Cliff Masking

 Yesterday I created a forest of giant mushrooms during my lunch break. As you do.

Rough/low-poly test for a Forest on Aurore

I'm going to do a proper version. First I'm going to need to build some "hero" assets. These broadtops are a bit low detail.


Today, I'm looking to get a base terrain finished. One thing I was keen to work out was how to mask the high slopes on a terrain so as to be able to texture cliffs.

Justin at The CG Essentials had just the tutorial:

This is pretty simple:

1. In the node editor, add a geometry node.
2. Add a separateXYZ node. Connect the normal slot to the geometry node to the seprateXYZ's factor slot. 
3. Connect the "Z" axis output to a colorRamp
4. Adjust the ramp so that it splits the terrain into steep slopes and everything else.

5. Use the  output as the factor in a mix shader that mixes a ground material with a cliff material.

And then I cover the entire ground layer in grass...