Decoupling Height in Surface filters

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Kraellin wrote: if HEIGHT were a separate component, one could use it more than once in other portions of the filter. i dont have a current need for this, but it seems like it could be desirable.

Well, I sure could
Another good suggestion I hope gets a little consideration

dilla, specifically, the height node on surface filters. in my 'blood stain' filter is a good example of why this is needed. if i turn the height control way up, because an effect i'm applying to an imported image cant be adjusted heightwise without also adjusting the imported image.

ok, i ran into this again when working on a filter. so, let me put this a different way and give an example. perhaps we dont need this if someone can tell me how to do this, but so far, i'm not seeing it.

in crapadilla's 'noise lab' thread i learned a bit more about noises and one of the things i learned was how to use one noise on the surface color and one on height in the results component to get a lot more depth in a given filter. that was good. but, now i want to take it an extra step. let's say i have done the noise and noise thing on surface color and height, but i now want to add something additional to that effect, an overlay. i can do this with two separate filters and that's good, but i'd prefer to do it in one filter. so, the question is, if i've already got a surface color and height combination that i like, how do i add an additional element that overlays those two effects and would be the foreground over those, if i've already used the surface color and height nodes on the results component?

i dont see how i can do an overlay on the surface color because the height control is going to alter both the original noise and the overlay. and i cant put it on the height node because that's going to affect the height of the surface color and such. so, the point of this thread was to be able to essentially have another results component that wasnt named 'results' but that would do the same things as the results component, so that i put additional elements in there without warping the two noise elements.

let's state this another way, just to be sure i've got this right. let's say i had another component that did exactly the same thing as the results component. i could plug one noise into the surface color and one into the height and then have that output to anything else. i could then add in any additional elements and components and routines i wanted to and then plug that all into the final results component. essentially, this would do a pre-render on height to get that final noise blending i wanted and then be able to plug that into my overlay and finally to the result. and, the results component, the real one, could be either surface or simple still because the pre-rendering on the other one would already be a done and just pass a final out its output.

i really dont think this is impossible to do and i do keep running into this in filter making. i want to pre-render a height and surface color combination like the current results component does and then pass that on to the rest of the filter. this shld be possible to do.

jffe, an inversion on some of those nodes might help me. i'll look into that. but i still dont see why one cant just render a bump map type thing like we do in refraction or some of the other 'height' nodes that exist in components. in fact, that gives me an idea. perhaps i can do my pre-height with some of those components that already have a 'height' node. that might work. i'll look at it some more.

yeah, i've been pushing the limits with blend modes on this one. and i just tried refraction to as a pre-rendering height blend. it came a little closer, but no prize. i'll keep toying with it. noise elevation didnt work at all.