Simulating erosion in Blender

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
21

Can someone tell me why when I envoke the addon it immediately becomes grayed out, as in I can’t edit the settings?


I don’t believe it’s due to the addon but rather a system setting since it’s doing the same thing with the ANT addon.

Any help would be appreciated.l

22

Hi Nerk,

fantastic work! I have of course no problem with it at all, that’s what open source is about :eyebrowlift2:
I hope I can find some time to give your enhancements a closer look. is your version already downloadable somewhere?

cheers,

– Michel

23

Hi Michel,

Good to hear from you! I’ve now put my version of the add-on here for the time being…

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89015387/ErosionR.zip

I’ve added the R on the end to allow it to be installed as a separate add-on to yours. Ideally I think it should exist as a fork on your GitHub project, but I could start my own if you prefer.

I hope you get time to have a look!

Cheers,
Ian

24

For anyone wanting to try the ErosionR version, I suggest the following steps…

  • Install and enable the add-on in the usual way
  • Ensure ANT Landscapes are also enabled
  • Add a new ANT Landscape
  • Change to weight paint mode
  • Select ‘ErodeR’ from the ‘weight’ menu
  • Have a look at the vertex groups that have been added
  • Select a water related group like ‘water’ or ‘capacity’
  • Increase the ‘River Iterations’ in the ‘Eroder’ panel in the tools panel and watch the vertex group
  • To make the rivers flow to the edge might take 100-200 iterations (more for large meshes) but it’s a speed tradeoff
  • Fiddle with the ‘River Erosion’ settings until you get the water patterns you like
  • If you set the main iterations to a number that’s greater than 1, it’s the same as pressing refresh many times, so it’s most useful when you have the settings you want, and you want to erode a large mesh gradually for best quality.

Feedback much appreciated!

25

By the way, as vertex groups can’t be used directly by cycles, I used the weight2vertexcol add-on by Kursad Karatas available here…

https://bitbucket.org/kursad/blender…/src?at=master

This copies selected vertex group weights to vertex colors to allow use in cycles.

Also, comeinandburn, have you tried File > Load Factory settings?. It could be a problem with your startup file, or settings from a previous add-on or blender version.

26

I can’t manage to find the Erode options, I followed your instructions but I can’t see anything in the Tools menu in the Weight Paint mode. I installed the the zip file as an addon, am I missing something?

It looks great and since I’m working on creating an Himalaya landscape, I’m sure it will prove to be useful :slight_smile:

EDIT: Found the Eroder at the top of the Object Menu!

27

Hi Chafouin, it’s at the top of the object menu, but also at the top of the ‘weights’ menu if you are in weight paint mode. This is the best location to see changes in the vertex groups without exiting the add-on.

28

The link is down > could you upload the erosionR version again for some experience?

29

Sorry for the missing link. It’s still there but Dropbox has changed their public folder policy. I’ve tended to avoid Github, but I guess I should embrace it… I probably should have made a fork on Varken’s project, but I might have to learn how to use Github first.

Link is:
https://github.com/nerk987/ErosionR

Funny this should come up - I just used it myself recently making a volcanic scene for a short movie project. Ant landscape at high res. ErosionR to modify and paint some weight maps. Weight2VertexColor to convert to a bakeable texture. InstantMeshes to reduce mesh polycount with half decent topology. Cycles bake for AO, cavity and Erosion maps. Export to Substance painter for texturing, then back for cycles. It all works pretty well. I did a few similar but different volcanic islands:

HotLand.jpg1920×1080 1.01 MB

30

Thank you!
I saw that it’s not need to install the python site-packages to let it run faster.
Had fought half the night to get numexpr to run, but without success.
Anyway!
The Lava looks really great! Is the movie released?

31

Yes, there is no support for numpy in the the erosionR addon. I must admit, I mainly use it with a fairly small number of iterations to generate the weight maps. There’s a lot more work required to get realistic river flows and landscapes.

The movie should be finished in a couple of months.

32

i found this: Geomorph
> a height field generator and editor, but only for Linux
> maybe good for inspiration
http://geomorph.sourceforge.net/installing_en.html

33

@Nerk: that looks really good!

34

Hi Varkenvarken, Nerk and everyone else,

i’m the author of A.N.T.Landscape and i have updated my addon,
i have now included this great ErosionR code in A.N.T.

You can find ‘Landscape Eroder’ in the new ‘Landscape Tools’ panel in the Tool shelf,
together with the new ‘Mesh Displace’ and ‘Weight from Slope’ tools.

J.

1 Like
35

hey Jimmy, that’s a fantastic set of new features, well done & much appreciated!

36

great job guys, congrats

37

Thanks Jimmy, that’s really good news! I’ve used your add-on so many times, and I’ve learnt a lot from your and Michel’s code.

38

Are you talking about thermal erosion as explained here or here?

39

Thank YOU Nerk and Michel :slight_smile:

For those who like to know what this addon can do,
a example of ErosionR in action:

2 iterations

planetnoise_eroded_1.jpg1920×1057 627 KB

100 iterations

planetnoise_eroded.jpg1920×1057 397 KB

Edit: added image

Attachments

planetnoise_eroded_1.jpg1920×1057 604 KB

1 Like
40

Perhaps a bit cheeky and noobish for my first post on here, but I tried to install erosionR on 2.78c and, while I received no error messages, there was nothing in the addon list for it afterwards. Any suggestions?
As you would imagine, I’m not a blender expert!
Thanks in advance.