This example demonstrates the different ways to use materials with Instant Terra.
Learn more about Materials.
The project used for the "Use case - Materials" is split into three parts, each starting with the same basic terrain.
- The first terrain uses the Simple Material node.
- The second terrain uses the Material node and introduces the use of a User sub-material node.
- The third terrain uses the Advanced Material node and introduces the use of elaborate masks.
Terrain with the Material node
The Simple material node uses four sub-materials:
- Rock over the entire terrain
- Snow on fairly gentle slopes
- Two different types of gravel on the bottom of the terrain and the gentle slopes. The two layers have slightly different settings so that the first layer is visible around the second layer.
Terrain with the Material node
The Material node uses three sub-materials:
- Rock: The four textures have been imported and form a User sub-material. Rock is positioned over the entire terrain.
- Grass: Grass is less present on the highest altitudes. In the slope settings, it is only present on the gentle slopes.
- Snow: Snow has no altitude limits. On the slopes, it has almost the same values as grass, but with a gradient (falloff) so that grass appears slightly below the snow, giving the impression of melted snow.
Terrain with the Advanced Material node
The Advanced material node uses six layers:
- A first rock layer, which uses a white mask as an input: the rock is everywhere on the terrain.
- A second rock layer, which is a User sub-material. This layer uses a Mask from slope node as an input with slope selection between 30 and 90°. This rock layer is above the first rock layer on the steepest slopes, providing different shades of color. An intensity coefficient of 50% is applied to avoid too strong contrasts.
- A basic ground layer using a Mask from slopes node as an input with a gradient of 25° to 0° to be positioned on the flattest parts of the terrain.
- A layer of gravel, positioned using the sediment mask of the Rock erosion node.
- A layer of grass (here, moss). The position is calculated from a Mask from convexity node to select the concave places, and we also add the Mask from heights node, inverted, to achieve more moss on the lower parts.
- A last layer of Snow, the mask of which is set in the Advanced Snow node.
