I'm trying to get 7 solid bands of color to appear on the sand dune terrain following the contour of the dune. I'm trying to do this by using a procedural color map.

I'm getting close to what I'm shooting for.

In the picture shown here there are 3 color bands on the terrain and I'm showing the color map used which has 3 solid colors rather than the typical Gradient these color maps have.

I downloaded the 3 solid color color map as a freebie so I don't know how they even did
that.

My question is:

Is it possible to have 7 solid bands of color in a procedural color map?
When ever I try to add a color to ad to the 3 color map it makes a gradient and using the color sliders below the map in the color map editor just mess up things.

Can someone make a solid 7 color procedural map (any 7 colors that are different from each other, you know like a rainbow with solid colors) and tell me how they did it?

I'm also open to doing this some other way. I'm using Vue 8 complete

Any help.

You mean something like this?

I started this color map with the 'engineer' map, from the 'terrain editor maps' folder. This map has 5 key colors, from left to right: blue, cyan, green, yellow, red. To make the hard transition from blue to cyan, I created another key color to the right of the blue, with the exact same color (copy color -> paste). Then I dragged the cyan keycolor to the left, until it overlapped the new blue keycolor. I had the first hard transition, from blue to cyan. Then I made another keycolor to the right of the cyan, with the exact same color as the cyan. Dragged the green until it overlapped the new cyan keycolor. And so on, using the same method for every hard transition.
Hope that helps.

That's one of the ways I thought of too :) You get that by right clicking on the color map -> edit Add pairs of keycolors with the same color, bring key points together till they touch, so in my example, from left to right: Green+yellow Yellow+ blue Blue+ purple Purple+ red red

The other way is to have just one keypoint per color, but use a step function as a filter - number of steps= number of colors you want.

Thanks to both for the help on copy and paste the color method

Artpearl said

Quote -

The other way is to have just one keypoint per color, but use a step function as a filter - number of steps= number of colors you want.

Can you use the preset called rainbow, then apply 7 steps to it as you mentioned so that it comes out in 7 solid colors. Maybe a screen shot of the function editor settings.
I can't seem to do that.

This is a quick example of the filter method. The color map is the rainbow from the folder 'colorful'. There are some step filters provided but I think only a 5 step and a 10 step. It is easy enough to design your own - I did this one really quickly, and counted wrong - only 6 steps:) (ask if you need more help in editing the filter.) I'm not sure what is driving your color map onto the terrain, so I just showed the function editor -  object parametric mapping, the altitude is connected to a multiply filter (by 0.05), then to the step function, then the map and at the end to the color output. Have fun

The best solution is to use the "Quantize" filter node which will allow you to specify the number of steps you need rather than trying to set them up by hand.

Well I finally got it. I tried steps method and got that down pretty well. Then I tried Quantize on the lower filter node instead of step. Wound up going with quantize. You can see the settings. Took a while to figure out the exact quantize settings to get all seven colors to show up on my terrain. Messed with it for about 2 hours.

So I used the bright rainbow colors so that I could see what I was doing. The real goal was a hill with somewhat more natural colors, but in unnatural bands.

The second more greenish one is what I'm after. COOL!  GOT ER DONE.

It is just part of an art style I'm working on. I'm sooo glad I picked Vue as my main art tool, I was thinking about carrara pro 7 which I also own, but had to focus on learning one main app.
Carrara renders really fast, but I think Vue is more versital and is on a faster devoplement track.

I pretty sure that with help. Vue  can do lots of things I have in mind.

So my work flow will be Zbrush for some organic shaped models.
Vue for terrains, skys ,coloring, displacements and rendering.
Photoshop cs number whatever for postwork.

Thanks to all for your help. I learned much today and have some sence of accomplishment.

Excellent!
The quantized filter is obviously the one to use if you need regular intervals & accuracy. A graphic filter is the one for flexibility. (I never needed/used anything regular:) )