Clearings and Fields

[Doug]

How do i make a clearing in a forest.
I tried using the simple shape shader that makes a flat spot in the Terrain and got nothing.

[WAS]

The Density input expects greyscale (though it will interpret colour as greyscale) scalar data to determine masking. 0 (Black) is no population instance, and 1 (white) is probability of population instance (depending on object spacing, seed, etc).

You'll want to take that simple shape shader you're using for the terrain, and also apply it to the density input of the populations. But you'll also want to invert the density, as the simple shape you want as a clearing is defining with 1 (white), so it'll want to constrict the populations to the simple shape itself, instead of the other way around.

Have a look at the following articles on the wiki:

• https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Population_Masking_Techniques
• https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Populator_v4#Distribution_Tab
• https://planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Masking_Populations_with_Inverted_Fractals

[Dune]

Here's a quick example of how I usually do this.

[Doug]

Thanks for the help

How do i use the shader to clear the terrain in the same path as the trees have been cleared?

If i hook it to the compute terrain i loose all my hills.

So i can make my Amazon River.

Thanks
Doug

[Dune]

Basically this is what you can do. Smooth any displacements to zero altitude before the compute terrain by the same mask.
Use a surface shader, mask it and set it to smooth. Only problem might be that if you use a PF to displace terrain, you'll have positive and negative displacement. So smoothing can also raise some ground that was lower than zero. In that case you can use the offset in the same surface layer to raise the whole lot again until you're satisfied with the smoothed area altitude.
For more variation on the shores/banks of your river, you could also use a PF to break up the transition between normal terrain and smoothed area. Play with values, and color roughness (!), and uncheck 'only breakup color'.

[Doug]

Ok, thanks again.

I got my Amazon River, so far. Need to learn to make it curvy.

Now the goal is to add an airplane crash or something modern..

[Dune]

There's an amazing amount of information in this forum, also presets and small discussions about how to get some stuff done. Using the search function may get you whatever you need.
Like this (river preset, or procedural river, or warped simple shape...): https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,16684.msg163024.html#msg163024

[Hannes]

By the way, I think your water roughness settings and the wave scale are too high. Makes the river look a bit tiny. Otherwise a great image, Doug!

[WAS]

Also the palm trees and stuff are pretty massive compared to those temples. One palm is bigger the the whole top of one. :O

Also I have shared a procedural river map setup which outputs a RGB map where you can use Red to Scalar, Green to Scalar and Blue to Scalar for different maps, valley, banks, and river. These masks can be used to carve out a river area that has been active for a long time.

https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25926.0.html

Direct download on page 2