Using altitude

Bonito Lil

I've been working on a scene that uses David Brinnen's Derbyshire terrain, slightly tweaked for color and bump height. It contains all native Bryce-iana except for some xfrog trees, a millennium cat and a butterfly purchased at Turbosquid. I like the Derbyshire terrain because it looks like New Mexico. No hdri here, just one sun. I thought about light beams, but I don't want to get on the slippery slope to looking like a Kinkade.

But I would like to have some intermediate altitude-dependent texture where the land meets water; it doesn't seem quite right for the greenery to go right to the edge. How would one go about adding this to a material that already has several layers of stuff happening?

I will also be grateful for any other critiques anyone wants to offer.

GussNemo

@asterlil: Welcome to the forum. One thing you could do is to copy and paste the terrain, resize it slightly then add your choice of material. Or if you use material which contains altitude and tweak it until you get the no grass at the water look you want.

Dave Savage

You may find this video tutorial by David Brinnen handy... It goes through setting up a shoreline effect which is probably more than you need for you render, but at about ten and a half minutes in, he concentrates on setting up a band in the terrain that can be used to deliniate the land from the water by providing a 'beach' effect.

You don't need a beach, but the same technique could be used to make the grass finish before the water starts and leave a strip of gravel or pebbles.

Hope this helps... I'm on with a long(ish) render at the moment so haven't had chance to double check of Derbyshire terrain material uses all four channels in the mat lab.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjxvZksI0VE&feature=youtu.be

Bonito Lil

@gussnemo -- Thank you for your comments. I have tried the cut-and-paste technique in other scenes, but the transition is pretty abrupt. And this brook is pretty narrow in places.

@thesavage64 -- I just knew there must be a David Brinnen video that would cover this and I appreciate you finding it for me. The Derbyshire terrain has 3 channels, so there is scope for doing this, I hope. Yes, I would really like to see sand or silt under those rocks and pebbles in the foreground.