Using Vue 6 How do i more accurately get my materials to behave? I want the top of the mountain to be covered in snow. The middle to be rock and the bottom to be grass, but the material editor is fighting me all the way. I have done this before, but when I select: "distribution of materials dependant on local slope, altitude and orientation" then try to figure out the "influence of altitude" and "influence of slope" it never seems to behave like I think it should. More importantly I want to know what is the "best" way to do this. Is it best to create a single material for the base of the mountain or create a mixed material right from the start. Should the snow and rock be 1 material or the rock and grass? Do any of you have any tips to make this work more consistently? Thanks

Here's my materials

And influence of environment

You could make a simple material with 3 layers, Grass, Rock and Snow. In the Environment tab adjust the Altitude range for each material. Also the Fuzziness settings will give a smoother tranisition between the materials.

I see one problem right off the bat.....you have 'world orientation'  checked instead of 'object orientation'.   The difference is that any other object with the same material (perhaps a larger mountain in the background) will affect the material on the first object in 'world orientation'. If using the object orientation, then each object keeps it's material integrity.  Took me quite a few headaches before I figured that one out........my snow on the forground kept disappearing when I tried to put the same mat on background mountains. 

And I would also go with three mixed materials instead of  snow and a two tone mat.....(or maybe you did, I can't tell from here)...mix the rock and snow with environment settings and save it. Then make your bottom mat and mix it with the one you just saved again with environmental settings. That should let you adjust all three layers separately. Make sure all mats are set to object standard or parametric...not world or the same as the above will happen.

Here's an example...hope it helps....

rigul64, thanks for the tip. _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Quote - And I would also go with three mixed materials instead of  snow and a two tone mat.....(or maybe you did, I can't tell from here)...mix the rock and snow with environment settings and save it. Then make your bottom mat and mix it with the one you just saved again with environmental settings. That should let you adjust all three layers separately. Make sure all mats are set to object standard or parametric...not world or the same as the above will happen.

Monsoon, The Object and World orientation makes total sense the way you explained it. Thanks! You said you would go with three mixed materials. Could you explain how to do this? and What do you mean by mixing with "environment settings"? Thanks!

Environmental settings are the ones you've already been using...ie...according to altitude, slope, etc.  

Mix snow and rock, set the altitude and slope and then save it out with some name..(snock?:)

Then find your grassy material and mix it with the one you just saved.   A saved mat will load like a single one no matter how many mixes it has in it.  Then set the environment for that mix.

Then just adjust the mix slider left or right for the amount. 

Also, in the lower right is your mix blend....

And as rigul states above, you could just do it with layers and use those environmental settings....I'm just partial to mixes is all..

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1308617&member

Well I have finally made some progress on the snow and rock, now I will be adding the grass. I don't like the way it looks so unrealistic though. How can I make the texture look more real? I don't mean with trees/vegetation I want the snow and rock to look more like these images by Peten. Can this guy create awesome landscapes or what! http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1216559&member http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1217029&member

The first thing to do is send the terrain way back there and then scale it up considerably.  Then scale up your materials to match...don't forget that. I sometimes have mats all the way up to 20 in scale.

Peten's terrains are not small and close to the camera as you'll notice. When things are scaled properly, then the atmospheres and lighting (like I know anything about lighting..not) will have their desired effects....

I'm glad you are getting to where you're going....

M

Thanks for all of your help Monsoon. Well still not anywhere near Peten's work, but at least I'm learning a lot. I still have only 2 materials here. I still need to add the 3rd material to the lower part of the mountain, but I can't seem to get the snow to stay at the tops of the mountains or at least half way up the mountains. I tried to use a gradient to do this but the gradient made the left half of the terrain snow and the right half rock, but I need the gradient to work vertically. I even tried rotating the gradient but it still didn't work. Any ideas how I can use a gradient in the Function Editor to keep the snow half way up the mountain? or are there any other ways to do this? After I get the snow where I want it I will mix this material with the grass like you suggested. Thanks

Make sure the environment settings for the snow is on 'high altitudes' at about 75-85, and on 'steep slopes' about the same. Then when you use the mixing slider between material 1 and material 2, it will go up or down.

The other way and one which gives you different controls is by using layers first. If you take the rock and add a new layer of snow, then you'll see the environment tab all the way to the right. In there are some different controls...I like the two way altitude slider and the fuzzy sliders. 

What I like to do is mix my materials first, save them and then use them in layers.....

Be careful though....I've been lost in the material editor for days on end with little food or water and no contact with the outside world....barely made it back and scarcely scratched the surface of what can be done in there.....right now I'm exploring the variety gained by using the filters.

That said, if we don't hear back from you...we'll know where you are lol....

M

Quote - Be careful though....I've been lost in the material editor for days on end with little food or water and no contact with the outside world....barely made it back and scarcely scratched the surface of what can be done in there.....right now I'm exploring the variety gained by using the filters.

That said, if we don't hear back from you...we'll know where you are lol....

I hear you. I spent about a week in the Function Editor tweaking landscapes. Moving all that dirt around wears a person out :)

I don't understand why you're still messing around with a mixed material when it's not  giving you the result you want.  If you'd  follow my suggestion, the enviroment settings of the Layer would give you the effect you wish to achieve.  You can layer mixed materials, but for the effect you want to achieve with the snow, the controls of the Enviroment setting are better suited for it.  Here's an example of using the layers. The snow and rock are single materials the grass is a mixed material. Mixed materials are nice for certain effects, but so is the layer function. But this is just my opinion and how I would approach this problem. 

here's a shot of the Environment settings

Yep, I've found it easier to use layers. I suppose it's all in how one likes to work. For instance, the water in this image is a mixed materials in order to get 2 levels of edge shore. The mountain is a 5 layer single material. While I agree with Monsoon about the 'world' vs 'object' orientation, I do use the top snow layer as 'world' as well as the bottom 'foam water' layer as 'world'. You can see in the distance the snow on the far mountain, but the mountain on the left has no snow as it is not as tall.  --Chipp

BTW, does anyone know how to 'save' an individual layer from a single material-- other than deleting all the other layers?

 

Rigul and Chipp are both on the money of course..different methods for different needs and wants.  

Chipp....highlight the layer and then use the little floppy icon at the bottom of the material editor window. Takes you right to a saving place....

"What I like to do is mix my materials first, save them and then use them in layers....."  What I meant was 'with' layers like Chipp did in the pic....you can't use mixed materials 'as' layers unfortunately.

You may not be able to layer mixed materials but you sure can go hog wild the other way around.....been playing with them for a couple of hours now. I can definitely see advantages that I didn't before..........that's the key I guess, messin' and learnin'.....

Quote - I don't understand why you're still messing around with a mixed material when it's not  giving you the result you want.  If you'd  follow my suggestion, the enviroment settings of the Layer would give you the effect you wish to achieve.  You can layer mixed materials, but for the effect you want to achieve with the snow, the controls of the Enviroment setting are better suited for it.

rigul64, I actually did follow your suggestion, but I just didn't post it yet as I got busy with work. I am still messing with it and trying to get it to look right, then I will post it. :) _______________________________ Chipp, Great example! and looks polished like all of your stuff. _______________________________ Monsoon, I'm starting to see the possibilities in doing it this way too.

Okay looking forward to seeing it BTW Just for fun I was messing around with this today and came up with a mixed material, it doesn't have the ease of use and control like with layers, but it's workable.  I based the idea upon the flame mats, using a Step (smooth) function as the alpha control to get the transition between the mats. I found i had to create a mixed mat with the rock and grass first and then mix that with the snow, here's a some shots of the function settings.

This function would be applied to the rock and the snow mats.

here's the combiner settings, this was for the snow; the settings were different for the rock.

And a quick render of the the completed mixed mat.

@Monsoon (and anyone else interested)
There's a trick to bring in a mixed material as a layer, but it must remain the bottom layer.
Here's how:

1. i like to start with the default material

2. Add layer, again I like to use the default material

3 .   1. Select the bottom layer        2. Double Click on the preview window to get new material.

4. Load the mixed material.

5. Add new Layer

6. Delete the remaining default layer. Now you can add extra layers. The mixed material has to remain as the bottom layer though.

@Monsoon
BTW I have several of your products, they're top notch.

Whoa...great trick there rigul..!!!   This thread has been very enlightening....Haven't spent much time with layers before this. I've been playing with layers and mixes for hours on end tonite and the past day or two. The differences between them are subtle yet the different ways to get them to work together can get complicated...I've been making multi layered single mats and then using them for the mixes....now with this little trick to go back the other way.....I think things could get hard to keep track of lol.... Good thing I got enough beer and pizza to last several more days.

rigul64, Thanks for sharing this tip on creating a mixed material in a layer. I can't wait to try this but I only have Vue loaded on my work computer so I can't try it now. Keep em coming folks. This has been a lot of fun.

Thanks everyone for a very interesting post!  I've learned a bunch from this!

LVS - Where Learning is Fun!  
http://www.lvsonline.com/index.html

Great ideas guys......

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_8/file_385538.jpg

The transition between the different materials is too smooth, so how does one use the "Filters" when using layers and the "Environment" settings to create a texture between materials? Please see link for type of texture I am trying to achieve. How can I doo this with layers? Thanks

Here are the materials settings for the above file.

Raise your slope constraint up higher and lower it's fuzziness value, Also take the Alpha boost up to 100 i used the grass on top of the rock layer  so i use the slope constraint to help break up the two mats. you're not constrained to having the bottom layers as the bottom mats, you can set the position of where it actually lies with the Altitude Setting. As you can see with the grass settings.

Depending on the size of your terrain you might have to play with the scale, it depends on the material as to whether you increase or decrease, it's somethign you have to play with.

This is a quick render and some settigns (don't have enough time to play with it right now).

here's the settings I used (ignore the grass on the right, i hit store material by accident  lol ) Fuzziness can go a long way, sometimes you need just a small amount.

here's for the grass, even though it's above the rock layer I can set it to appear at any altitude I want, in this case at low altitudes.  In this case i did this so i can use the slope constraint to help break up the transition between the rock and grass. unfortunately the terrain I'm using is a little smooth at the botoom so you can't see this effect as much as with the snow.

Hope this helps.

In addition, you can use the transparency tab and drive variable transparency with a function...has the same effect as the distribution function with mixed mats....

This has been a fantastic thread! Thank you all so much for sharing your various information.

Well I have learned a lot about layers and many thanks to all of you for your help. Still a lot left to do on this one but time to put it aside for today. I live near the Canadian Rockies and there are a lot of upper mountain lakes in and around Canmore and Banff so this is what I was trying to achieve. I tried to add a shoreline layer but had a weird problem come up. I created a new layer and then saved the file but when I rendered the file the changes didn't occur. So I opened the material editor and sure enough the shoreline layer was there but the settings didn't save. I tried it 4-5 times but it won't save the settings for the layer. I think it may be a memory problem, but was wondering if any of you had any similar problems. Thanks

That's looking pretty awesome there!!!

Thanks Monsoon. This thread has been a lot of fun.

Excelent thread!

I just want to add..

 To get a better idea of how your materials are mixing, click the little pen like icon next to your layer. This will turn that material to a solid colour of your choice, to give you a more precise view of your material, when done click icon again.

 

Great tip Ivan...that really helps in learning these layers....

Yes, thanks Ivan a helpful tip! :)