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Proximal problem
I’m working on making a sea foam appear around a shoreline, using the Proximal shader. I have a plane (the sea) and a landscape object. The sea has a blue water shader on it, and also a foam shader I made using the Color channel with FBM noise and the Alpha channel with the Proximal shader, with the landscape in the Object field. It works fine, except that the foam shows up as tiny squares, almost like a half-tone screen, instead of showing the noise pattern I want to see. I’ve got the foam material set to flat mapping (no tiling, and Fit to Object), but I get the same result with UVW also. I’ve tried the Proximal shader in Luminance, as well as both Luminance and Alpha, and I’ve gone through all the various choices for settings (Vertices, Edges, etc.) and get no change in the result. What can I do to display the noise pattern instead of this strange pattern I’m getting? Here’s a picture.
thanks, Jack
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7 Replies
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without seeing the file it looks like you have vertexes on in the Proximal with a small radius and your ground plane subdivided enough that each of those dots is a vertex. If that’s true then increase the radius of the proximal or subdivide the plane more. If that’s not it I’d need to see the file.
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That’s a limitation with Proximal, since it’s basing the result on the geometry of the referenced object(s). The only solution that I’m aware of is to subdivide the object — in this case your landscape object. It also helps to use the polygon area setting.
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The density of the plane doesn’t really matter. It’s entirely dependent on the resolution of the “colliding” object.
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Thanks for your replies. I played with subdividing the object but it only made the dots smaller, didn’t give me the pattern I was looking for. Also, in the Proximal details there is a Polygon Radius checkbox, but no place to adjust the radius, so it didn’t have any effect.
I did solve the problem, though, by using a spline. I drew a spline around the coastline, and subdivided it a lot. I used the Uniform interpolation, but I haven’t experimented with the other ones. I made the Color channel plain white, and the Proximal in the Alpha channel, checking Use Vertices, and used the Cubic function and Lighten blend mode. Then I put the noise in the Luminance channel and it works fairly well. Here’s a picture.
Thanks for your help and input on this.
Jack
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the radius I meant (sorry to not be more clear) was Start Distance/End Distance
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yeah, I caught that and edited, thanks anyway
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Oh, OK. That makes more sense then. Thanks.
Jack
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