The Terrain Operator Shader can be used in rendering, to create intricately detailed materials or in 3D simulations to isolate effects to specific terrain features.


Use this shader to access the 2D output of individual operators or the combined 2D output of tfGroups and tfTerrains.

The Terrain Operator Shader can be accessed from any object that uses the Texture drop-down menu.

This could be a material channel, an X-Particles modifier or a node within a 3rd party render engine.

Note: The shader will only render a default gradient in the material and shader previews.

UI 02.png

Menu access to the Terrain Operator Shader.

UI 03.png

Terrain Operator Shader menu.

TFX_TOP_Third Party Renderer_v03.png

The Terrain Operator Shader loaded into a Cycles 4D Image Texture node.

Link

Link the operator or the terrain object that you want to render by dragging and dropping into this link field or using the eyedropper tool.

TFX_TOP_Link_v02.mp4

This animation shows the Terrain Operator Shader being used in the color channel of a material. The shader can reference any part of the TerraformFX hierarchy for different rendering effects. It can also be used to isolate certain terrain features.

Source

Set as Altitude, by default.

The alternatives for the source data are: Slope or Fields Mask.

Filter operators also have the Difference Map option.

In addition, there are some operator specific modes, for example, the Hydraulic Erosion filter has Erode Map and Deposit Map options.

TFX_TOP_Source_v02.mp4

Animation to demonstrate the different settings available for the Source parameter.

Altitude

This renders the operator’s height map.

By default, the left side of the gradient will be applied to the lowest altitudes and the right side will be applied to the high altitudes.