Terraform by David Roberson

Terraform by David Roberson
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/14696.html

Very nice filter!

Great idea!!
I hope to see it soon.

The update has arrived! Now you will actually be able to spheremap your terrains.

Quote
emme wrote: One suggestion would be to modify the directional lighting to match the spherical mapping, or to add the ability to disable the lighting. The current lighting setup might not work very well when actually mapped onto a sphere (especially on the poles). In order to use lighting from a 3d renderer, it would be useful to have the directional lighting disabled in the color map.

An excellent suggestion, and something I thought about at some point and then forgot to follow through with! I think I just set it to 23 degrees (Earth's tilt) by default. Probably because I could not figure out how to link the lighting angle to the 3D lighting. I started thinking of the 2D lighting more as a terrain differential than actual lighting... that problem with achieving true spherical shading N to S, E to W, really stumped me.

Okay, so, it's been roughly three years since I mentioned adding deserts, oceans and ice caps. I have gone through a score of attempts to produce something I'm happy with. I was hitting the limits of what you can get out of noises and failing to get good continent shapes, or the right distribution of desert to foliage. I'll be trying for years to come, no doubt, but I've finally got something close to what I originally envisioned for my Terraform filter.

Now, this does break away from the near-copy of Landform I started out with. If you like that version, you have a while to archive a copy of it before an update can go through and replace it. I am taking a little time before submitting the update, since I usually think of something more to do afterwards, and I have to wait for the Library to get the update before it will let me submit a newer update! I'll post a quick pick of preset 1, and in the next post I'll share the ffxml for those who want to test drive it and maybe offer a little feedback.

I've done a little tweaking already, and added to the Height and Normal map outputs. I'll keep the filter in my tinker list for a while, still. I did render out a few medium sized test renders to wrap them on a sphere and add clouds and atmosphere for a Photoshop rendered planet.