> As I was saying >>>>> once a polygons "qualities" can be >deter- mined , using boolean logic , then any number of >operations can then be applied , from texturing to particles >to displacement map- ing ... , the mind boggles at what can be >done to a polygon in RS !
Hi Don't start a project/material thinking about its gui. Think about what you need it to do first, simulate the maths (spreadsheets are quite nice for this, actually), make it happen, _then_ worry about the gui and workarounds for this, and only if it is generalistic enough to have reusability value in other scenes :-) Maybe it is possible to create a landscape material thingy based on booleans, but I would vote strongly against it due to antialiasing problems with IF statements. Check the default checkerboard material against the antialiased-checkerboard material found somewhere in the installation. The latter is how it should be done IMHO. It looks harder and more complex to achieve with VSL, but antialiasing this way is a hellufalot faster (especially regarding bumpy surfaces) to render than brute force antialiasing settings, and tends to look better too. Most likely old news, but I thought I'd mention it. I would try something like the following: * Parallel map the terrain from top view, adjust the depth to match the depth of the terrain object. * Create some userchannels to hold scopevalues for various elements. I suggest lowflat, lowslopy, highflat, and highslopy. All floats. * In a new VSL material, use dot product between surfacenormal and mapz to find the steepness angle. Map the output accordingly to a float variable, angle. * angle=abs(angle) * Setup heightmap using mapcoords.Z and map it to another float variable, height. * Two curves objects to change the output contrast of both the height and the angle. * Assign color=black and illumination to the new variables. Just to test which values are actually assigned and if it all works this far. * New float variable, invangle, then invangle=1-p1(angle) * Using the channelnames I setup above, then do the following maths: lowflat=multiply(angle,height) lowslopy=multiply(invangle,height) height=1-p1(height) highflat=multiply(angle,height) highslopy=multiply(invangle,height) * Delete the output to illumination you did above, and test each variable to see if it works. Angle and height might be inversed but you get the idea. * Delete the tests and you should have user channels that holds scoping amounts for whatever you want to achieve. Assign actual textures and bumps in separate materials. This is the procedural way of doing it, and is only _required_ if the landscape is morphing, which I would expect would be rarely ;-) Why not export the channels as a texture and use it as a scope map when you're done with the object? Should work better and you can tweak it in Photoshop if you like. I.e. if you have a huge lake/sea area, you could blacken the scope of the lows, when it is _very_ low, and add a new channel for a separate wet control. I actually used this approach back in v3.5 days, although I had to rely on a Photoshop plugin to get me the steepness maps. Photoshops "calculate/apply image" commands then provided me with the needed scopemaps. So, quite old-tech :-) Heh, not sure if this was what the discussion was all about, haven't had time lately to read thoroughly enough I guess, but hope it was of any use. Regards Karl -- sorry for the following rant. This e-mail and any attachment are confidential and may be privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. It is solely intended for the person(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient, any reading, use, disclosure, copying or distribution of all or parts of this e-mail or associated attachments is strictly prohibited. If you are not an intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by replying to this message or by telephone and delete this e-mail and any attachments permanently from your system.
