Feature Request: The secret to Global Clouds & Waves

[Will]

Terragen is not being setup to be the Maxwell renderer its a small Business and simply doesn't have the backing things like. Also while it would be cool to implement such things it would make making a GUI a nightmare. But theres always the SDK or rather will be the SDK. But in the end I just want water transparency and SSS.

[Tangled-Universe]

Terragen is not being setup to be the Maxwell renderer its a small Business and simply doesn't have the backing things like. Also while it would be cool to implement such things it would make making a GUI a nightmare. But theres always the SDK or rather will be the SDK. But in the end I just want water transparency and SSS.

Yeah same for me Luckily water transparency is included in the next update :p

[Cyber-Angel]

Tangled-Universe,

Sorry to launch off the way I did, I do some times as you say jump ahead but as a Futurist that is unavoidable; looking at what could be based on current trends and thinking and then project them forward in time. Many of the idea's I present are based on me sitting TG2 working on some thing or other and thinking of ways to make the job at hand easier not only for my self but for others.

I have always had this feeling in the back of my head that life has some important for me to do and make the world just that little more integrated, streamlined and efficient.

When I'm on a mission (Some thing I feel strongly about) I go after it full bore and fully believe in the principle "Encircle and Give no Quarter" which is basic military tactic that I have adopted as a mantra of sorts.

Again sorry to go off its just I believe in what I say even if its years even decades ahead of where we are now, I normally hold off but every once in a while there are times when the record needs to put straight and for want of a better term for it "Godzilla" comes out: (Note: In a poll at high school I was voted individual most likely to lead a revolution or start a popular uprising).  End of Line.



Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel
                 

[Tangled-Universe]

Tangled-Universe,

Sorry to launch off the way I did, I do some times as you say jump ahead but as a Futurist that is unavoidable; looking at what could be based on current trends and thinking and then project them forward in time. Many of the idea's I present are based on me sitting TG2 working on some thing or other and thinking of ways to make the job at hand easier not only for my self but for others.

I have always had this feeling in the back of my head that life has some important for me to do and make the world just that little more integrated, streamlined and efficient.

When I'm on a mission (Some thing I feel strongly about) I go after it full bore and fully believe in the principle "Encircle and Give no Quarter" which is basic military tactic that I have adopted as a mantra of sorts.

Again sorry to go off its just I believe in what I say even if its years even decades ahead of where we are now, I normally hold off but every once in a while there are times when the record needs to put straight and for want of a better term for it "Godzilla" comes out: (Note: In a poll at high school I was voted individual most likely to lead a revolution or start a popular uprising).  End of Line.



Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel
                 

Yeah I did get those impressions of your feelings myself too while I was overthinking the "issue" last few hours
It's good you've told it, for the sake of mutual understanding and to prevent possible misunderstandings in the future Thank you.

Martin

[Will]

For some reason I think the Portal end song would fit really well at this moment. Don't know why though...

[Oshyan]

In general, even as CPU power increases, the "fake" will tend to be faster than a true simulation. If the results are equal and the "fake" takes less time and/or is easier to control, then for most people the "fake" will be the better approach. As long as this continues to be true, Terragen will likely be using "fakes", while trying to cover as many aspects of the real world as possible. Creating a proper, physically accurate simulation of global weather dynamics might get you highly realistic cloud patterns, but it's going to be incredibly demanding on processor time - imagine letting your computer sit overnight, or even over a week, computing the results of a single day of global cloud movement - so it's really not worth it if simple methods to achieve visually similar results can be used.

In regards to the other programs that do some of these things easily, most notably 2D image editing programs, you have to keep in mind that they're operating on finite, 2d images. Terragen operates primarily on infinite 3d noise functions which are rather more difficult (and resource-intensive) to manipulate in the same way. It's similar to the problem of procedural erosion. That being said the "Warp" functions in the Power Fractal can get you some decent results...

- Oshyan

[Cyber-Angel]

In general, even as CPU power increases, the "fake" will tend to be faster than a true simulation. If the results are equal and the "fake" takes less time and/or is easier to control, then for most people the "fake" will be the better approach. As long as this continues to be true, Terragen will likely be using "fakes", while trying to cover as many aspects of the real world as possible. Creating a proper, physically accurate simulation of global weather dynamics might get you highly realistic cloud patterns, but it's going to be incredibly demanding on processor time - imagine letting your computer sit overnight, or even over a week, computing the results of a single day of global cloud movement - so it's really not worth it if simple methods to achieve visually similar results can be used.

In regards to the other programs that do some of these things easily, most notably 2D image editing programs, you have to keep in mind that they're operating on finite, 2d images. Terragen operates primarily on infinite 3d noise functions which are rather more difficult (and resource-intensive) to manipulate in the same way. It's similar to the problem of procedural erosion. That being said the "Warp" functions in the Power Fractal can get you some decent results...

- Oshyan

Would you agree that what you have said (For todays processor technology) is a true statement, but in a time scale of say 10-15 years from now with the advent supercomputer on a chip technology and optical chips (Processors that use laser light instead on copper wire and silicone) and chips that use eighty or more cores that physically acute simulation and/ or rendering would theoretically be possible?

With an in cress in processor performance we would need to see a similar revolution in memory performance and pack more memory into less space and make petrabyte or more memory available for home systems.

With an in cress in processor performance there should be a decrees in the power required to run them and they should be cooler in operation as the HVAC requirements (Talking about corporate networks and data-centers here) as if I recall a survey conducted in the US showed that data-centers consume 1.2% of the national power consummation when compared to the national average.

According statistics published by the Environmental Protection Agency data-center energy consumption has doubled since 2000 and is set to double again by 2012 to 100 billion kilowatt hours at an annual cost of $7.5 Billion.

Any way no problem even in CGI is unsolvable and as technology evolves then possibilities that seemed out of reach become possible (They said the sound barrier could not be passed but in time it was).

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel 

[Oshyan]

Certainly available computing power will always be increasing, but so will the demands on that computing power. Some level of simulation for certain phenomena may make sense in the future as far as computing resources are concerned, but the "fakes" will advance likewise and will still tend to produce better (visual) results in less time, regardless of the increase in power. Let's say for example that today a weather simulation could take a week to complete for a single day of global weather patterns (that's not at all unrealistic since extremely powereful supercomputers are used by the weather prediction community for this purpose and it still takes a comparatively long time). In 10 years let's say that's down to an hour. That's still a long time, and the "fake" could probably get similar results in realtime by that point. To those people for whom absolute real-world accuracy is most important the simulation may still be preferable, but they will always be in the minority and thus their needs will tend to be less addressed. It makes sense to develop your product for a reasonably large segment of the market, balancing performance and hardware demand against realistic results. I don't see the benefits of "fakes" becoming obsolete any time soon.

- Oshyan

[Sethren]

If i can just warp in a overall uni-directional pattern to a latitude then that would be a good start.

[Virex]

I'm currently not able to acces TG2, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the first modification could be done with a displacement shader. Getting a vector pointing away from the center of the "bulb" and plugging the X and Y component into a displacement shader (Z too if you want a spherical bulb instead of a flat one) should yield similar results. You might want to decrease the displacement as the distance from the center increases though.

The second one could be done by chosing an area, reducing that area's size to a gradient going from -1 to +1 and then plugging that into a sine function before finaly multiplying it with it a displacement size constant and putting it into a displacement shader. At least, that's how i'd expect it to work...

[Virex]

Apparently, I can't use a displacement node with clouds. What I'm trying next is to build a normall terain and use that as a blending mask for the clouds. It might not produce the stretched effect, but it'll (hopefully) create the shape.

[nvseal]

Apparently, I can't use a displacement node with clouds.

Did you try to attach the displacement node to a warp shader first?

[Oshyan]

*Displacement* itself can't be used with the clouds because it is fundamentally a terrain surface manipulation. A terrain is a surface interpretation of a noise function, just as a cloud is a *volumetric* interpretation of a noise function. In order to create a terrain interpretation of a noise function you can use a Displacement shader to realize that, converting greyscale values into height. The cloud node has its own process to convert information into volumetric data, so a Displacement shader is irrelevant to it. Displacement is essentially a way of visualizing a noise function, just as volumetric rendering is, so using them together doesn't exactly work (although granted the concept of "displacing" a cloud shape is not unreasonable).

You need instead to be thinking in terms of modifying the noise function shape that provides the form of the cloud. Perhaps you're thinking instead of a Warp shader? Anything that modifies the fundamental noise function's output will affect the shape of the cloud. Find the right warper and you might be able to achieve what you want.

- Oshyan

[Virex]

It'll take me a while to get this to work on clouds I'm afraid, but i'm having some succes with mutilating the ground into something that looks like effect number one, but then in 3D.

here's the proof of concept render (Which turned out rather ugly)

and here sis the file, whitch still needs some tweaking it seams. Just hook the 3 end lines into displacement shaders, set the x and z shader to lateral only, and hook them up to a redirect shader to get the effect. Remember that this version will create displacements on a scale of a few meters.

[Cyber-Angel]

When you post a thread or a replay at the bottom left hand side you will see some thing called "Additional Options" click on this and you will be able to you .tgc file form there.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel