Tilting strata vertically

trailgirl · August 05, 2009, 01:02:17 PM

How do I tilt strata, such as http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Strata-french-alps.jpg

I've tried changing Strata Tilt Direction to various values, such as 0, 45, 90, 180, 270, but my strata always stay horizontal.

cyphyr · August 05, 2009, 01:13:05 PM

Hmm, you could try a combination of a re-direct shader and a warp shader. I don't know if you'll be able to get the strata to completely turn back on it's self as in your referance photo.
Good luck and please post you result

richard

Tangled-Universe · August 05, 2009, 02:19:36 PM

Like this?

Your reference and this image has tilted strata angles, not direction.
Probably the direction is also tilted, but the main effect is because of the tilted strata angle.

I've attached the .tgd

Cheers,
Martin

efflux · August 05, 2009, 03:25:23 PM

If you look on my thread called strata you will find another way of doing strata without using strata and outcrops. Strata and outcrops is good in some ways especially for more extreme and jagged strata but some of my techniques allow you to easily manipulate the distortion of the strata and it's distribution. For example you could recreate those strata visible in just part of that hill. You can distort it wildly, doubling back on itself or swirling without any connection to any horizontal. I have 4 graphs of various methods. I may go back to that technique to get better more interesting profiles for the strata. It's quite smooth at the moment due to being Perlin.

trailgirl · August 05, 2009, 03:49:43 PM

Thanks so much, I guess I misunderstood the tilt direction vs. tilt angle. Although I really thought I had tried changing the tilt angle too without success, maybe it's a combination of both being set correctly. The 90 direction and 45 tilt looks good. Thanks for the tgd, Martin, that's a big help and what an interesting use of the crater shader.

Tangled-Universe · August 05, 2009, 04:11:42 PM

Quote from: efflux on August 05, 2009, 03:25:23 PM
If you look on my thread called strata you will find another way of doing strata without using strata and outcrops. Strata and outcrops is good in some ways especially for more extreme and jagged strata but some of my techniques allow you to easily manipulate the distortion of the strata and it's distribution. For example you could recreate those strata visible in just part of that hill. You can distort it wildly, doubling back on itself or swirling without any connection to any horizontal. I have 4 graphs of various methods. I may go back to that technique to get better more interesting profiles for the strata. It's quite smooth at the moment due to being Perlin.

I've seen your topic and I'm following it with much interest

The strata & outcrops shader is somewhat difficult to master, it takes quite some time to understand the settings and their relations.
Your strata look very good so far and the smoothness and amount of control looks/is very appealing.
However, with the strata & outcrops shader one should be able to make not too extreme and jagged strata too and also be able to mask it to certain areas/slopes etc without too much trouble as well.
Looking forward to see your improvements on it.

Martin

efflux · August 05, 2009, 06:09:15 PM

You can do extreme stuff with Strata and outcrops. I am actually working on that now. I am using redirect but X,Y and Z because I work on the planet being interesting all over.

One cool thing is if you blend two terrains in certain ways but only use one of those terrains to redirect. Terrains with areas of little output are needed - not noisy all over. This technique redirects the part of the terrain molded by that fractal i.e. it's higher output leaving the rest not so redirected. Then you can cross those over from the other terrain if you see what I mean.

efflux · August 05, 2009, 06:19:33 PM

The strata I worked on is really for more subtle stuff at least as far as displacement is concerned. It should be especially good for simply colour and it's easy to blend up in different ways with the rest of the surface.

efflux · August 05, 2009, 06:37:25 PM

A thing to note here is that terrain is by far the most important component. If you have that right you can get any with the rest being very simply.

Tangled-Universe · August 06, 2009, 02:57:42 AM

Thanks for the headsup Ryan, though I'm not entirely sure if I can understand what you mean and how you do it, but that doesn't matter much at this point I guess

I'm looking forward to see a file to try out in your strata topic some time.

Cheers,
Martin

efflux · August 06, 2009, 06:04:41 PM

It's in a planet I'm working on at the moment but I might make a simple file so you can see how it works. I was not satisfied with the strata so I tried this in the planet rather than a simpler file.

If you have a terrain that has a lot of flat areas then take that fractal and use it to redirect itself then only the areas where that terrain has high value will redirect (not the flat areas) hence if you blend with another fractal for more terrain features then the flat areas of the first terrain will not redirect the second one. This second terrain will poke through without redirection. It obviously hinges on blend method as well to get best effect.

I often start with a theory, as in this case, but it is partially tested and works.

One issue I continually have is creating nice overhangs due to the fact that I always try to create planets that will have interest all over, not an effect working in one place but not another due to using X,Y and Z to manipulate various functions. This is the problem with redirect.

efflux · August 06, 2009, 06:15:47 PM

You have to think of everything in TG2 as masks but in 3D. This can be tricky.

Tangled-Universe · August 06, 2009, 07:52:48 PM

Quote from: efflux on August 06, 2009, 06:15:47 PM
You have to think of everything in TG2 as masks but in 3D. This can be tricky.

Absolutely. Like you I don't try to create planet-wide effects that often. In most cases I go for the local terrain-features and detail.
I just try to make it look good in that view and what's 1000m away from it and I can't see, I don't care

Anyhow, your approach is very interesting and now that you explain that you use the original terrain-shader as input for redirect it sounds so logical that that might work best.
Definitely going to try that out soon.

Hurry up with that file

lol

Martin

efflux · August 06, 2009, 08:58:41 PM

It's best to duplicate the original terrain fractal because you may want to change some of it's settings for the redirect (like displacement) but you will not want to change it's overall size or shape.

Eventually I will get some more files out but I don't want them to be a mess. I'm a bit sick of this planet I am working on. My system is slow. I need a new computer.