The key is in the texturing so with a little digging through the BlenderWiki I got to here: http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartIV/Map_Input
Oh glee, oh joy, says I. Blender can use the mesh’s normals to determine which texture to use, either the flat grass or snow texture or the steep sloped rocky texture.
After a little experimentation I get a texture test ready. No fancy mesh or any fancy materials, just the bare bones to see if it’ll work. http://methuselah.home.bresnan.net/SlopeTest.avi
It don’t work. And I don’t think it will. This seems to be the correct setup, but clearly the reference to which the normals are compared is the camera vector and not one of the meshes three local axi. This explains the clever use of nearly the same technique to fake fresnel. The implication that selecting the Y axis instead of selecting the Z axis rather proves that this won’t work, implying that Y is up, X is right and left, and Z is towards the camera.
Darn. Any ideas of how to actually get what I’m after here?
This could be a powerfully simple landscape creation technique if it only takes the setting of a few program features to get an adaptable terrain texture. Perhaps this is old hat stuff and everyone else knows the real settings to use?
Oh well, this at least resulted in a unusual melty-camera-shy-goo-thing skill to add to my budding arsenal.
Aside:
I love blender, it’s so very much more beter than my blundering around in the dark with trueSpace 4.3!
When setting up a texture stencil can the map input button, Nor(normal), be used to determine the slope of a face relative the mesh’s z-axis rather than the camera’s look axis?
I tried your suggestion and ended up with a nice height based stencil.
But, what I was trying for was variation based on the relative slope of the mesh, not it’s height. It is confusing for me so naturaly I’m confusing others.
lemme show what I mean:
This is like what happens with an Orco input set to Z
(red areas are full texture, blue areas are stenciled out)
which results in a nice heightmap
But I’m going for mapping based on the slope angle
(blender seems to have the basics already)
to get something like this:
Following the wiki turorial above, using Nor and set to Y (Z does no better), I end up with blender stenciling the texture thusly:
resulting in something like this…
which, I admit is passable, until one moves the camera.
Hopefully this clears up what I’m talking about?
Thanks for trying to thin my madness BackBONE.
Maybe I just misunderstood your help? Your pictures might be useful for a newbe like me.
Is there any way? It looks like it could be done but after much tutorial searching I’ve seen nothing.
Suggestions very appreciated.
Here is a stencil tutorial. A stencil is a texture that tells were a texture underneath it can be visible and were it can’t.
Better explanation in link.
I do not have and answer for you. I have never understood those map input buttong. For instance, since a texture is a kind of wrap on the mesh I understand the size and offset in the x and y direction but how can something that is basically a flat wrap( like wrapping paper) have a Z coodinate??
Anyway welcome to blender. I have been using it since 1999 and there are STILL things that I do not understand about it.
