DTE Terrain Character
İMeski 2003
May not be distributed without the written consent of the author
Giving Your Terrain Character
Before we go on, you should notice that the attribute buttons are lit in the Alpha channel only. Color information is useless here because we are mapping the height of the mountain with gray scale information, "Alpha". Also, notice that there is no bump either. Bump will create a billion little spikes that makes the terrain look unnatural. Of course, if that is what you want... go ahead and use bump. :)
1. First, we are going to add some phase to Component1 so that we don't create an egg mountain. So, click on the green left corner of Phase. Set your settings as shown if they are not already that way. After applying phase amount ( lower yellow rectangle, rotate using XY and change frequency. Watch the Component1 and Combination windows to see the effect. In a general way, what we want to do is create a mountain shape not too dissimilar with what we see in the terrain editor. Try different noise sources for Phase and observe the effect.
2. Now we are going to add some more detail to the faces of the mountains. Select "2" at the upper left. If your noise is not as shown below, select Value, More Irregular, Octaves 5 and set the xyz frequencies as shown. In the Filter choose Clip aX+b and set "a" and "b" as shown. This will increase the contrast of Component 2. Also, you can increase the contrast of Component 1 the same way. Careful though... too much and you will have a bunch of spikes on your mountain surface.
3. Now let's add some rocky bumps to the surface of the mountain. When you are adjusting the Filter, pay attention to the effect on the bright spots on your mountain surface. We want to add just a little detail... too much and it won't look natural. You can import the finished elevation map below by importing MeskiDTE_Tut2.brt.
4. Click the checkmark and let's get out of here. It will take some time to make a 1024 x 1024 bitmap. The more detail, phase, and channels you use, the longer it will take.
5. For perspective terrains, we want the foreground to be relatively flat. So, we will apply some Gaussian edges to accomplish it.
6. Next apply Raise/Lower to get our elevation back.
