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General => Contests => NWDA 2013 Theme Challenge - Roadside => Topic started by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 03:55:41 PM

Title: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 03:55:41 PM
...
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: cyphyr on March 08, 2013, 04:04:23 PM
Intriguing start, could do with a little more something ...
Richard
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 08, 2013, 04:27:45 PM
Well the dashed line is there already :)
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 04:31:19 PM
The scene I have in mind has several distinct areas of features which I'm breaking down and working out the networks individually. I thought it might be interesting to document.

I tend to like working in texture space as much as possible before I displace. This lets me build things around the origin and then 'transform' them into a position I want, so this may look a bit disjointed as I build up the elements.

First off is the road on a test piece of terrain. It's running north south on the Z axis. The texture is just a marker at the moment. The function creates a horizontal surface across it's width, whilst finding an average grey scale input from the terrain along it's length. The idea will be to warp this with the surrounding terrain at a later stage.
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 04:32:42 PM
Give us a bloody chance guys.  ;D
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: cyphyr on March 08, 2013, 04:42:15 PM
Sorry, I wearing my naught hat, I'll try to behave!

So the road is a function (blue nodes?).
Will this method allow you to warp the road and allow it to go up and down along a terrain (I can see it already dose the latter), also would this method allow you to put a flat road alongthe side of a sloping valley (for instance)?

Cheers

Richard
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 04:47:48 PM
It should do. The next thing I need to build is the profile I want the road to sit on. I'm deliberately working in soft scales at the moment because I want to add detail later with the masks created.
Title: Re: Hetzen's entry
Post by: Hetzen on March 08, 2013, 07:09:08 PM
The warp side of things is working, a flat road to the horizon. The second one shows the road function cutting into the landscape too much, which should be easy to correct by adding some grey to the road in the landscape texture.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 10, 2013, 08:57:20 AM
Two more showing the profile function warping with the road. The outcrops sync up with their overal height, so dip down to give a natural base shape. I'm still using one displacement for this scene, I want to keep as much in texture as possible, because the next stage will be modulating that texture further to add more detail.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 22, 2013, 09:11:08 AM
Next is some basic sculpting on the landscape, with some larger modulation to curve the hills into a bay for the POV I'm working towards.
The idea will be to use this shape to blend a correctly scaled PF mountain pattern to add more detail.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 22, 2013, 09:16:23 AM
Most of this week has been used up in working out a workflow for my road texture. I've started off with just one tyre tread that runs 10km, doubled up to the width of an axle, then given some deviation to build multiple instances. After looking at the second render, I think I need to put some probability weighting in the random placement of the tracks to give a central bias, especially as each track cuts progressively deeper.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: TheBadger on March 22, 2013, 09:23:21 AM
I love the terrain in "Road03.jpg (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=fdcc073f924ae32981fa0b1f088ebecd&action=dlattach;topic=15786.0;attach=41934)"! If you don't use that Hetzen, please let me get a look at the TGD.


Good start man!
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 22, 2013, 09:33:11 AM
Here you go Badger..

<terragen_clip>
    <displacement_shader
        name = "Displacement shader 01"
        gui_use_node_pos = "1"
        gui_node_pos = "-920 260 0"
        gui_group = ""
        enable = "1"
        input_node = ""
        gui_use_preview_patch_size = "0"
        gui_preview_patch_size = "1000 1000"
        function = "Power fractal shader v3 02"
        displacement_direction = "1"
        displacement_multiplier = "900"
        >
    </displacement_shader>
    <power_fractal_shader_v3
        name = "Power fractal shader v3 02"
        gui_use_node_pos = "1"
        gui_node_pos = "-920 300 0"
        gui_group = ""
        enable = "1"
        input_node = ""
        gui_use_preview_patch_size = "0"
        gui_preview_patch_size = "1000 1000"
        seed = "37434"
        feature_scale = "1000"
        lead-in_scale = "10000"
        smallest_scale = "100"
        noise_octaves = "8"
        apply_high_colour = "1"
        high_colour = "1 1 1"
        apply_low_colour = "1"
        low_colour = "0 0 0"
        colour_contrast = "0.5"
        colour_offset = "0"
        colour_roughness = "1"
        clamp_high_colour = "1"
        clamp_low_colour = "1"
        apply_displacement = "0"
        displacement_direction = "1"
        displacement_amplitude = "1"
        displacement_offset = "0"
        displacement_roughness = "1"
        displacement_spike_limit = "1"
        continue_spike_limit = "0"
        adjust_coastline = "0"
        coastline_altitude = "0"
        coastline_smoothing = "30"
        noise_flavour = "0"
        noise_variation = "1"
        variation_method = "2"
        buoyancy_from_variation = "0.25"
        clumping_of_variation = "0.25"
        noise_stretch_XYZ = "1 1 1"
        distort_by_normal = "0"
        distortion_by_normal = "5"
        lead-in_warp_effect = "0"
        lead-in_warp_amount = "0.5"
        less_warp_at_feature_scale = "0"
        allow_vertical_warp = "0"
        blend_by_shader = "0"
        blending_shader = ""
        fit_blendshader_to_this = "0"
        invert_blendshader = "0"
        >
    </power_fractal_shader_v3>
    <power_fractal_shader_v3
        name = "Base colours"
        gui_use_node_pos = "1"
        gui_node_pos = "-920 220 0"
        gui_group = "Shaders"
        enable = "1"
        input_node = "Displacement shader 01"
        gui_use_preview_patch_size = "0"
        gui_preview_patch_size = "1000 1000"
        seed = "8028"
        feature_scale = "1"
        lead-in_scale = "1000"
        smallest_scale = "0.1"
        noise_octaves = "15"
        apply_high_colour = "1"
        high_colour = "0.3000000119 0.3000000119 0.3000000119"
        apply_low_colour = "1"
        low_colour = "0 0 0"
        colour_contrast = "0.125"
        colour_offset = "0"
        colour_roughness = "5"
        clamp_high_colour = "1"
        clamp_low_colour = "1"
        apply_displacement = "0"
        displacement_direction = "1"
        displacement_amplitude = "1"
        displacement_offset = "0"
        displacement_roughness = "1"
        displacement_spike_limit = "1"
        continue_spike_limit = "0"
        adjust_coastline = "0"
        coastline_altitude = "0"
        coastline_smoothing = "30"
        noise_flavour = "0"
        noise_variation = "1"
        variation_method = "2"
        buoyancy_from_variation = "0"
        clumping_of_variation = "0"
        noise_stretch_XYZ = "1 1 1"
        distort_by_normal = "1"
        distortion_by_normal = "5"
        lead-in_warp_effect = "1"
        lead-in_warp_amount = "0.5"
        less_warp_at_feature_scale = "0"
        allow_vertical_warp = "0"
        blend_by_shader = "0"
        blending_shader = ""
        fit_blendshader_to_this = "0"
        invert_blendshader = "0"
        >
    </power_fractal_shader_v3>
</terragen_clip>


Hope it's off use mate. Instead of using the PF displacement, I'm using the black and white output to drive a displacement node. Have a look at using a bias or gain node in between the PF and displacement, just to see how it affects the shape. The wiki has some good diagrams of what shape those power nodes apply to greyscale.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: TheBadger on March 22, 2013, 09:50:54 AM
Thanks! Will use this when I get back to my mushrooms ;D
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 23, 2013, 12:37:18 PM
A quick update. I think I'm happy with the tyre tracks, time to move on to the centre texture.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 25, 2013, 12:22:14 AM
Block texture for the inner road done. Now moving on to the outer boundry.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Dune on March 25, 2013, 02:27:53 AM
Nice to see your crops developing, Jon. Looks like a moonlit road.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Tangled-Universe on March 25, 2013, 04:11:04 AM
Cool. I have something quite similar cooking (finally).


Looking forward to see more!
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: FrankB on March 25, 2013, 05:20:07 AM
beautiful, Jon!
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 25, 2013, 11:51:40 AM
Cheers. I'm enjoying this. It does look like a night shot atm. I think the base colour is too red, but as it comes from one PF, I want to see how I can use this as one tone in a few, that sweep across the landscape and therefore influnce the hue and saturation of the road.

A quick lazy update. Just trying out a tread instance on the previous texture. I've given myself the challenge to do as much as possible with just one displacement node. :o We'll see how that goes.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: mhaze on March 26, 2013, 09:27:40 AM
Looking good.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 26, 2013, 06:45:30 PM
Thanks Mick. I'm having a go at setting up my camera position and blocking out the colours and lines. I need to straighten out the road line, perhaps curve it into the right some more.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Dune on March 27, 2013, 03:15:36 AM
How come you work so terribly dark? It will be hard to judge the road ;-)
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 27, 2013, 07:52:42 AM
It is at the moment Ulco, I've got two suns in this, one lighting up the atmosphere and casting shadows, the other much lower strength ignoring atmosphere to help light the landscape. It's kind of the mood I'm going for I guess. I thought I should see how the scene would be lit with this sort of cloudscape to see how the colours react, and as my textures are quite editable, I can adjust areas if they need it.

Some more work on the atmosphere and trying to resolve reflection quality, which is still a bit noisy.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: FrankB on March 27, 2013, 07:57:42 AM
I cannot see the road at all on my screen, Jon.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Hetzen on March 27, 2013, 08:11:52 AM
Quote from: FrankB on March 27, 2013, 07:57:42 AM
I cannot see the road at all on my screen, Jon.

It's because it's not there yet Frank.  ;D

The road texture should react ontop of my base colours, and that's what I need to plot out next. The grey road is just a marker, as the road function is render expensive, I've switched it off.
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: FrankB on March 27, 2013, 08:43:13 AM
That explains it  ;D
Title: Re: Hetzen's Road
Post by: Oshyan on March 27, 2013, 08:53:28 PM
'tis very dark indeed, but the clouds are nice. If the road is a little reflective and rough, to pick up some of the lighting in the sky, it could be a very cool, subtle composition. I guess that's what you're aiming for?

- Oshyan