Feature Request - Curves

[Ironshirt]

Hi there, 

I have one question 

would it be possible to implement different curve types in TG2? (simple, bezier)

I'm just thinking of the many different things we could use them for...

e.g  lightning bolts; Rainbows; path controls for rivers, shaders (strata and outcrops or cloud shaders) or objects; controllers to define shapes for seed.... to make ring clouds for example.... or wave forms...
...

things like camera movement along path could also be done with curves....


regards,

Michael

[HooDoo]

I can second on this and request something like Input/output curve control object in Node Network. As I've seen in Mojoworld Pro UI (so called curve editor), its pretty handy to control these parameters (In/Out). One of most used features was the control of terrain shape by curve - imagine, You can draw terrain curve from ocean bottom -> beach -> some higher terrain features. So the fractal input will be transformed by this curve object and we will get terrain shape as we want ie model actually the terrain.

[Oshyan]

Curve-type (and/or gradient) controls are something we would like to add however they probably won't make it into the final release later this year. A subsequent update may include them, or if nothing else a future major release (e.g. 2.5 or 3.0).

- Oshyan

[efflux]

A colour gradient would definitely be my preference because you can use that to do stuff that a curve graph can do and more. In Mojo I often used a gradient instead of a curve graph because it is easier to create smooth changes than trying to tweak a graph. In Mojo, the curve graph also handled input/output functions such as clamp but we have clamp functions as seperate in TG2.

[Cyber-Angel]

I would welcome a gradient shader as it would help smooth out some harsh color transitions that you some times get on some types of terrain that use of Fractal Breakup alone doesn't fix and would be vary useful on some types of rock, that for now are hard to achieve.

The Shader would need to have good range and falloff controls and allow for both black and white and color gradients that must allow changes to the colors used like the way you can in Photoshop as way of example, if a separate node is out of the question could future versions of Terragen (Beyond the first commercial release) have this functionality built into existing nodes that deal with color such as the Surface Layer Node, but there maybe reasons, technical, developmental or other wise why this is not possible but since TG2 is modular in design I would have throat such things could be possible.
         
Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel     

[Oshyan]

As I said this is something we would like to include at some point, but it is unlikely to be availabe in the initial commercial release this year. It is a very powerful feature and we want to "do it right" when we do tackle it.

- Oshyan

[efflux]

OK, thanks Oshyan. No problem. We realize it will take time but a colour gradient is definitely at the top of my list for wants in TG2.