Hi all, I was trying to get this in Vue last night but couldn't figure it out (I'm not in front of it now, so bear with). Let's say I want to create a material from scatch (we'll keep this easy) that uses green as a color on the more "flat" areas of a terrain, and grey on areas with more slope? I'm working on simulating moss on rock applied to a terrain. On Vue 4 there is such a material in one of the scenes, I remember it stood out very clearly. But I'm interested in building it from the ground up, because I can't seem to get it. A sample terrain I've been using is more or less a smooth terrain with little rock "buldges." I know I'll get it to work when the sides of these bulges show grey, while the tops show green. Does this make any sense, and come someone help explain how to make this? Thanks, Brian

Hi Brian, Do you mean something like this?

Hopefully you can see by this screenshot, what I did. The materials were the Grass material, from the Landscapes collection, and the Rock material from the Rocks collection. Material 1, was the Rock, and Material 2 was the grass. This is the view of the altitudes window.

Notice in the "Mixing proportions" slider, the percentages, especially. Different materials and combintions of materials respond differently to this slider, and sometimes you have to move it only a little, and sometimes alot....more to follow...

And here's the same thing, only with the "Mixing proportions" slider set at 29 %

Hey Mike, Cool! Yes, that's the effect I was looking for... how could I have missed those options? :) I'll try it out later -- thanks very much for the help! -Brian

And now with "High Altitudes" checked off, and a value of 46% applied to the "influence of altitude" slider. Notice the grass is still on flat surfaces, but has crept higher up the terrain...

There is soooo much you can do playing around with all these sliders! Remember though that to apply these effects to terrains independant of the rest of the scene, you have to have "Object-Standard" selected. Just play around with it all using two simple materiasl, and you'll get used to it. Then when you start mixing materials that are themselves already mixtures of other materials, you can really get some wild effects. Download bloodsong's "Whole Mountain" materiasl from the Vue Free Stuff here, for some really good examples of how it's done. They were made in Vue 3, but they work fine in Vue 4 too.

Or how about a terrain that's part rock and part ballroom floor... ;)

One other thing, back under the "materials to mix" tab, you have another huge set of choices and options. you can edit the function to use which determines the blend, byy right clicking on the picture in the "Distribution of Materials 1 and 2" box and selecting edit function, or load function. You can do the same to the filter picture right next to it and change the way the materials are distributed through a filter. And even further enhance it all in the boxes at the far right which are labelled, "material mixing method" and the "smooth blending strip" slider. THEN if that's not enough, consider also that pictures can be used as both materials, as well as bump maps... There are no limitations in the material editor....

I liked the part rock, part ballroom floor... :)

Me too. I want to go dancing along the shoreline! :D

Mike, OK I played around with it a bit. For awhile, I couldn't get the effect at ALL. I must've fiddled for 30 minutes. Finally, I started playing with the mixing proportions slider -- that seemed to really make the difference. It must be a really tight "threshold" between deciding which material to use, at least with my sample terrain. Literally, the difference of 25% to 40% on the mixing proportions would cause one material to dominate almost 100%, if that makes any sense. Any chance you could email me your scene so I can play with it? I'd like to play with it in the context of your example... (brian@lonewolf.tierranet.com) Thanks for all your help, this has gotten my wheels churning! I like playing with the ballroom floor idea! Not only funny, but it really demonstrates the idea. Brian

Yup, the sliders get very sensitive when dealing with proportions, right down to the hundreths of a percent. So here's a tip that may come in handy - you can use the slider until you've "narrowed down" the target area you want, then type numbers to change it more subtley in small increments. Like moving from 30.03 to 30.07, for example. And as Mike said, the settings will vary with the specific terrain. So if you save the material and then apply it to a new terrain, it'll probably need some adjustment to suit it well. :)

Brian, I'm sorry it took this long but I just got back home. I did in fact save the original material, and I'll send you a zip file of a couple of examples, very soon. :)