Two questions

[wayne]

1.) I have a nice alpine planet.  I would like to make some of it flat land so I can view the mountains in the distance over a prairie.  How to I insert a flat territory onto a mountainous planet.
2.) How do I view my planet as a whole (as in from space).  I have tried looking down and then elevating but it doesn't seem to work.

[red_planet]

Quick and dirty replies....

1   masking...search the forum for masking..use an image or paint a mask using the painted shader.
2   elevate more....easy using the navigation widget in the preview window. you need to be quite a long way from a planet before you can see it all....planets are quite big after all...

Rgds
Chris

[schmeerlap]

As long as you intend to stay on terra firma (and don't wander off into space) you can use a Distance shader in the Blend by shader option. Set the Distance shader to Z depth (planar) mode and assign the Render Camera as the Camera. Then adjust the Near and Far distances to something like 2000 and 10000 respectively (the more distance between them the smoother the transition from flat ground to full Alpine effect). Of course if you then decide to take your camera into the stratosphere and above, the Distance shader as a blend shader becomes ineffective and you should use another form of masking such as a power fractal ensuring you give it large scale settings to avoid jagged sudden transitions in displacement.

I have tried looking down and then elevating but it doesn't seem to work.

You'll have to be more specific here as I've just simulated what you're doing (i.e. hiking the render camera into the stratosphere and beyond, using the navigational controls, to see the whole planet, and it does work, i.e. I can see the whole planet. To be sure I can no longer see my mountains as their scale is far too small to be visible in orbit.

John

[Hetzen]

1.) I have a nice alpine planet.  I would like to make some of it flat land so I can view the mountains in the distance over a prairie.  How to I insert a flat territory onto a mountainous planet.

Use a power fractal to generate a black and white mask to plug into the alpine fractals blending input. Set the scale of the PF to the size of your mountain range, 20,000 m for example. you don't need much detail in the mask PF, so smallest scale can be 100 for example. What this will do, is blend the alpine fractal into a a flat surface where there's only black in the PF.

As for point 2, you're either not going up far enough, or you're not pressing the update camera button on the bottom left hand corner of your preview screen when you try to render what you're seeing. Or I don't understand the problem..

[sjefen]

It would be nice to just have an option on these fractals to make it flatter at some points

- Terje

[schmeerlap]

It would be nice to just have an option on these fractals to make it flatter at some points

You can do that to some extent by checking the Adjust coastline option and setting the coastline altitude in the main Power Fractal v3 shader, but of course this option isn't included in the Alpine Fractal shader.

John

[Henry Blewer]

I avoid the alpine fractal and use the power fractal. The power fractal can be tweaked into looking like an alpine fractal. The advantage of the power fractal is it does not use so much data (?) and previews and renders are faster.