I'm the guilty party here. I keep adding more stuff myself. But I've had to stop it now, or I will just get bogged under and then you will end up with a really unbalanced set.
Ok. We're back on the Coast symbols. Progress is now more or less back on track for 2 new symbols per day Here is the maelstrom... or should that be whirlpool?
I'm running out of space in the ocean for all the new symbols. I think I might need to delete the land and just use this map as a place to dump all the coast symbols to check that they look ok together.
Maybe. I really don't know. I remember an awful lot of mesa images looking a lot like that, and I did try them like that, but they looked really horrible.
I will have another go at them if they really don't look right.
As I understand it, and I don't live out there, Mesas usually have a top of slightly harder rock than below and I think then lower layers are then a little undercut. Draws and ridgelines on the top, I don't have any idea, never have been on top of one.
The way I'm creating them undercuts aren't possible. These are generated from height maps, which are only 2.5D, not true 3D. You can only have relative height.
I could make the cliffs steeper, but when you do that with a height map you end up with a very blank face indeed - no features at all except vertical slots where the top line of the ridge goes in and out.
The line between things called mesas and similar formations like towers is pretty blurry. Generally, a mesa is wider than it is tall with very steep (often vertical) sides. A butte, in contrast, is usually taller than it is wide and a tower is a very skinny butte. Those sorts of things are pretty hard to do with a heightfield erosion sim due the underlying heightfield's minimum feature size (a single sample or pixel in the image). I recommend taking a mountain at the maximum resolution that you can reasonably handle, doing basic erosion to get the talus slopes at the base, chopping off the top pretty low, adding a vertical section by extruding the flat area if youre tool lets you do that, and then very lightly eroding what's left to give it a little interest from above. Those big canyons into the interior and less-steep areas that you're showing are uncommon in what most people think of as mesas.
What a lot of folks familiar with Western movies think of as mesas are similar to the formations around the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Those features are mostly in sandstone and range from steep cuts like the Grand Canyon and Zion all of the way to badlands full of hoodoos like Bryce Canyon. Somewhere in the middle is something like Monument Valley, which is more towers than mesas (they are taller than they are high). Capitol Reef is an example of interesting erosional features with both sandstone and limestone, btw, but those mostly aren't mesas.
There are some intrusive tower formations such as Devil's Tower and Ship Rock, which, while they are interesting, aren't really mesas (they are buttes and towers).
There are things that aren't specifically named mesas that certainly qualify such as the tepui of Venezuela. They are remnants of a heavily-eroded karst terrain and similar formations occur around the world (usually less spectacular, though).
Unfortunately, if such things are possible in Gaea I haven't found them just yet, but I will have a look. I am just in the middle of adjusting the models to have flatter tops at least, even if I can't seem to control the steepness of the slopes. This is shorter than they appear in Blender because I exaggerate the vertical scale in Blender.
If there's an exponential operator, that might help. It will make the steep parts steeper without beating up on the flat tops too much. The defining features of mesas are really steep sides and flat tops.
One of the big problems with most erosion sims is that everything is of pretty much uniform hardness, which means that you're eroding a mudhill. I keep thinking about ways to fix the problems, but they all end up taking way too much memory and/or performance to put much work into them.
Next up, I have a set of proto-cliff symbols. Now these look rough because they are raw Blender renders. That's why there are strange triangular bits where the Blender's Cycles rendering machine can't be told to ignore the back faces of the models and I had to hack it by telling it to see through only one layer of polygons. It still sees the back of the cliff where it's still visible as the first layer of the model polys from the camera's point of view.
(that's Blender 2.79 btw - an out of date version because I just haven't got the time to learn and convert everything to 2.9, which probably does the job without even blinking, but which completely throws all my lighting in the air - as per usual with any new version of Blender ?)
Anyway... They're super clunky and only one length, but I thought you might like to be able to build crude plateaus to go with your mesas - once I've painted out the odd bits that is.
Comments
That's me all over!
I'm the guilty party here. I keep adding more stuff myself. But I've had to stop it now, or I will just get bogged under and then you will end up with a really unbalanced set.
Ok. We're back on the Coast symbols. Progress is now more or less back on track for 2 new symbols per day Here is the maelstrom... or should that be whirlpool?
Anyway! What do you think?
Maelstrom looks cool. I wouldn't be the ship captain that had to navigate all those dangers to get to that harbour up there though.
LOL!
Thanks Remy :D
I'm running out of space in the ocean for all the new symbols. I think I might need to delete the land and just use this map as a place to dump all the coast symbols to check that they look ok together.
I like it. Here's one from Norway. Monsen may recognize it.
Thanks, Mike :)
I believe this was the one that I modelled mine on - the Moskstraumen?
Actually, no. It's this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltstraumen
A real Charybdis!
Thank you, Quenten :)
It was meant to be a bit of a monster.
Or you could call it Corryvreckan ?
I'm starting to think that we need a Spectrum Add-On product for 2021 or 2022 ☺️
Symbol Set 6: Spectrum Symbols of Sue.
That sounds like an awesome idea.
Wow! Thanks :)
I think that all depends on what PF want to do. So for now I will finish part 2 - hopefully right on time ;)
I did some mesas.
Do you think they look right compared with the arid mountains behind them?
I thought they would be more flat and sharp edged?
Maybe. I really don't know. I remember an awful lot of mesa images looking a lot like that, and I did try them like that, but they looked really horrible.
I will have another go at them if they really don't look right.
As I understand it, and I don't live out there, Mesas usually have a top of slightly harder rock than below and I think then lower layers are then a little undercut. Draws and ridgelines on the top, I don't have any idea, never have been on top of one.
The way I'm creating them undercuts aren't possible. These are generated from height maps, which are only 2.5D, not true 3D. You can only have relative height.
I could make the cliffs steeper, but when you do that with a height map you end up with a very blank face indeed - no features at all except vertical slots where the top line of the ridge goes in and out.
I think they will do nicely, Sue. That should have been said before ... "As I understand it"
You are probably right, and with more time I might have hand sculpted an overhang in Blender, but that would take quite a long time.
Thanks anyway :)
Devil's Tower is a basalt tower out west US. It doesn't have sifter rock under the cap, but software rock was around it at one time.
Here is the park site, with photos.
Some mesas that the various tribes in New Mexico live on, don't have soft rocks under the top either.
Thanks for the reference info, Jim :)
I am currently adjusting the mesas as well as I can so the top edge is a little sharper.
The line between things called mesas and similar formations like towers is pretty blurry. Generally, a mesa is wider than it is tall with very steep (often vertical) sides. A butte, in contrast, is usually taller than it is wide and a tower is a very skinny butte. Those sorts of things are pretty hard to do with a heightfield erosion sim due the underlying heightfield's minimum feature size (a single sample or pixel in the image). I recommend taking a mountain at the maximum resolution that you can reasonably handle, doing basic erosion to get the talus slopes at the base, chopping off the top pretty low, adding a vertical section by extruding the flat area if youre tool lets you do that, and then very lightly eroding what's left to give it a little interest from above. Those big canyons into the interior and less-steep areas that you're showing are uncommon in what most people think of as mesas.
What a lot of folks familiar with Western movies think of as mesas are similar to the formations around the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Those features are mostly in sandstone and range from steep cuts like the Grand Canyon and Zion all of the way to badlands full of hoodoos like Bryce Canyon. Somewhere in the middle is something like Monument Valley, which is more towers than mesas (they are taller than they are high). Capitol Reef is an example of interesting erosional features with both sandstone and limestone, btw, but those mostly aren't mesas.
There are some intrusive tower formations such as Devil's Tower and Ship Rock, which, while they are interesting, aren't really mesas (they are buttes and towers).
There are things that aren't specifically named mesas that certainly qualify such as the tepui of Venezuela. They are remnants of a heavily-eroded karst terrain and similar formations occur around the world (usually less spectacular, though).
Thank you, Joe :) That's really helpful.
Unfortunately, if such things are possible in Gaea I haven't found them just yet, but I will have a look. I am just in the middle of adjusting the models to have flatter tops at least, even if I can't seem to control the steepness of the slopes. This is shorter than they appear in Blender because I exaggerate the vertical scale in Blender.
If there's an exponential operator, that might help. It will make the steep parts steeper without beating up on the flat tops too much. The defining features of mesas are really steep sides and flat tops.
One of the big problems with most erosion sims is that everything is of pretty much uniform hardness, which means that you're eroding a mudhill. I keep thinking about ways to fix the problems, but they all end up taking way too much memory and/or performance to put much work into them.
There are bias options on the erosion node, but they don't work in a way I understand. I will try some more before giving up.
So, when I look at your mesa just above, I can turn it into a mesa or canyon by switching my focus slightly.
MAKE IT STOP!!!!
Sorry, Mike!
I'm usually the one with that problem, but for some reason I'm ok with the Gaea view window.
Not sure about the sastrugi, but I think the fissures are all done now.
Thank you for all your appreciation :)
Next up, I have a set of proto-cliff symbols. Now these look rough because they are raw Blender renders. That's why there are strange triangular bits where the Blender's Cycles rendering machine can't be told to ignore the back faces of the models and I had to hack it by telling it to see through only one layer of polygons. It still sees the back of the cliff where it's still visible as the first layer of the model polys from the camera's point of view.
(that's Blender 2.79 btw - an out of date version because I just haven't got the time to learn and convert everything to 2.9, which probably does the job without even blinking, but which completely throws all my lighting in the air - as per usual with any new version of Blender ?)
Anyway... They're super clunky and only one length, but I thought you might like to be able to build crude plateaus to go with your mesas - once I've painted out the odd bits that is.