Turns out you can't do this, at least not out of a single Terrain anyway because when you reduce the height of the Terrain to make it more of a plate thickness, you are also completely killing the curved/warped effect of the Terrain itself.

The trick was to create a curvy terrain, then duplicate it, put some holes in that duplicate (I did the holes part via Photoshop) then Boolean the bottom out of that 'holy' Terrain with the original non-perforated Terrain. This way I could keep my height curves and still make the thickness whatever I wanted.

Want to render this as glass but I'll leave that for an overnight render, lol.

P.S.; FAR less compressed version of the render here;
http://www.kirkdunne.com/files/multi_terrain_00_b.jpg

I have a scene setup with this Terrain rendering right now in the background, when done I'll post up the scenefile for download.

oooh, nice, that would certainly be interesting rendered in glass.

Thanks Fran! Hey, btw, I will be getting those scenefiles you emailed me about available for download also! They are old enough they're located on my backup dvd's.

I make the bottom one Negative and the top one Positive and then Group/Boolean them. Once that is done, can raise or lower the bottom Terrain which will make the resulting Boolean either thick or thin.

Oh, this process of Booleaning Terrains isn't perfect; during the rendering process you will see tiny 'flakes' left over from the Booleaning process. These are usually so small that by the last (AA) pass completes they are pretty much invisible. I've tried resizing the Terrains but with no luck yet as I said, after fully rendered, its very hard to even spot them at all.

that'll be great! It might be a while before I can download anything though  - my PC has collapsed again and I'm away from my tame technician (aka husband) while my brother is in  hospital. (Using bro's laptop)

good elegant solution to a problem I haven't yet had but now I can fix if I ever do, hee hee hee

I've Booleaned Terrains here sometime in the past but it was just to make a bowl, lol. But using Terrains, I could make the bowl something other than just round. I'll have to find those renders.

oddly I never even thought of that tho I used to do that to Imagine 3D terrain models to get rivers and he like...

I just can't seem to bring myself to use Bryce for what it was made for in the first place; Landscapes.

Yep, a non-solid terrain would have zero thickness and making it solid will leave a flat bottom.  Boolean would be the only way.

I remember someone multi-replicating small spheres then dropping them onto an object.  Maybe the same could be done with small negative cylinders.  Drop them onto the two booleaned terrains first them lower them enough to totally penetrate the terrains. It would be less effecient but would keep the Bryster happy.

That's a perfect point there actually skiwillgee. Why not drop negative clylinders into the Terrain to create the holes? Other than the Brysters happiness (which IS paramount)  ;o)

That actually can totally be done and it works. Yet, here's why I went with making holes via the image;

• The pattern for the holes is seamless/tile-able, so if I were to also apply them to a seamless (warped) image, I'm good to go to tile up my Terrains all I want (for like a weird sci-fi wall or something or if I even apply the holes to multiple images, I know the holes will remain perfectly tiled.

• If I were to use negative cylinders...I cry at the thought of manually placing all those suckers by hand, lol. Multi-replicate would help a lot but still, lol. Also, in the vein of trying to keep down the count of polys and number of items in a scene, the cylinders would add a lot of both.

• My main reason? Added realism. With the holes added in via the image, the edge of each hole is slightly rounded, this in general is seen as by our eyes as more realistic as it picks up small areas of specularity.

good explanation of the 'why' of your method Kirk...and I agree re: the realism. That was my main problem back in my Imagine3D daze...fetting those edges looking non fake....

Yes, AS, your way is better.  The holes made in a 2d program can be anti-aliased also to enhance the rounded edge look also.  No?

I've also found what looks really rounded (blurred) in Photoshop may come out looking lesser so when it is rendered as a Terrain so, some amount of "over doing it" in Photoshop may be required to actually attain a basic rounded edge. Gotta play it by ear.

nice tile

I don't have Photo Shop, but I do have MS Office PowerPoint; which I have found to be a great way to create templates for use on Bryce terrains and symmetrical lattices. The idea you mentioned concerning the use of a duplicate set to negative boolean is a nice touch and I plan to try it very soon.

Another program I use to create templates for Bryce is Project Dogwaffle. There are several type of brushes available in it and you can use gradients to create the depth when used in Bryce. 

If you enter the Deep Terrain Editor in Bryce, there is a feature available that will allow you to effectively cut off the top and/or bottom of a terrain. So once you have your holes established in your terrain, you can slice the bottom off just enough so that any part of the terrain that was black in the editor will now be red. This will render out as openings in the terrain. If you want to make the entire terrain look like a sheet, the unaltered duplicate set to negative and grouped with the positive booleaned holey terrain raised maybe 0.1 higher than the negative should do the trick.

Just thought I'd pass along some of what I have learned.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Attached Link: GIMP download

Quote - Agent0013...you really ought to try a Photoship type program for makig stuff. There's a free one available called GIMP...I have PS so I don't use it as I know PS fairly well, but I did use it before PS came to my jobsite...

I have Gimp 2 and I do use it, but the tools in the other programs that I have work quite well. I have no complaints. Thank you for your suggestion, though. I actually would recommend Gimp to anybody who cannot afford Photo Shop, as the tools are similar and there are a lot of things that can be accomplished using it.

I went and tried my version of this after my first post in this thread and it did fine. I was even able to make the edges of the holes rounded like those in the images posted with this thread. I'm quite happy with the results.

Stay awesome!

Agent 0013.

Here is the image I made/used for the Terrain. It's a 16-bit, 2K (2,048x2,048) tiff file.

http://www.kirkdunne.com/files/warped_holes_2k_01.zip

Quote - Here is the image I made/used for the Terrain. It's a 16-bit, 2K (2,048x2,048) tiff file.

http://www.kirkdunne.com/files/warped_holes_2k_01.zip

Thank you Agent Smith. Clicking on the link has automatically downloaded the file. I will try it and see how this version works.

Stay awesome.

Agent 0013.