Samples of what effects do?

Brian Ransom

Is there a tutorial or something that shows/explains what the various effects can do on sheets? Like some examples of what it looks like/can be used for?

I'm trying to blend some poly's of different shades of oceans so it goes from a light to darker blue. I feel like the edge blur is what I want, but a general place or list of the various effects and what they do/how they work would be great.

Calibre

You can check out Ralf's videos on youtube. He goes through each effect and demonstrates what it does.

Meanwhile, I've a fair hand at blending. Show me what you have and I may be able to assist.

Cal

Loopysue

This is the video Calibre mentioned above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y9NRUm2jHg

Monsen

They're also all listed with a brief description in the accompanying program manual, page 65 and onwards in the current version.

Brian Ransom

Thanks Monsen! I figured there was, but I'm actually away from home, so the manual is not available easily. But I'll definitely keep that in mind.

Loopysue and Calibre, thanks. I will watch his video to see what I can get from it. I like Ralf's stuff, so I'm sure it will be what I need. I'll post my map a bit later Cal. I'm still pretty new so its nothing super special, but I'd appreciate the help.

Brian Ransom

https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/comment/121546#Comment_121546

If you would like to take a look at what I've got so far. I have made sheets for the layers of ocean depth. Still not as smooth a transition as I'd like, but I think its passable.

Netvah3.FCW

Any suggestions on how to smooth out the transitions further? (*I forgot to turn the effects back on before I uploaded the FCW)

Here is a jpeg of it for anyone that doesnt want to open the FC

jslayton

To smooth out the transitions a bit on the sea things, try making the "Edge Fade, Inner" effect have an "Outer Opacity" of 0% instead of 30% and try pushing the blur amount on the Blur, Alpha up a bit (say, 4 or so). Doing those two things gives this:

Those ocean transitions aren't going to get much smoother due to how the textures work. You can get a similar but less costly to compute effect by turn off the Blur, Alpha effects and setting the Edge Fade, Inner to the following settings:

Brian Ransom

Thanks Joe. That helped. I decided to stick with the blur cuz I like the subtle difference, but I definitely appreciate both methods!

jslayton

Alpha blur introduces some peculiar artifacts on the outside of the objects because it extends the outermost rim of RGB pixels to get something under the outside blurred alpha area. In this case it should be reasonably unnoticed because it's fairly similar shades of blue, but Ralf found some impressive failures during a live stream once.