New registered user here and have a question and a suggestion. I was attempting to make a simple isolated terrain, (I.E Think island, a terrain surrounded by level terrain) and began searching for a way to have the terrain fall for towards the edges. Is there a device that can accomplish this that I haven’t found.
I could do it if there was a circular gradent function, as I was able to create a circular gradent in photoship, save it as a TGA and then it along with Perlin Noise and a Combiner set to multiply, this forced a fall off from the center towards the edge. But it might be useful other gradient typy were implmented expecially circular and square gradents, perhap even with a repeat value so you could create banded gradents with only mulitple generator or device.
Keep up the great work,
J. Stuart J.
Production Art & Imaging
Good suggestions. You found one of the better ways to do what you wanted to do by making a mask externally and then using it in Multiply mode of a combiner to affect your terrain. You could also use it in a chooser as the mask input to choose between 2 terrains, giving you a bit more control.
With a series of the internal gradients and a blur effect, you can create a decent “mostly circular” mask with built-in devices. I also often use simple Perlin generators and, with a Transform or Curves device, increase the contrast to form an appropriate mask for my terrain. The advantage of this is it allows a more natural looking shape, with some variation in the blending strength in different areas, rather than a totally smooth and regular circle, which you’ll almost never find in nature.
We’ll have to see what comes along in 1.0 as far as additional devices. There just might be something that would fulfill your desires.
Thanks for the reply, after some playing I was able to acheive a very nice radial gradient with the following
2 Gradients each with a Ramp set to 1.54,
combine them with Multiply
Apply a Gausian Blur and a Equalize
It works well and as a macro it is working perfect for controling the fall of for more complex macros. I was able to generate a fairly nice Atol / Island generator using the technique.
Thanks for the help,
J. Stuart J.
Glad you got something good worked out. You might consider making that macro available to the general public, especially if you can parameterize it in any interesting ways.