A test of displacement terrain

[robcat2075]

This uses a noise combiner for a displacement material to create terrain for a flyover.

 

Flyover000MP4.mov

 

It's got a few odd pops and gaps but interesting none-the-less.

[John Bigboote]

"Ground Control to Major Tom..."

 

Very cool! There seems to be a render glitch when the camera gets too close to a heavily displaced surface.

[Animus]

It looks good! I like the blur you have as you look farther away. Is that just depth of field on the camera?

 

Michel

[robcat2075]

There seems to be a render glitch when the camera gets too close to a heavily displaced surface.

 

yeah, not sure what triggers that.

 

If you watch closely you'll see some of the smaller peaks pop up or disappear at random times. Displacement is still a bit unpredictable.

 

 

I like the blur you have as you look farther away. Is that just depth of field on the camera?

 

Even simpler, it's camera "fog" turned on.

[mtpeak2]

Pretty cool, looks like an alien planet or an ocean bottom.

[Darkwing]

oh wow, i've always wanted to know how to do that, as i've tried with decals and displacement maps and never got anything nearly as cool as that!

[robcat2075]

Here's a refinement of the terrain appearance

 

 

I'm using the AM_HeteroTerrain which is part of the Enhance AM pack, a third party set of material things sold separately, but you can get very similar results with the fBM noise combiner.

 

The second node is set to black, the first one is the cellular noise combiner set to Webbed with white and near white as its color nodes.

 

The Hetero combiner makes most of the shape but the cellular adds a bit of ridging on the mountain tops

 

I put the material on a grid with displacement amount set to 1500% and monkeyed with parameters until I got a mountain like appearance.

 

Then I made another material with same settings on the Hetero combiner but with white and brown as the colors. This gets put on the grid as a regular material and is what makes the actual snow and rock colors you see.

 

 

They are still not terribly convincing mountains. They have that lumpy shape that CG mountains always seem to have.

[Darkwing]

so was your original vid using this add-on too? it looks really good, now if a way to make clouds can be figured out, i have some ideas for clouds, but never got to play with the idea

[robcat2075]

so was your original vid using this add-on too?

 

yes

 

the description:

This combiner provides a noisy pattern based on Fractal Brownian Motion (fBm). The difference to fBm is that the valleys are smoothed making it better for craggy mountain tops.

 

However I find my mountian tops are still not very craggy.

 

Try experimenting with the fBM noise combiner. It's almost the same. But Ill warn you, if you thought rigging was tedious and opaque, you wont' like noise combiners.

[Darkwing]

I'm doing some quick tests now, and i've fiddled with combiners before, i prefer them over rigging, but when you say cellular noise, you mean cellturb?

 

EDIT: Hmmm, my mac seems to hate procedural mats, always has, i'm gonna try this on the windows, it renders mats about 3 times faster

[photoman]

If you dont want to use displacement for terrain you can use the Terrain Wizard plugin the model view, or download A:M TerraForm.

 

Or better yet, do a mix of both.

 

Photoman

[robcat2075]

I'm doing some quick tests now, and i've fiddled with combiners before, i prefer them over rigging, but when you say cellular noise, you mean cellturb?

 

EDIT: Hmmm, my mac seems to hate procedural mats, always has, i'm gonna try this on the windows, it renders mats about 3 times faster

 

Yup. CellTurb

 

I didn't change the first node to cellturb until i was getting something about right with just black and white on the first turbulence combiner. Start simple.

[Darkwing]

this has lots of potential, and i'm really intrigued with this, i think i might just pick up attempting to make clouds

[MJL]

Rob, could you give more info on the Enhance A:M pack you mentioned? or maybe a website?

[robcat2075]

Rob, could you give more info on the Enhance A:M pack you mentioned? or maybe a website?

 

 

First, I'll warn everyone again... these are not magical plugins, they are every bit as complicated to use and hard to see a use for as the combiners you've already got in A:M. And they're not fast either. I think there's a lot of potential in combiners, including A:M's regular ones, but it's real guru stuff to become proficient at them. And I'm certainly not.

 

So no long faces, OK?

 

 

http://www.shaders.org/enhance:am/index.htm

 

 

It says they are for v13 but I got mine around v10 and they still work in V15. The ones I've tried. I've never done much with them. They are complicated.

[Darkwing]

and i'm gonna look into using normal combiners to see how closely i can mimic what you've made, also, what would it look like if you put a volumetric effect just slightly above the ground, creating a thin misty fog look at the base of the mountains?

[robcat2075]

Here's a quick version using A:M's fBm turbulence combiner

 

 

the peaks are rockier which I like, but I can't get the snow capped peak effect as much because fBm doesn' t seem to produce as severe a separation between the two attribute colors.

 

Or maybe I just don't know how to do it.

 

 

Here's the PRJ if you want to try it.

 

DisplacementRenderTest06b_FBM_substitute.prj

 

 

btw, Displacement currently needs to be rendered with multipass for the shading to work correctly. Do your tests with 1 or 2 passes.

[photoman]

I once made a procedural mountain texture a while back here:

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...untain+photoman

 

Photoman

[Darkwing]

for your distinction, play with the amplitude factor and the octaves if the amplitude doesn't work

[Darkwing]

interesting, with the two turbulences nested like that, the amplitude method doesn't seem to work. in the past I've made a fairly solid distinction between two attributes, but the fbm one seem to blurry

[robcat2075]

I once made a procedural mountain texture a while back here:

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...untain+photoman

 

Photoman

 

Hey that looks good! It can be done.

[Darkwing]

hat one is cool, is the mountains all displacement?

[Darkwing]

well, i'm obviously doing something wrong

 

[robcat2075]

well, i'm obviously doing something wrong

 

 

Take the cellular out and get the shape going with the FBm alone. The cellular may not wont' add much to the fBM peaks.

[Darkwing]

well, here's what i got from using your prj file, i'm gonna look at photoman's on sunday, and would like to play with making 3d clouds

 

[MJL]

Rob,

 

I missed your earlier response to my request for information. I'll stick to learning the tricks within A:M, when I get that under control I'll look outside.

 

Thanks again

[robcat2075]

I missed your earlier response to my request for information. I'll stick to learning the tricks within A:M, when I get that under control I'll look outside.

 

 

Sorry, I shouldn't have been so negative. I was just worried that someone might expect me to explain it all, and I don't know much about it really. It looks like powerful stuff, but I haven't explored it much.