Shader View Question

[pfrancke]

I have a question about the shader view.  I've been playing with it a little and now know that it can be it's own window and that there are painting options for it (which I've been scared to use, but that is another story).  I know that I can zoom in and out with the plus and minus icons, and I assume I can change the camera position.  For clouds in particular, it sure would be nice if this window could be given the same POV as the render camera.  Is there an easy way to do this?

[dandelO]

I think you'd have to just manually approximate that. Clouds in this view will only display as a 2d, flat fractal, you won't see their Y-depth in the shader preview.

[cyphyr]

The small preview window your talking about, weather its for shader, clouds or powerfractal, whatever your previewing will ALLWAYS be centred on 0,0,0 so if your camera is elsewhere you'll get an impression or "style" of tyhe pattern your creating but not actually a proper view of what will be rendered.
I hope this helps and I think Planetside have it in mind to make the preview camera centred, sometime, so don't hold your breath
Richard

[pfrancke]

I understand... Now I can see also that I was asking for something that just can't be.  If the information is two dimensional, it just won't show / can't show in three dimensions from the same POV in a meaningful way.  For textures, I can see how having the top down view match the area that the camera is looking at be useful, but I can see now (and should have understood a long time ago), that the two dimensional (all white and black) type of information just doesn't resolve into a 3d type of concept.

[cyphyr]

You can use the Top down view as a reference, build your detailed textures to look right there and then move them to your desired location with a transformer shader.

Richard