Blender School: Terrain 5 Materials

 I need to up my game. Seriously, I have been doing rookie-level terrain materials since I started using True Terrain 5. I'd just apply a few materials separated by simple masks. If I used filters, it was just a cheap hack to adjust the material's uniform appearance, such as darkening it.

When True Terrain 5 offered some pre-made materials, it was a revelation. I suddenly realised what all those weird colour adjustment nodes were used for.

Oh wow, Big Sanctus update

You can't use Sanctus material on True Terrain 5 unless you ditch its brilliant material system. I was adding a material to the focus object in my test scene when I remembered there had been a Sanctus update.

Sanctus Library is the work of Blender artist Sanctus, who has become a legend in procedural materials. His library now contains 1000+ assets. Really, it's unlimited because it's so darn procedural, with so many parameters to drive. More on this update, later, when I've run through all the changes.

Some of the masks

Slope Mask set to very tight for contrasty cliffs, etc

Valley Mask for a gradient on slopes rather than a tight band.

This procedural mask is a severe limitation, in that at high contrast settings it produces banding, sometimes creating a moiré effect.

Actual Mask files are memory-expensive, but offer much more power.

Patch Mask, cheap and flexible, is a first step in adding noise patches.

Material Progress

 I am slowly developing some better "big terrain" materials for use on the Halo: Raptor project. It's really slow going.

Tomorrow, I may do a Blender School post exploring how True Terrain 5's premade terrain materials develop their natural patterns—mostly using noise filters.

A True Terrain 5 premade material on a Martian-adjacent terrain 

I bought a bundle of add-ons!

I liked the look of some if its items, especially the camera rig. They are old works, but the blurb says that they all work with Blender 5.1.

Expect to see some experiments documented right here when I find time to install, read the docs and experiment with them. CableCam will be the first, although WeatherFX also looks really useful. 

Half-term project

 I need to complete the terrain task for Halo: Raptor. I really do, but I also need to be able to stretch other Blender skills. So, over this week, I will find the time to do a small project.

"Eden Bomb" is a landscape scene depicting a kind of bomb crater or craters that seed life in an alien desert landscape. It's a simple dry terrain with some crater-shaped plant scatters. Easy! Well, maybe. 

I wasted hours trying to replicate the render layers test I completed a few weeks ago. Some element of my notes must be off as I was getting render layers seemingly not saving visibility states, so I was repeatedly turning elements on and off. I'll come back to it soon. 

Friday

 By all accounts, it's going to be a hot one. A tease for summer? Possibly. 

Alien plants!

I get a warning email about having lots of unused credits on my Hitem3D account, so around the 20th of every month, I start hunting down quick, generic subjects for generative 3D models. Yesterday, it was finally time for some weird 3D plants. Usually, I make people.

Another week in which I was especially unfocused and distracted. It's been a fairly consistent state for a few months. There are reasons. The reason will hopefully pass in time.

Halo: Scene 002

I worked on terrain materials, but I ended up in a situation where each iteration was taking a stupid amount of time to render. The last render took nearly three hours. I need to par back the setup so that I can get faster renders. It's why I built the terrain in the above scene, as a test ground for quick terrain development. 

Fix release

 Blender 5.1.2 drops (out of nowhere?)

Just twelve obscure but serious bugs fixed. The next full release should be on July 14th.


I spent time yesterday on the scene 002 terrain. I'll spend more time today improving the materials before introducing some scatter elements.

Meet up

 An esteemed work colleague/manager/mentor is visiting the UK with his wife. They're visiting Sheffield for a day, so I'm going to catch up with them today or tomorrow, possibly both if it means reconnecting with a few ex-colleagues.

It's going to be nice/a bit weird/possibly emotional to catch up with people after three years. Especially having spent the intervening time in a bit of a self-care bubble. We will see! I will report!

Edit: It was too short notice for other ex-WANdisco people to make the date; it was just the visitors and me.

Splashdown

Subnautica 2 has entered early access. I have purchased. I have played. About four hours, so far. It's quite smashing! So far, it seems to have everything I loved about the first game and its stand-alone expansion, only a bit better. Obviously, I will only be dipping in as a reward for completing work tasks—the Scene 002 terrain is now very late. That should be a priority!

Scene 002

Firstly, I had to do some repair work. The critical lake area disappeared. Looking into the problem, I realised that the lake EXR file wasn't loading in because I'd renamed the directory it was stored in. Once that was identified, the lake was quickly returned, and I could concentrate on adding a final set of hills.

The next step will be to rebuild the scene in Blender using new displacement plates and mask files. Once done, it's "dressing-up" time, with the addition of some foliage scattered in the foreground and a lot of structures, here and there; for starters, the city. 

This week

I haven't fallen too far behind on the project effort, but I need to get more productive so that a small slip doesn't get any worse. I've missed my targets for Blender School - that will be a second item on the list.

Gaea vs World Creator

The challenge I posed to Gabe: create a terrain in Gaea, and I will attempt to match it with World Creator, has not yet started. We'll see if Gabe delivers the challenge. I did have a bit of practice, creating a flow terrain in about forty minutes.

Same terrain with a much gentler elevation. Note the path-based material layer that follows the flow, turning it into a stony path or river-bed.

Positive feedback

<sings> Positive Feedback!

Doesn't it just make the world go round?

I posted shots of the latest iteration of the Scene 002 terrain. The director loves it. I just need to add a few more hills to the last flat-looking area. This area was flat by design because ...variation is important. But directors make the big bucks for a reason. More hills!

There remain big challenges. Getting the materials right and consistent with the other scenes will take a lot of time. It's iterative, but the render times on each test are a few minutes, which is very sub-optimal. I think this is a major problem with my general 3D workflow; I get bogged down in slow renders too soon. It should be really fast. Maybe I should be working without True Sky 3 until it's all finished?

Lead Env Artist Gabe seems unhappy that I'm using World Creator instead of Gaea. He's looking at World Creator, but it isn't working for him. I really need to produce more work with Gaea to better understand where each tool's strengths lie. I've suggested to Gabe that he produce something in Gaea and I will try to replicate it using World Creator. We'll see if this is the nudge that I need to spend substantial time retraining with Gaea. On this, I rechecked my upgrade to Gaea 3.0, which doesn't appear to have worked, so I've messaged Quadspinner to take a look.

Random render of old. A World Creator Terrain completely lost under grass and cliff assets. A lesson about how your terrain is only a part of a scene. Sometimes not as big a part as you imagined.

Technically, this is a breach of the NDA, except the entire terrain's shader broke, leaving only a hint of what's going on.

New Car

I didn't get much Blender time over the weekend because Clara wanted help in getting a new car. This was the first time I had a significant part to play in the process. My first time dealing with car salesmen. Sheesh, their reputation appears to be well earned!! We chose a 3-year-old KIA Sportage, which we are picking up today.

Halo: Infinite terrain labours.

The director asked for an update. I find myself caught in a cycle of progress, only to fall short of the necessary level, forcing a restart. Gabe, the lead environmental artist, has been called in, but he's seemingly never actually used True Terrain, so he hasn't yet provided a winning insight into how to make progress. He likes Gaea. I like Gaea too, but I also recognise that just because Gaea has superior erosion systems doesn't automatically make it the better tool for the task.

Nonetheless, I really should do some more Gaea lessons, or I'm the stick-in-the-mud, here.

This week's tasks

Same as last week!

Get Scene 002 finished, which means:

1. More hills in the flat areas. 

2. Win at terrain materials.

3. Find a way to introduce foliage that doesn't crash my system...<hint> It will probably be done in the shader system rather than as discrete scatters. 

Blender School

Some serious lessons, even if it's refreshing my knowledge. I found myself doing Boolean modelling without touching Hard Ops. Insane, but that's what happens if you don't practice stuff: it gets dusty, then rusty, and then you lose it.

 

Material test at high altitude.

A May week

 

Cthulhu chamber

Playing around with modular concrete rooms that connect together to form endless interiors... A quick and dirty animation! 

Fun, but rough. I'll create rooms with a bit more detail and nuance, should I come back to this again. The most important thing I got out of this exercise is a reminder that every video I create always turns into a stuttering, artefact-laden mess. I need to investigate what steps I should be taking to not make them that way. This is annoying because I'm already rendering to stills and completing the animation in DaVinci Resolve.

Update required

Halo director wants an update on the terrain. It's still dragging because its slow work, but lets see if I can get it finished this weekend. 

Gamma 2 - random photo (National Space Centre)

Time flies

 I've failed to post anything this week. It's a minor failure because I have been getting some work done.

There's the development of the terrain for the Halo project. Slow progress, to be sure, but a few more foothills here and there should help make the service road area look more realistic. Can't show it. NDA!

Personal stuff

I find myself going out with a camera and actually taking photographs, which I then actually process and show off. "Looks like photography is back on the menu, boys!"

PHM

I walked away from this little effort because I wasn't quite getting the engine-root. Then I noticed that the official reference was, in fact, an early concept sketch, which is inconsistent with the production version anyway. All the brilliant models I've referenced go their own way. So, I'm not going to sweat the accuracy, I'll stay true to the design but have some fun with the details.

Too much detail, too soon? You have to start somewhere. Plus, BMS is a bit less important when you already have the design roadmap.

A quick play before bed

Boolean some spaces within a cube. Create some holes and doors. Spend time proving that your concrete material doesn't work here. Fall back on the brilliant Materialiq material set.

This is a test. I wanted to render into a 2-second animation, but I was heading to bed, so I thought I'd hold off until I'm out or at work, later today.

The point is made! I can create a cool modular environment with blocks you place together. to match up doorways. These could be dressed up and textured differently, resulting in an endless, varied 3D environment.

Today's Lesson

Cableator or something. 

Pushing through hard stuff

 I'm making some progress on the terrain work. It's very slow and somewhat painstaking, as there are lots of complex parameters to tweak. Individual changes don't indicate that you're heading in the right direction; you have to spend quite a lot of time before you can reflect on whether the results are meeting your requirements.

Sliding displacement plates

This is the process I used for generating the displacement map. I have created many individual terrain elements that are arranged into a single terrain. Getting them to blend appropriately can be tricky. Although this workflow has some benefits, such as the ability to swap out individual bits, as seen here, where the service road element has been replaced with a more detailed version.

It's a struggle, but this feels like steps forward, at least.