This video is educational in more ways than in creating realistic procedural terrains. Dax Pandhi, founder of Quadspinner, which is a must if you use Vue, creates his procedural terrains using the Function Editor. Not only do you see how he manipulates the controls and how they interact, but if you are not an expert using the Function Editor, his information can be applied to many other scenarios. The information in this tutorial has expanded my use of the Function Editor in many ways and given me more ideas how to use it to create interesting effects.
Dax Pandhi divides his tutorial into a few parts:
- Introduction
- Terrain Fractal
- Mixing Different Fractals
- Using Combiners and Filters
- Working with other Fractals
- Explore a Terrain for Scene Opportunities
- Procedural Terrain Examples
Below is an example of the type of detail you can get in a procedural terrain using the Function Editor and just the Terrain Fractal.
Using mixed fractals many different effects are possible. Below are a few examples. Dax, also, notes how rendering at higher pixel dimensions such as 4000 x 1702 will give more details than at a lower render such as 800 x 340 pixels.
Dax demonstrates how the make up of the terrain can be modified by the use of Combiners and Filters.
While Dax shows how to manipulate the various controls in the Function Editor, he does not do this so one can copy his effects, but so that one can understand how to control the creation of a procedural terrain. At the end of the training video, he does suggest that the reader duplicate his numbers and play with creating various terrains.
He gives many examples of terrains and explains how they differ. He, also, shows how one terrain, by using different camera placements, can become many different scenes.
This is one tutorial where each time you see it, you will learn more and more. Another example of a great and informative tutorial by Dax Pandhi!
This concludes my reviewing of the 4 training videos that Dax Pandhi has created so far. The Beauty of Strata, Mighty HyperTerrains, and Capturing the Brilliance of Light, I know he has planned more as well as a book. This tutorial can be purchased for $27 from cornucopia3d and from e-on software. Don't forget to go to his website.
