Noob question about noise procedurals

Bug Reports
#1

Hi. I’m used to 3dsmax and Modo… using Modo for a personal project.

I have one tiny problem, and it’s probably something very easy to get right… but I would like to set up a completely normal noise map where the white peaks are very “rare.” Not 50/50 black and white. I need it as a mask for controlling a clamp node, where I am only trying to clamp down on a few places… And I need this noise to be perfectly smooth without any discernible edges.

What is the best noise to achieve this, and what are the settings I should look at?

#2

A few screens to describe your problem would be great.

#3

Ok here are some screenshots showing the desert terrain I have set up. It’s a very simple machine, but I prefer this over the dune field macro that I found in the WM library. I also prefer it over the dune included in the GeoGlyph macro library I purchased.

The problem with what I have made is that it looks fine from the low view, but when viewed from high above, you can clearly see the repeated pattern of the gradient lines. I would like to find a way to break up the dunes, and make them fall smoothly down into the earth where it would just be a flat area, then up again. As you see in the node chart, I have tried to make the dunes fall down and go up using Clamp + Noise… and it’s important that the noise procedural is very simple and without ridges. So the Advanced Perlin is not capable of doing the job for me. So I need to use the Perlin Noise. I can only use the Standard noise type, as the others will produce ridges and other unwanted artifacts. I need 0 persistence in the noise. The problem is that the noise is too evenly distributed. I only want the terrain to “clamp” the dunes in a small number of areas. In 3d studio max, I could change the bias of the noise procedural so that there would be mostly black, and just a few white noise items. I don’t seem to find this possibility in WM… Being able to change the “High” and “Low” was how I would do this in 3dsmax. But these kinds of options seem to be missing from WM Pro. Either I’m not aware of how to do it, or it’s simply impossible in the current version of WM Pro. Adding a bias/gain filter also doesn’t help. I want to reduce the frequency of white in this noise. Adding a “Probability” filter COULD help… except the artifacts generated are way too small and sharp with no way to control the sizes. Anyone have any tips?

#4

Hi there,

You are on the right track with your Clamp+Noise approach – except its’ even easier than you are attempting, if I understand you correctly. I believe you are looking for having essentially two frequencies of noise: The first frequency is the feature scale of your dunes, and the second modulates the dunes and provides areas of no content. This can be done easily by having a second perlin generator that masks the primary one.

As an aside, the Advanced Perlin noise should be able to do everything the Basic Perlin can do, and more – for your unridged, single octave of noise, simple set Style=Basic, and Octaves=1 (zero persistence) in the advanced perlin generator.

You can plug the output of your “dune modulator” generator into either the mask input of your primary generator (in your case, the gradient gen), or use a Combiner at the end of the chain set to Multiply to mask away sections of the primary terrain and break up the monotony. You can adjust the elevation center and steepness of the advanced perlin to control the relative weighting (mostly allowed output or mostly disallowed), while the feature scale of the modulator should be set to a value at least a couple times larger than the feature scale of your dunes.

Was this helpful at all?

#5

If I understand correctly, you want to make the lowest points in the perlin to be zero, or completely black (in masking terms). For this, simply replace the simple perlin with advanced perlin, then adjust elevation range and steepness to your heart’s content!

#6

Or you could port a Layout Generator in place of perlin and draw your mask yourself, with precise control!

#7

Thanks for replying. I didn’t understand much of what you say, and I think you may even misunderstand me.

I tried to use the Advanced Perlin, in Basic mode… but it produces some glitchy super-low holes, and super-high peaks regardless of the settings I use.

What I am aiming for is to break up the pattern in a specific way. I want to make the dune tops to fall down into the earth and disappear completely, so there is no contrasty wavy line when viewed from the sky. Then I want it to come up from the earth again, preferrably farther ahead…

To show my idea using clumsy ASCII: from the top like this: — __ ¯¯¯¯__–

From the ground like this: /¯¯_/¯¯¯¯-------__—¯¯¯—____

When the sand dunes hit the ground, there should be no discernable line-path, which I see from the sky. I have tried to remove these low-lying lines with blur, and clamp, but the lines are impervious and invincible.

I uploaded the tmd here for you to have a look at. I’m sure you’ll be able to make it work since you’re not noobs, and in fact one of you being the creator of this amazing software!

And to show you that my desert terrain is on the “right path” some more, I will show you a render I’ve done in Modo 801 for it:

gojl.jpg1020×680

Thank you again for your help.

#8

Can’t open file. What version of wm are you using?

If I understand from the ascii, you want to mask the final output such that there are smooth areas in the terrain where there is no wave formation. You can use the Mask breakup macro from the macro library. Or as I said earlier, draw your smooth areas yourself in layout generator device.

Or do you want a replacement to the clamp device?

#9

I’m using 2.3.6.3 pro

#10

By the way, your dune terrain shape is excellent!

I’ve attached an example of what I meant – is this along the lines of what you mean, or something more complicated?

I have included two new paths: One does what I mentioned above – simply masking with a different generator to create clear areas.

The second does something a bit harder, but which might be what you want – to have the desert areas be less common/more isolated. This was done by simply clamp-expanding to the top only of the noise generator.

Does either of these cover it?

#11

Thank you for the compliment Mr Schmitt. I am a huge fan of the Dune novels, as perhaps my nickname suggests to anyone else who have read it. And I’m working on a personal fan-art project, which will involve a vehicular animation, particle system, and much more.
I didn’t feel the dune terrains in the libraries gave me what I needed and wanted.

Woah, that is almost exactly what I want… yes… I must learn this :smiley:

Only thing different is that I want those smooth break-downs to be more like rare and scattered zones. The one you make, it looks like there’s a gigantic area of flatland… but this definitely shows the way.

I am in fact looking for the opposite result of your second picture. I want there to be overwhelmingly sand dunes everywhere, but many pockets of smooth areas, randomly placed… some medium, some small…

#12

Great!

I think the key point to achieving the effect is something subtle but very important that I did in the world file posted above – I added the Combiner+new perlin noise generator BEFORE applying the clamp.

This is important because using a Multiply combiner (or ANY mask input in World Machine) will drop the result to zero elevation whenever either of the inputs is zero, and maintain the elevation where both inputs are at maximum. In our case, we want the elevations to be relative to the bottom of the dunes, not to drop the base blank areas all the way to sea level sitting way below the base of the dunes! Failure to do the combination in this order will produce a very bizarre looking result.

To get the opposite of the second example: In the file I posted, in the second group labelled “Or like this?”, double click on the clamp and have it Expand not the top-most selected area, but, say, the bottom quarter (move one slider to the bottom, and another about 25% of the way up). You’ll now have scattered isolated flat areas!

#13

Well hell, I’m on the right track now all thanks to you. :slight_smile:

The next thing I’m trying to do is have a greater height-variation in some of the Dunes, I want some to be very large and tall… and some to be short and stubby.

Btw, have you tried DarkTree? It’s an old procedural node based texturing stand-alone package I bought a while back.
It has a LOT of procedurals. I hope you will add more procedural textures to World Machine some day. Doesn’t even matter if it’s not made for terrain, it could still be useful. I loved working with DarkTree. Unfortunately they have ceased to exist. Not many programs like that around.

Meanwhile, here’s a new render with better bump mapping. I got immeasurable help from three awesome people today, involving a LOT of emailing and foruming back and forth:

Stephen “Remnant” Schmitt of World Machine
James “Mutantpixel” Darknell of Luxology / The Foundry
Yazan Malkosh of Luxology / The Foundry

#14

I’ve certainly used DarkTree. If I find my self out of work with nothing to do for a month, I may see about porting it over to Modo as both DTT and Modo have published developer APIs.

#15

Seriously? Then you have some mad skills :slight_smile:
I would LOVE dusting off my DarkTree “book”
Modo, despite its strengths, doesn’t have a great way to preview materials and set up nodes like DarkTree or indeed World Machine.

If you do that some day, please email me :smiley:

#16

Is it like Substance Designer? I mean Darktree.

#17

I haven’t tried substance designer, but I think the only thing similar is they are both node based and provide nodes that affect the shading of the material. Substance designer seems to be based on having an entirely integrated PBR shading and UV’ing process. DT is only about generating procedural textures which can then be exported, but you can indeed preview how it will look in DT. You do also set up specular level, bump level, etc in DarkTree.

I looked at a video of Substance Designer’s “FX Maps” system, as that is the closest thing you’re gonna find to DT.
From what I see, there aren’t many preset procedural textures. You start off with very simple beginnings.
Other than that, Substance Designer seems to be focused on bitmaps. DarkTree is not.

In DT you can start off with complex or simple beginnings. There is a vast library of procedurals available, plus there is something called the “Repository” where people used to upload their own textures and materials. Similar to the library here in World Machine

#18

Ok, I’ve made a serious upgrade to the Dune machine. I took inspiration from real life satellite imagery of the Issaouane Erg. Erg is arabic for Dune field, and that is also the word used for all the Dune field locations in the Dune novels. Habbanya Erg etc.

Issaouane Erg, Algiers:

I tried to emulate the gigantic Dunes such as this one:

Tallest dunes on earth:

Wiki article on Ergs

Here are the results of the dune machine in two formats: Erg from above and Erg from ground level

Now I wish I had more than 16GB ram :smiley: My machine has grown so complex that it’s not enough… maybe I’ll just go for a 16gb more.

#19

Shigawire, that’s really good!

#20

Thanks! Still not done! :smiley: Working on another revision. Btw. check your inbox, I sent you a PM