"Embossed" snow

[Lucio]

Thank you very much all for your experiments, I'm happy to see all those beautiful results and contributions

Now I'll post an image assembly of my node network to explain how I plugged the embossed snow on fake stones, on the image I posted some day ago



You can see that the snow shader is used as a reduced version: I've removed the vertical and lateral emboss, and added a lambert shader with a light blue translucency color. The coverage over the stones is controlled with the max slope constraint set on Snow_base, as for the terrain, but I've set the slope key on "Final normal" to render it correctly. I repeated this scheme on all the fake stones layers I used over the scene.

[Lucio]

Lucio,

Thanks for more than just the clip file.

I have been wrestling with this issue for a while and you not only gave me a way to create a great glacier but second you reinforced for all TG2 users the power of the node network and  third, you opened a door, you gave us a way to think about the the solution of problems like snow creation.

Your clear explanation along with the diagrams is a job well done!

-Steve Horstmeyer

Steve, thank you very much, I'm honored to read this

I guessed using a graphic diagrams approach can be a good and powerful way for creating complex surfaces, because the node architecture permits to manage all the aspects of the scene logically and with great precision

[ello]

wow, that looks so beautiful , specially the second image is showing the snow extremly impressive

[old_blaggard]

Thanks for all of your detailed explanations, Lucio!  They've been a big help .

[sonshine777]

Here is a link to a render I just finished and posted over at Terranuts
http://www.terranuts.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=25358&limit=recent

I didn't realize that the monitor was in the ultra bright mode and was adjusting my snow color accordingly, after 34 hours of rendering I figured it out (hence the grey snow). I guess that it could be assumed that St Helens just had one of its many small steam eruptions and coated the snow with a light bit of ash.
I think the surface was affected by the fake rock surface I put below the snow and had not read up on the thread about using snow and rocks together.

When I'm happy with the scene I will post the tgd. And the location of the terrain at Terranuts.

[king_tiger_666]

nice render. good use of clouds/trees and POV

[old_blaggard]

Nice job.  You manage to incorporate a variety of techinques into an aesthetically pleasing image.

[Mammoth]

I must be stupid or something because I can't even open it. TG2 doesn't open .tgc's so what do I do?

[king_tiger_666]

terragen 2 can open tgc files. go file/insert clip file

[Mammoth]

Okay now I know I'm stupid because now that I've imported it I don't see anything change.

[king_tiger_666]

have you connected the base shader, or compute terrain to the input of the snow_base  and the output of the snow_base to the input of the planet node?... or else you willn't see anything except a blank terrain..

[Mammoth]

have you connected the base shader, or compute terrain to the input of the snow_base  and the output of the snow_base to the input of the planet node?... or else you willn't see anything except a blank terrain..

Ah that helps. 

[sonshine777]

The tgc file will show up in the node network portion of TG2 and as king_tiger_666 said it is not plugged into any thing. You need to plug the output of bottom node called Snow Base into the planet01 and the Base Color node onto the input of the Snow base node.

[attachthumb=#]

[king_tiger_666]

no problem... will be interested with what you render after experimenting

[Mark-S]

Hey guys,

Sorry to just but in but I'm having trouble with this :/..
I haven't had much time to play around with TG2TP due to personal stuff but I need help with this insanely awesome clip file .
I've got it working to an extent but not to it's full emboss look.

I haven't done a lot to fix the problem as I really don't know what to do!
All I've done is:
-Inserted the clip file
-Generated a Power Fractal terrain
-Linked the Base Colours Output node to the Input node of the Snow_base function
-Then linked the Output node of the Snow_base function to the Surface shader node of the Planet_01 function as illustrated here.


And I'm not getting anything of the embossed look - would someone be able to save my life and show me what I'm doing wrong?