DAZ Studio height-based terrain shaders, or similar?
sriesch
Posts: 4,241
What do we have for height-based terrain shaders for DAZ Studio? I'm personally only looking for 3DL shaders, but perhaps others might be interested in knowing of any iray shaders.
Alternatively, instructions on how to modify a shader in Shader Mixer to do this type of thing, or other less obvious methods, might also be handy.
I've attached a random Bryce screenshot with no attempt to make it look good, I just picked four materials at random to illustrate the general idea. Some are just elevation based (green for trees or grass higher up and rock lower down), others are based on elevation and/or angle too I think (snow on flatter areas, but not on the steep slopes, and concentrated higher up, etc.)
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We had several ShaderMixer examples on the old (or is that really old) forums that got lost in the suffle...I have some image captures from those threads, but no text explanations and nothing explaning the networks (which makes it hard to figure out what they are actually for...and why I haven't put them up on the wiki...'cause I can't figure out what they are for!)
But that aside, yes, it is possible to do in shader mixer...
http://www.daz3d.com/let-it-snow-ds-shader
http://www.daz3d.com/winter-kingdom-castle-ruins
Both use the results of those missing threads...
I'd love Iray shaders that do this sort of thing, but the only shaders I know of with this kind of procedural element are for 3DL. So you are in luck. Ish. Bryce (and Carrara) blow Daz3d out of the water in this area, which is annoying for those who want to use Daz Studio.
Anyhow, here are some potential items:
http://www.daz3d.com/gathering-moss-ds-shader
http://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-dirt-shaders (I have this one and it works GREAT -- really wish it worked in Iray. :/)
And Stonemason's winter Castle Ruins, Draagonstorm's Snow...and there's a few others. But really that's only a fraction of the power of ShaderMixer.
And many of those functions, for procedurals ARE available for Iray...it's just a matter of figuring out HOW to actually use them. ShaderMixer documentation has always been minimal and best supplemented with LOTS of trial and error (mostly error) experimenting (been there, done that, got the t-shirt...).
I'm hoping that those folks are motivated to generate cool shaders, because I have way too much on my plate already to learn yet another totally new thing (I never learned how to do much with shaders with 3DL, either)
I'd totally spend money on it. Dirt Shader was one of my favorite things! (I can still sort of make use out of the texture maps, so that's something)
Well if you have a grey scale height map for the terrain it should be possible
I am no Iray whiz but in octane I know you can use grey scale images in functions
if the terrain is flat UV mapped of course
I didn't even think of the gathering moss or snow shaders, I'll have to look into what it would take to adapt them to this kind of thing.
Let it Snow is pretty much 'it'...
Can the "Let it Snow" shader be configured to have multiple colors at varying altitudes, or is it purely on/off with the white snow? I haven't worked with geoshells yet, but perhaps one could make several of a terrain and stack them with the snow shader set to different settings on each to get snow on top, rock in the middle, green at lower elevation, etc.
I'd have to look at it again (have installed, but haven't done anything with it lately)...
But if I recall it's a simple gradient between two colors.
But there's a way with mix and altitude bricks to do 3 or more colors.
Hmm. The big problem I'm running into with displacement maps is getting the subd high enough to look proper. But cooking an example.
Took simple cloud generation, then made two maps from it to divide out a mask for high caps, mid rock. Geo shell +.02 offset for rock, +.04 for snow.
Another option that occurs to me, particularly if you have an actual terrain model rather than a displacement map, is that you could adjust Y scale, set them to collide with the lower layer, so it spreads somewhat naturally. Maybe set it a little transparent. Hrm.
Eh. Ok, first is a use of cloud maps and geoshells. Second is a free terrain obj of Mount Shasta... well, three, plus fog.
Neither approach is great. The critical thing is to get better shaders, I think.
Shader: Cylindrical projection in object space.
(3delight) You could theoretically make one yourself via the Altitude brick and then attatch some image maps to it. I haven't tried it yet, though it's on my to-do list.
One major problem however is how fickle the shader can be when you attatch 3 or more image maps/colors to it, as you can't really toggle the height of one color vs the other (though I'm guessing that this might be possible if you hooked the right math nodes up to it). Though 4 or more is where the altitude shader really has problems.
Still, that would be the simplest and most direct equivalent to the Bryce height-based shaders.
I'm too lazy to load up Daz and look at the base custom shader needed for an altitude setup right now, though
Edit: Laziness over. There are actually several ways to go about it, but something like this is what gets the best results.
I really wish I could find everything from those old threads...but that's similar to some of what was posted in the thread on it.
Here's an older tut on the altitude brick...
There's a few of the older recipes in this thread...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25448/list-of-shader-mixer-tutorials-and-recipes-wip-please-be-patient-as-i-update-the-list-thanks/p1
I haven't looked at it either but doubt it would make a difference if I did. It seems to me that altitude is not enough. Is there anything about slope hiding in there somewhere?
The tutorial I linked to has a nice working scene or object based (he made custom bricks, but I think some of the problems with the default brick have been ironed out...or at least I hope they have in the past 3+ yrs) altitude that does the changes based on gradients. If I remember some of the discussion that lead up to Stonemasson's and Draagonstorm's shaders, ramp bricks were in the mix somewhere. (And DS's shader is very complex...)
And this is exactly why all the stuff from the old forums (what became the forumarchive) is still needed.
Oh, though it's not in the screenshot, you need to connect an image map node to each "value" if you want to apply a texture map to it. Array begins with a single Value, but you can click on the dropdown on the upper right of the node to add new values. And yeah, there's a problem with Mixer in that any shader you create with it will have the displacement screwed up unless you set it to 0 via the Mixer. Unless that has been worked out in recent releases, that is.
Have you tried internet archive wayback machine, has gotten me stuff off old forum before today
If I could remember exactly which thread dealt with it...yeah, but it's too hit and miss to just try to blindly search the wayback machine.
I found it is not that difficult using MDL, in 3DL I am lost. This image was made using a procedural shader, no bricks, @Stonemasons's winter terrain.
Have you tried 'Infinito' to create a terrain from a height map (similiar to using Bryce) and then used some of the supplied textures for the terrain? Some of them can approximate height based coloration. The terrain in these renders was made using Infinito with USGS data
http://www.daz3d.com/infinito-1-0