Simple Shape Shader - Displacement Tab

This is the Displacement tab of the Simple Shape Shader.

Settings:

• Apply displacement: If this is checked the shader will generate displacement information.
• Displacement direction: Choose the direction for displacement.
• Displacement amplitude: Set the amount of displacement.
• Displacement offset: Set the starting offset of the displacement.
• Displacement edge profile: This controls the profile which is applied to the edge of the shape. This creates a 3D edge profile, as you might expect from displacement. See above for examples of the different edge profiles. Note that the "Stroke" edge profile is not available for displacement.
• Displacement edge width: This param lets you set the width of the edge area of the shape. To show the edge profile the Displacement edge profile popup needs to set to something other than "None".
• Position key:

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Literally, to change the position of something. In graphics terminology to displace a surface is to modify its geometric (3D) structure using reference data of some kind. For example, a grayscale image might be taken as input, with black areas indicating no displacement of the surface, and white indicating maximum displacement. In Terragen 2 displacement is used to create all terrain by taking heightfield or procedural data as input and using it to displace the normally flat sphere of the planet.

A shader is a program or set of instructions used in 3D computer graphics to determine the final surface properties of an object or image. This can include arbitrarily complex descriptions of light absorption and diffusion, texture mapping, reflection and refraction, shadowing, surface displacement and post-processing effects. In Terragen 2 shaders are used to construct and modify almost every element of a scene.