Iterate over all available Heightfield layers and combine everything into one?

[ron2812]

Hi there!

What would be the best approach to iterate over all available heightfield layers and combine them?
E.g. I have layers like:
- rocks
- path1
- path2
- dirt
- dirtabc
- various erosion layers
- ....

The user can enter a custom layer name in my HDA and I won't know exactly how many layers are in the final heightfield.
Now i need one layer that combines every other layer (to create a layer for all areas that don't belong to any other layer).

What would be the best way to approach this?

Thanks in advance!

[anim]

not sure if there is a node for this, I'm not that familiar with hfields

but you should be able to do it in Volume Wrangle

string pattern = "rocks path* dirt*";  // pattern matching layer names you want to combine
float combinedlayers = 0;
for (int i=0;i<nprimitives(0); i++){
    string name = prim(0, "name", i);
    if (match(pattern, name)){
        float value = volumesample(0, name, @P);
        combinedlayers = max(combinedlayers, value); // combining layers using maximum 
    }
}

f@mask = fit01(combinedlayers,1,0); // mask will contain complementary areas to combined layers

 

[ron2812]

Awesome Tomas!

This is exactly what i was looking for. Thank you!

[vinyvince]

Hi all.

Im Looking to combine all my tiles into one large terrain, and blend the border of each according to the surrounding tiles so there is no break. 

I could do a Xform or copy to point, and obviously blending is okay for two layers , but to do automate this to a full large mosaic?

Cop , could be one i guess, but i don't know, maybe it's only me, buthe old beast feels so slowww , unstable and heavy

 

Also, speaking of syntax here, this is an easier question, just can't remember how to ... Let's say i have 10 variantes heightfield generated on my disk  saved in this folder structure  "/var00x/craterterrain.tif" _and i want to attribute a piece variant to each of then to scatter each terrain , do you remember what will be the proper way to load each tile from the different folder , assign a variant number and feed the scatter?

Here's if an heightfeild file input to read... PDG will be a good way, not sure how, is there a more simple way?

 

________________________________________________________________

Vincent Thomas   (VFX and Art since 1998)
Senior Env and Lighting  artist & Houdini generalist & Creative Concepts
 http://fr.linkedin.com/in/vincentthomas

 

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by vinyvince

[vinyvince]

Would be great if we could combine the patch tool with scattering ... Will be a nice feature upgrade

[vinyvince]

I guess it's possible by building a 2d array with u,v translation values to give to the patch translate, then for each iteration to load a different heightfield.

Have to look how to do that, especially as i said in my previous post for loading a different heightfield from disk for each iteration pass, if someone knows, please drop a line

For now it's semi manual