QuoteI don't think that's possible
You're right, Bobby, so feeding it into the mask of a density fractal won't do anything.
There is a solution, however (if still needed); pull the alpine through a (blue node) displacement to scalar, add a color adjust and set highest and lowest levels to get the color range correct, then input in altitude function of the cloud.

JakubCech

great Oshyan.
bobbystahr - thanks for effort but my intention is to feed alpine into Altitude function not Density function.
Dune - I tried Displacement shader to Scalar + Colour adjust with no success - resulting map is just blank (one color). I tried Displacement shader to Vector, Vector to Colour, Blue to Scalar, Scalar to Colour just to give a try with no success, can you elaborate please?

Matt

#12
Quote from: JakubCech on November 21, 2016, 12:56:58 PM
Thank you. Another question - how can I feed Alpine fractal shader v2 into lattitude function of clouds where there is no color in alpine node?

There's a way to convert any displacement shader into data that can then be used in any of the cloud function inputs or as masks for other shaders. To do this, use a function node called "Displacement shader to scalar". I've included one below which you can copy and paste into the node network:


<terragen_clip>
<alpine_fractal_shader_v2
name = "Alpine fractal shader v2 01"
/>
<displacement_shader_to_scalar
name = "Displacement shader to scalar 01"
input_node = "Alpine fractal shader v2 01"
/>
</terragen_clip>


The output will be the displacement amount in metres. This can be plugged directly into the altitude offset input of a cloud layer.

However, this is going to cause your clouds to render VERY slowly. Once you've got this working, you're better off baking it into a heightfield and using that instead.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

JakubCech

#13
Got it working! Problem was in color adjust node - it should not be there, just "displacement to scalar" directly connected to altitude function. Thank you.

Dune

Good that you got it working, and that's right indeed, it needs a scalar, not a color. The color adjust or smooth step can be used for other, color demanding ranges.