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Support => Terragen Support => Topic started by: choronr on July 08, 2012, 01:12:33 PM

Title: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 08, 2012, 01:12:33 PM
My same old question which has been answered by many with a number of different approaches - some of which work sometimes; but most of the time not.

Why do the fake stones pick up the color of the base color; or, the base shader. Can't this be fixed within TG2 so you get the colors you choose by the stones themselves or by a power fractal?
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: cyphyr on July 08, 2012, 02:53:29 PM
Child of a surface layer always seems to work for me.
There may be a reason to drop in a compute terrain/normal before it sometimes.
:)
Richard
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Simius Strabus on July 08, 2012, 04:31:30 PM
This will work, as you can see. I set the base colours to freakish green to make it stand out.
Hope this will help you on your way. By the way, you can also place a reflective shader between the power fractal
and fake stones shader and set reflectivity to 0.3 to make the stones look wet.

Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 08, 2012, 05:54:18 PM
Quote from: cyphyr on July 08, 2012, 02:53:29 PM
Child of a surface layer always seems to work for me.
There may be a reason to drop in a compute terrain/normal before it sometimes.
:)
Richard
Thanks Richard, I always add the fake stones as a 'child'; also, add a compute terrain before the stones shader. Yet, still get negative results.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 08, 2012, 05:57:56 PM
Quote from: Simius Strabus on July 08, 2012, 04:31:30 PM
This will work, as you can see. I set the base colours to freakish green to make it stand out.
Hope this will help you on your way. By the way, you can also place a reflective shader between the power fractal
and fake stones shader and set reflectivity to 0.3 to make the stones look wet.
Thank you. I'll have a look at what you've posted. I'll be posting the .tgd with maybe a screen shot of my set up.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 08, 2012, 07:59:20 PM
Here is the .tgd of the file. All stones are the same; yet, each are supposed to be a different color.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Tangled-Universe on July 09, 2012, 03:52:20 AM
Hi Bob,

You may find some very recent and interesting information here:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=14759.0

Martin
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Kevin F on July 09, 2012, 04:16:10 AM
Bob, your stones are all different colours. Here's a quick render with all your PF's used for colouring the stones replaced with a simple basic test colour, they're all there as different colours. But note that they are all varying in shades and degree of "purity".
Something else in your setup is having a direct influence on their colours and making them all very similar (your original colours were all closer than the ones I chose, see modified tgd). I also shifted a few things around to a format I'm more used to working with.

Hope this helps.
Kevin
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 09, 2012, 05:14:19 PM
Kevin,

Thanks for the .tgd file. Will work with this and hopefully imprint this in my mind for the future ...appreciate it.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on July 10, 2012, 06:39:57 PM
One thing I found useful in getting fake stones color to pop more is to increase their saturation by 40 to 50%.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: fleetwood on August 03, 2012, 02:28:44 PM
Looking at your test tgd there is a Fractal Breakup shader connected to the Sand Surface shader but it has NO colour checked.
There is another Fractal Breakup shader connected to the  Fake Stone Connecting layer as a Blender but it has no colour checked.

Removing these  helps, but by my testing I believe the real "culprits"  are the Altitude constraint used in the Sand Surface shader
and the Slope constraint used in the Fake Stones Connecting layer.

Both of those two different constraints in different surface layers are attempting to be applied to the structure of the fake stones and colour.
The colour on the sides of the individual stones tries to stop at the slope angle you picked, instead of wrapping around the stone.
The Altitude constraint appears to actually try to stunt individual stones.

Here are a couple of renders with Base Colours set to red and blue. One with altitude constraints and one without. Some individual stones
get bigger as they were right near the altitude limit you set. Had to move the camera back and up so as not to be inside a now less restricted  stone.
You can see how the Base Colours bleed in.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: choronr on August 04, 2012, 12:23:37 PM
Fleetwood; thanks for your in depth looking into this file. I've saved your comments and will look into this and try some experiments. I really appreciate this.

Bob
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Fabien Sokal on December 14, 2017, 06:31:10 PM
Excuse me, so what is the right way? how to restrict the stones spawning over the terrain by slope or altitude without breaking the color or surface shader from them?
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: luvsmuzik on December 14, 2017, 09:18:38 PM
Quote from: Fabien Sokal on December 14, 2017, 06:31:10 PM
Excuse me, so what is the right way? how to restrict the stones spawning over the terrain by slope or altitude without breaking the color or surface shader from them?

A general rule is that fake stones are used as a child of a surface layer. The color of that layer is not used or selected for terrain color.  The settings of altitude and slope are shared by the surface layer and child layer.  If you want to restrict your stone color to equal hues, uncheck vary color RGB.

You can add several stones to the same layer with the merge shader and mix option.

Don't be afraid of using many layers for different effect, occasionally you might need to add an extra compute terrain at the end of your shader string before piping it to Planet.
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Fabien Sokal on December 15, 2017, 08:31:23 AM
Quote from: luvsmuzik on December 14, 2017, 09:18:38 PM
Quote from: Fabien Sokal on December 14, 2017, 06:31:10 PM
Excuse me, so what is the right way? how to restrict the stones spawning over the terrain by slope or altitude without breaking the color or surface shader from them?

A general rule is that fake stones are used as a child of a surface layer. The color of that layer is not used or selected for terrain color.  The settings of altitude and slope are shared by the surface layer and child layer.  If you want to restrict your stone color to equal hues, uncheck vary color RGB.

You can add several stones to the same layer with the merge shader and mix option.

Don't be afraid of using many layers for different effect, occasionally you might need to add an extra compute terrain at the end of your shader string before piping it to Planet.

Thx, i got that. But as an example, if you have 4 stone shaders merged to child input of that layer and you want to use different restrictions on them?
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: luvsmuzik on December 15, 2017, 11:20:36 AM
An easy answer would be to use the Distribution shader on each stone, then you could even mask coverage of that distribution with a power fractal mask. Your merge shaders also have options for mixing.

Examine some files from File Sharing that are usually derived from images posted in Image Sharing. People are great about explaining as a project is developed the "how to" :) If you see a stone network you like in a tgd, you can make a clip file of that and insert it in your own project, be aware the terrain seed and fractal may not give you the same result, but that can usually be adjusted to unique terrain. Take note of the parent of the stones, ie, are they on a layer, a simple shape, masked terrain....
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: Fabien Sokal on December 15, 2017, 01:35:27 PM
Sorry for dumb question, if it is ))) I'm kind of new to TG. Using it for just couple of weeks.

Thank you again. Seems like i managed this out with your help. I used a surface layer with no restrictions, plugged in merged pyramid of four Fake stones shaders and different Distribution shaders with Terrain/Texture and Terrain settings for altitude and slope restrictions respectively, as a mask for each Fake stone shader. That seems to work generally, stones are distributed correctly and shaded quite properly... But there are still artefacts on some stones. Very little, but still. And they seems to me even scenic. I suppose it's for severe deforms of surface before with no smoothing on at stones layer (i read that from honored Tangled Universe, don't ask me )) but i really want to leave them that way with smoothing off). So i consider the problem solved. Thanx to all ))

PS: All surface layers like soil, grass, etc are before stones in node chain, after stones there are compute terrain and layers that must affect stones, like wetness, etc. If this is important
Title: Re: Fake Stones color
Post by: luvsmuzik on December 15, 2017, 04:03:28 PM
This is still on the WIKI page. Useful for stone displacement step by step procedures. I have never actually (and I should} viewed the fake stones to see the mesh itself in wireframe as that greatly determines how the fractal or image will displace the stones. It also varies when using a population.
Anyway, take a look if you wish. :)
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Terragen_2_Tutorials#Intro_to_the_Fake_Stones_Shader