In another thread about creating water somebody mentioned a digital carver tool called terrain tools. I can't find it at the Digital Carver website, but did find a ground control plugin. Is this the same thing? David

Hi Pedrith. I inquired at DCG about the same thing recently. Eric informed me that while Terrain Tools was, at this moment still in beta, it is due to be released very soon. I'm very anxious to purchase it myself.

That will be cool to add a shore line with out post work.

You can create some fairly nice water/shore lines in Carrara as is -- though I'm sure Eric's plugin will make life much easier.

Add a Terrain shader layer to your terrain, then select custom distribution and set the shore line color band with altitude, slope, and any other available options you want to use, to define how high the shore line will be relative to the water. You can add multiple layers -- just experiment.

Then go to the terrain editor and add a noise filter layer, which has an altitude/slope that roughly matches the shore line color band that you created. Play with noise size and amplitude (and other settings) until you get a rough noise area that matches the shoreline color band.  This will break-up the water that touches the shore, and will make for complex light interactions that make the image a bit more realistic.  Use GI, Sky Light to render.

The attached image has very shallow pot holes filled with very salty water.  I've done other shore lines with this technique, and it seems to work fairly well.  Still, I'm looking forward to Eric's new plugin! :-)

Thanks for the information LCBoliou. I can see that you are able to get some very interesting effects using the shader settings that you described.

When Terrain Tools comes out, you can still use your shaders for the terrain. The real beauty of T-Tools is the ability to create a realistic water shader which can detect the shorline and then use an Anything Goos type of shader for creating wave foam or pond scum. You will also be able to use it in the transparency channel to make the water more transparent at the shore and have that fall off as it gets further out to simulate depth. The combination of those two can really aid on water creation. Here are some early tests I did to show what I'm describing.

Here is one with 2 shader layers. Variation in transparancy  is one thing I have real difficulty with -- though I didn't work much on the water in the attache image.

The variable transparancy and scum with T-Tools will be great -- especially since I own Anything Goos.

Wow. That will be another must-have DCG plugin... Can't wait!

Bring it on! Shorelineboat etc. detection is a real issue in creating real water.

Patrick - when Terrain Tools is released, would you mind posting some settings for your test images? They are particularly impressive.

Thanks
Richard

Quote - ...The real beauty of T-Tools is the ability to create a realistic water shader which can detect the shorline and then use an Anything Goos type of shader for creating wave foam or pond scum....

Oooooooooh! DCG is the best part of Carrara!

I wonder if they will include a ripple generator? I remember one of those back, long ago, in a 3d-party Bryce plug-in. It detected shorelines and created ripple patterns to suit.

You should be able to do that in the bump channel at least.

Ah, but the trick is generating ripples that follow the contours!

Right, that's what I mean. You will be able to follow the shoreline.

That's NOT what I mean. Take a bird-bath. If all you have is an edge detection, then you would create ripples on the surface of the bath; ripples of some essentially random pattern. This plug-in I spoke of, would generate circular ripples that followed the shape of the circular container. If it was a square container, it would generate ripples off each wall, with the intersecting patterns as they hit. Very cool stuff. Of course this is mostly small bodies; a coastline deals more with wave patterns generated far offshore, that then change rapidly as they meet the bottom structure near the coast. They do not show those particular patterns caused by a wave pattern bouncing off a surface, intersecting other wave patterns, etc.

nomuse,

Is this what you're talking about?

Regards,

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Click on the image to see it a little larger. Here's another sample with a little EnhanceC thrown in.

Lunch break on a Friday. What can I say... ;)

Yeah! That's the ticket -- or at least close enough for most images (for the real cool stuff we'll just have to wait for an actual fluid engine in Carrara....!) So what was the trick? I'm guessing, as I look to the smallish zone the effect is in and the geometrical (not physics-based) shape of it, that what you did was draw a complex multi-point curve in the fall-off graph. Basically, had it fall off as a series of nesting rings. Clever. I was thinking total surface and couldn't look past that to this more effective solution. Still...that is definitely ticket for more realistic water interaction. This goes top of my "will buy as soon as cash allows" list of plug-ins.

You're a good guesser. ;) The falloff is a declining zig-zag but the peturbations are noise from EnhanceC.

Very very cool. I have EnhanceC, but I'm far from mastering it 'cause theres so many possibilities. It looks like Terrain Tools and EnhanceC would make an ideal bundle, especially if you wanted to render natural looking water.

I just came back to this thread after seeing Mark's earliest image. I saw the shark and thought "was I working so hard earlier I missed a whole shark". Then I scrolled up, feel much better.

Anyways, here's a status update on Terrain Tools.

I just finished (to the best of my knowledge) the OSX Universal binary patch for all the DCG plug-ins. That was the last thing in the way of getting Terrain Tools ready for release. I have just a few polish items to finish up on the plug-in and some documentation/tutorials to write. After possibly the looooooongest DCG beta ever, Terrain Tools should be out in the next week or two.

Regards,

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Good to hear Eric, I'm standing in line waiting :)

So....any news on TT?

Doing the last tweak right now. Should be able to push out the final beta by lunch. After that I'll start working on the docs and a tutorial or two. Assuming nothing out of the ordinary crops up, it should be out next weekend.

Regards,

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Quote - Lunch break on a Friday. What can I say... ;)

:lol: LOL...thanks. That was rather enjoyable.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

Quote - Doing the last tweak right now. Should be able to push out the final beta by lunch. After that I'll start working on the docs and a tutorial or two. Assuming nothing out of the ordinary crops up, it should be out next weekend.

Regards,

 

Thanks, Eric. Looking forward to seeing what it can do.

Quote - Doing the last tweak right now. Should be able to push out the final beta by lunch. After that I'll start working on the docs and a tutorial or two. Assuming nothing out of the ordinary crops up, it should be out next weekend.

Regards,

Okay, I have marked my calendar and you KNOW we are totally going to hold you to that.  ;+)  The 16th or 17th of September it is!!!!

Does anyone have any idea how much the Terrain Tools plugin will be when it is on the market?  I am disabled and have a really limited budget so I hope it's not much.

Quote -
Okay, I have marked my calendar and you KNOW we are totally going to hold you to that.  ;+)  The 16th or 17th of September it is!!!!

The 16th it is,

Quote -
Does anyone have any idea how much the Terrain Tools plugin will be when it is on the market?  I am disabled and have a really limited budget so I hope it's not much.

and $ 29.95 USD.

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2665466

Regards,

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Thanks!