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BryceTalk Terrain Talk
August 5, 1999
Part 2 of 5
1 2 3 4 5

BryceTalk Terrain Talk, August 5, 01999
Part 2

Meta AuntiAlias: So, before we get to 3D elf's comment, isn't there a way to "load" your brush with the effect without having to do and then undo?

ccasady: yes, you can

It's the opposite

in fact the Option key (Alt) toggels between tham

Paint or Unpaintt effect

ccasady: so remembere the Command Z undo I had you do?

angler: and please tell me what that real time linking is about

ccasady: just omit that

ccasady: If you have a fast computer you can have it turned on all the time

which I now do

angler: what does it do for us?

ccasady: earlier it was too costly to use, now it's very cool

Calyxa: makes the 3d preview thingie update in real-time

ccasady: simply, it shows your work AS you do it, in the 3D preview, not just the Terrain Canvas

right

Meta AuntiAlias: aaah! I found the combination I was thinking about.. it's another space bar trick : ) (reading from the previous terrain log)

Morpheus: !

ccasady: but because you can turn that terain (in the 3D preview) around and zoom in etc.

Meta AuntiAlias: hold down space bar as you select an effect (say, Mounds) to laod up your brush with "mounds"

ccasady: it's a very good way to work, kind of like having a magnifyer on just the area your working on

and you see the effect immediatly

it's great in combo with a close up preview

Douglas: Hi all

ccasady: I have my notes here on Fractal shopping

Douglas: I thought I was going to miss this! Cool...

Meta AuntiAlias: and when you paint in the effect, you can also hold down the option (alt) key to unpaint the effect...

Meta AuntiAlias: 3d elf, what is your comment?

3d~?~elf: pass

Meta AuntiAlias: Morpheus, you're on! :D

Morpheus: i just found something weird you probably all know, when you hold down the control key and drag up and down it resises the terrain taller and shorter when you hold down the option key and do that it resizes the preview

i think chris was just talking about that though

now that i look back at the log

ccasady: yes, that's one of 3 modifyer keys while previewing

Morpheus: okay shuting up and hiding in the corner again

ccasady: others will: a) zoom in and out. B) reset it all

Meta AuntiAlias: For those of you who've recently joined us, we're talking about terrains. Chris (ccasady) and I are fielding most of the discussion. We started out tonight by tossing out a bunch of ideas to cover, so we're going through that now....

if you have a question about anything, please type "?" .. or if a comment, type "!" : )

3d~?~elf: !

Meta AuntiAlias: 3D elf!

ccasady: no, Morpheus, I;m sure that was valuable to someone here

3d~?~elf: doesn't seem to have any effect on the terrain tho

Meta AuntiAlias: :D agreed, morpheus!

Douglas: !

ccasady: no, just preview

3d~?~elf: back in the main window

k

Meta AuntiAlias: Douglas, you're on!

3d~?~elf: ?

Douglas: I just Bought ryce 4 last week and know little of it so all tips are welcome!! haha

they all help me :)

thx

Meta AuntiAlias: k... just hang out and listen (watch) and you'll get lots of 'em! :D

3d elf?

3d~?~elf: sometimes the clipping brackets get locked, ...how to loosen em up?

angler: !?

Meta AuntiAlias: aaah. yes, there was a discussion about clipping brackets. I'll take this one! : )

angler: ?

Meta AuntiAlias: i.e., a request to talk about clipping brackets...

Morpheus: ummm it's getting late and the comp is starting to act up so I'm gonna turn it bye aunti i look forward to the log

Meta AuntiAlias: Clipping brackets are on the right side of the terrain canvas.

ccasady: They can be reset too

Meta AuntiAlias: drag down from the top to clip the terrain at high elevations. drag from bottom to clip off lower elevations

to reset, you can type the keycommand for select all (command-A or Ctrl+A)

or...

option-click or alt-click the center part of the brackets

that resets area to include everything!

3d~?~elf: cool, done

ccasady: you may accidentlty grab the gray strip as well and notice that it can be slid up and down. This does nothing to yoiu terrain, it;'s just to preview

Meta AuntiAlias: let's see.. once you've clipped terrain, you can move entire set of brackets up or down to adjust the clipped area....

option-click the gradient area that Chris just mentioned to re-set it

if you want to flip the gradient, command-F or ctrl+F will do it

ccasady: wow, so many functions!

angler: my bryce four sometimes locks up and i have to shut down and lose all the things ive done and it always seems to happen after ive created something really cool

Meta AuntiAlias: so color gradient is reversed (not the same thing as command-I or Ctrl-i to invert terrain grayscale information

ccasady: I didn't know you could flip the gradient!

geeze

3d~?~elf: that's way cool!

Meta AuntiAlias: hee! that' been there since Bryce 2! :D

ccasady: golly

ccasady: Here's where clipping gets a little funny, though

It catually works as a "selection"

Meta AuntiAlias: shows up better with some of the colored gradients....if you want to SEE the detail in the lower elevation areas.. then you choose and flip gradient so you can see what's going on down there! ; )

uh.. actually? ; )

ccasady: (right, and sometimes you need to)

well, ....

ccasady: The selection seems to work selectivly

Sometimes the clpiing bracket will protect an area from an efect, other times it's global

Meta AuntiAlias: clarification re: selection-- bracket selects an area of the terrain (i.e., whatever is not clipped) to apply an effect to.

ccasady: (yes) Invert, for example, will only invert what's between the brackets

3d~?~elf: qhhhhh

Ironhelix: occasionally I loose an object in the scene and dont want to move "mountains" to get to the object that I can seem to select because another object is in the way. Is there someway to pull up an object list so I can pick a specific object?

ccasady: several ways

But that's for thr Editing evening, isn't it?

3d~?~elf: <iron, go to the lobby for a mo', i'll tell ya>

Meta AuntiAlias: and.. my favorite method for this is to make quick sedimentary layers a la grand canyon. clip a bunch of high elevation, and clip low elevation and then use the dampen control. Slide to left (i.e., to reduce contrast) Middle area grows shallower, and there

Ironhelix: ok

Meta AuntiAlias: are two cliffy areas... voila! grandish-canyonish forms... thanks to clipping terrain and then dampening! :D

ccasady: neato

Clay: LOL

ccasady: I have yet to figure why it is the clipping does not protect an area from all effects

Meta AuntiAlias: uh, Chris, I just went and tried out that invert thing.. and it inverted everything! : ( so seems that brackets don't apply to "select" an "active" area for that effect

ccasady: and I forget which ones it's exempt from

I just rememebr some work and some do not...

Meta AuntiAlias: exempt from clipping: posterize, invert... some others

Calyxa: general painting will ignore clipping

ccasady: ...and that it changed from Bryce2

okay, there's one place, thanks Caly

I know it trips me up sometimes

Meta AuntiAlias: well, anyway, that is the gist... try to selectively apply effects using clipping... and Dampen DOES work! : ) ... try 'em on your own...

ccasady: yes, play with it!

What else were priotity topics?

Meta AuntiAlias: two other things on agenda: fractal shopping and terrain tiling...

ccasady: I haqve good notes on both of those

Also I have my recent TOPO experiments online

Meta AuntiAlias: those two go together.. wanna go for it? (does the Heeeeeere's Johnny golf swing toward Chris)

ccasady: hey hey hey!

Shopping!

CBXTX: Didn't we do those previously?

ccasady: were you here on Tuesday morning, June....

CBXTX: probly

Meta AuntiAlias: at a tuesday day chat.. but mostly different people show up at one or the other. It's GOOD stuff; bears repeating, methinks! :D

ccasady: here goes

CBXTX: No prob

ccasady: I'd like to talk about how to use these fabulous new mathematics:

The new Fractal Noise Models (do we have a better name for these?)

They are hiding uinder a small grey triagle next to the word Fractal <I in the Elevation pallet.

First I want to say something about how to shop for good terrains in here,

....and then I want to describe the proper sequence for obtaining a tiled grid of many terrains that all match perfectly together.

Yes these terrins do "tile", and I can do the tile, baby.

Infinite terrains live here.

They are random, they come up different every time.

has anyone not discovered these yet?

Heather: me

Meta AuntiAlias: prolly those who just got the app who are here tonight! : )

ccasady: Have you had a hard time predicting what your going to get?

well, you will. : )

You may notice that you wait for these terrains.

The computer must think hard!

They are so difficult to make!

3d~?~elf: hehe

camel: MMM

ccasady: About a half a minute on my machine. I usualy make these at 512K resolution.

Meta AuntiAlias: (computer thinking hard: mega computation going on there. Serious deep mathematics! )

ccasady: right

It often takes 30 to 40 seconds each, and then I don't like the Terrain. : (

Notice they are much faster to generate if you lower your terrain resolution to 128K resolution.

Hey! 128K, click! click! click!

ccasady: I see new and exciting fractals each time, very fast, ....no waiting!

(my favorites are Ridged Multifractal, Slickrock, Warped Zorch, and Planet-X)

so I click and see many different kinds, most of them no good....

But wait! Look! I love that one,

It's beautiful!

aw, but it's only 128K.

I can't use it; it's too low a rezolution.

Meta AuntiAlias: <pouting>

ccasady: You can fix it. !

(on cue)

Ironhelix: Aunti....will there be support for Symmetric MultiProcessing and multi-threading? It would really help with the rendering speed.

Meta AuntiAlias: Chris has the floor... the topic is terrains!

ccasady: (in 2003)

Here's what you do.

Meta AuntiAlias: iron... sssh please! : ) thanks!

Ironhelix: sorry

ccasady: don't click the fractal button again, after the one you like

bring up that list of fractal types....

Calyxa: (iron, the lobby is not moderated...)

ccasady: Look way down near the bottom.

Turn off Random Extent, Position, & Character.

ccasady: all randomization has been turn off, locked where you left it

Now when you regenerate a terrain it will regerate the same Terrain each time.

Just go in to Grid and up rez your tarrin to 512 or 1024 and click "Fractal" again.

Viola! You favorite Terrain at Hi rez!

and you were able to shop through many types without waiting for them

Was that fun?

3d~?~elf: yessum!

Meta AuntiAlias: wheeee!

3d~?~elf: ?

Steve Lareau: Wheee!!! What fun!

camel: AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

ccasady: Who wants to extrude their neighborhood?

desdanova: Yippy!

Douglas: ?

Clay: yeehaaaww!!1

Meta AuntiAlias: hmm... guess we got some questions here.. we'll take them and then move onto tiling after that...

3d, go for it!

3d~?~elf: mine were off(default) should they be selected while 'shopping'?

ccasady: take questions

3d~?~elf: ie: randomization

ccasady: they should be checked while shopping

3d~?~elf: k, done

Meta AuntiAlias: if you are using the normal Bryce fractal (top menu option) they'll be grayed out. But if you have any other item selected, they'll be on, normally

ccasady: unchecked, and the will lock to be the same each time

yes, it works on all types EXCEPT the top one: Bryce Calssic Fractal

Meta AuntiAlias: then when you want to stop shopping, you can shut 'em off. I *think* but am not positive, that the pref to keep 'em locked will be something you gotta set each time you launch bryce. That needs double checking, but i"m fairly certain that's how it is

ccasady: yes that's right

Meta AuntiAlias: so, because of that, 3D, I suspect that the option you ahve selected is Bryce Classic Fractal

ccasady: I thought it was set default to be random ON.

3d~?~elf: prefs>default or current state

Meta AuntiAlias: select one of the others and then see how it goes...

oh, so it works for that, too, then?

ccasady: yup

not for Classic

3d~?~elf: k

ccasady: but for all others

Meta AuntiAlias: heh. You can see that I'm more to default working <jogs self..go ahead and change, Susan

ccasady: lol

3d~?~elf: change is ...good...>g<

Meta AuntiAlias: Douglas, go for it!

Douglas: so on the high power math calculations that are best done at 128k for speed, is that the only way to increase to 256k (as stated above) turning off random extent, position and char? p.s. those are cool effects (hadn't found them yet)

ccasady: More questions!

Meta AuntiAlias: you could take the fractal that is generated at 128 and simply increase the resolution, Douglas...

but tha's like taking a 640 x 480 image and saying, make this 4 times bigger...

and getting blurred fuzzy edges...

Steve Lareau: ?

Douglas: ok done thx

Meta AuntiAlias: because whatever you're using has to work with the current information to generate increased resolution.

ccasady: if you change to 256 and re-click WITHOUT disabling Random, it will make you a new random terrain, something you can't predict

Calyxa: !

ccasady: 256 is good for shopping too

Meta AuntiAlias: Bryce, since it's working from math, can repeat the calculation. You choose the higher resolution, do that uncheck stuff to say "okay, lock it in here, Bryce ol' Buddy!"

and os it does

so

Meta AuntiAlias: Steve Lareau, go for it!

you had a question, Steve?

ccasady: You're supposed to have these questions all typed up and ready

Meta AuntiAlias: so... Calyxa, while Steve is typing.. go for it! :D

3d~?~elf: maybe he's next door

ccasady: Caly:

Steve Lareau: When importing an image and turning it into a terrain, if you do it at the default terrain size, then resize it after you've applied the image, is it good, ot is it best to make a larger size, then import the image in as the terrain?

Calyxa: I have to type, too... I've been in two rooms going crazy...

Steve Lareau: Sorry- screen froze up...

Meta AuntiAlias: make larger before importing

ccasady: yup

Steve Lareau: so it does lose quality, huh? Thought so....

Steve Lareau: validation is a wonderful thing...

ccasady: That was my very first point. That's one reason to do that. In that situation exactly

Calyxa: I like to turn off the randoms one at a time while shopping, starting with extent... that lets me pick the 'detail level' first. then I shop some more 'til I get a position I like and turn off random pos. and last I shop for random characters....

ccasady: Yes, yu're getting tricky there, you can certainly do that

Meta AuntiAlias: <shaking head in admiration> That Calyxa, I tell you.. she's systematic with her shopping! Way to go! :D

Calyxa: heh.

Steve Lareau: random characters- sounds like weasels in a bar late at night! =D

renato!: power shopper

Clay: LOL

angler: !

desdanova: lol

renato!: what you got against weasels?!?!?!

Calyxa: only for bryce terrains. I hate shopping in real life!

Meta AuntiAlias: yeah.. and it's a Blue Button special, too! Attention Bryce Shoppers! ; )

3d~?~elf: hehehe

>>>> Next up: Tiling terrain objects

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