Forum: Vue


Subject: terrain function smoothing problem

lightning2911 opened this issue on Feb 14, 2009 · 20 posts


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 1:56 PM

just for fun i used the watercress function to produce altitude on a procedural terrain and came across the following problem:

smoothing problem

you see that the borders of the circles are not smooth but kind of pixelated. increasing the size of the terrain does not help. quality boost increase does not help. and why does this happen with procedural terrain anyway? i thought with beeing procedural it would calculate the smallest details.

the only thing i can think of thinking in 2D would be to (gaussian) blur the image so the borders are not so sharp. i tried the gaussian filter but that did not do anything i expected.

any hints or tips here?

thanks in advance
chris


FrankT posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 1:57 PM

what resolution was the terrain when you generated it ? try increasing it to 1024 or higher - that might cure it

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Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:06 PM

The resolution in a procedural terrain has effect only on the opengl, it's irrelevant otherwise. So, that's not the solution (and not even necessary).

You have to increase the advanced effects setting in the render settings. Put it at 100% and render. You'll get very good lines.


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:11 PM

man you guys are fast!

map2

thanks! fixed :) but still i would be interested in a way to slant or soften the walls. is there a way to blur the edges of the terrain function image?


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:17 PM

Did you put it at 100%? I just tested this and my lines are better than yours. Did you also put the quality boost of the terrain itself at 4? I didn't mention it because I assumed that would be the first thing you'd try... :-)

lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:24 PM

quality boost on terrain: +4
render settings: user defined with "final" loaded
advanced effects quality: 100% (but did not go into edit and change anything there)

terrain size is 1024x1024


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:26 PM

Like I wrote above, do not increase the resolution of procedural terrains. That just wastes memory with no practical result.

What other render settings do you have? Can you post a screenshot?


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:35 PM

terrain size is still at 1024x1024

function is

gui1

edit object/terrrain is

gui2

and render setttings are user settings where i loaded final and changed the advanced effects to 100%

gui3


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:36 PM

Just remembered: what's your AA settings? Maybe that's too low.


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:38 PM

Ah, final! Don't use that. In fact, don't use any preset render settings. They all suck, in one way or another. The AA of final is very low. Increase quality to at least 80% and min/max to at least 8/16. I never use any lower than this.


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:40 PM

the default was optimized, 3-9 and 40% ... i upped it to systematic, 5-10 and 100% but that didnt really change anything for the "walls"


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:47 PM

Like I wrote, 5-10 is too low. You saw my walls, they look better. My terrain resolution is 256 (the default). My AA settings were optimized, crisp, 8/16, 85%. Advanced effects at 100%.


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:54 PM

i tried all kind of settings but it seems to me AA makes no difference at all. it went up to systematic, 16-32 and 100% but still looks the same to me.

are you sure AA is the right thing to tweak for this problem? i would have thought that it has more to do with applying the function values to the terrain object. like at what kind of resolution will it be applied? or something in that direction ...

or could the ple version but different in the way it handles this? i could try this in the office tomorrow maybe.


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:56 PM

Maybe we're talking about different things. I thought you wanted to get rid of the jaggies that your walls have. Is this it? Or are you after something else?


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 2:59 PM

yes :) one is the jaggies ... i would like to be able to have the same result like in your render above. (i also tried to raise the boost +4 in the terrain box but it seems +4 is the max)

and another thing i was asking is how to make the walls no that sharp (vertically). i would like to add some blurring in the function editor and dont know how to.


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 3:16 PM

i think i have it!

map3

the culprit was the filterunder neath the altitude production node thingie ... once i change that it went smooth ... but thanks for your patience artur (as usual i learnd a couple of new thing in addition)

so now if anyone has an idea how to apply the blurring of the watercress pattern i would be exstatic :)


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 3:16 PM

Well, regarding the jaggies, I'm afraid I ran out of ideas. Anyway, I tested now with a filter inverting the function, like you did, to see if that introduces more jaggies, and indeed it seems it does, in the areas where there's a long light/shadow transition. The other areas seem fine.

Regarding the smoothing of the walls, I don't know. Hopefully, others more knowledgeable in the function editor will step in.


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 3:16 PM

We cross posted and we arrived at the same conclusion at the same time. :-)


lightning2911 posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 3:20 PM

yup! thanks for all your help artur and good night for tonight :)


Rutra posted Sat, 14 February 2009 at 3:21 PM

Good night! 😄