Hi folks,

After perhaps the longest DCG beta ever, we're happy to announce the immediate availability of Terrain Tools.

Based on the Anything Goos technology, Terrain Tools adds a variety of new tools for shading the intersections of water planes, terrains, and other objects. Surf, Beach, Intersect, and more enhance your water and terrain shaders.

Please check out the product page at

http://digitalcarversguild.com/plugin.php?ProductId=19

the Getting Started with Terrain Tools tutorial at

http://digitalcarversguild.com/tutorial.php?TutorialId=29

and the Terrain Tools user gallery at

http://digitalcarversguild.com/gallery.php?ProductId=19

As with all our plug-ins, Terrain Tools supports an evaluation mode. You can download and try out Terrain Tools from the links below.

Carrara 5.0
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c5/terraintools.zip
Mac OSX Power PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c5/terraintools.sit
Mac OSX Universal Binary
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c5/terraintoolsub.zip

Carrara 4.0
PC
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/terraintools.zip
Mac OSX
http://digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/terraintools.sit

Regards,

Wow. Paid for. Downloaded and tried out!

Can not get over how clever--though dont understand the workings at all! Just follow the instructions.

HOWEVER!--I want to have a different sea shader for the sea itself rather than the black one.

Howto please?

Great plugin!  Thank you Eric!

Thanks Eric, awesome plugin this will help.

Quote - Wow. Paid for. Downloaded and tried out!

Can not get over how clever--though dont understand the workings at all! Just follow the instructions.

HOWEVER!--I want to have a different sea shader for the sea itself rather than the black one.

Howto please?

In that case instead of using Surf directly in the Color channel, use a Mixer operator and use Surf as the Mixer. Put your foam shader in one side, the water shader in another.

Just keep in mind the shading rule that color + reflection + transparency shouldn't be greater than 100%. If it does, your water may appear to glow.

Regards,

Looks good by the description, but out of my price range.  I'll have to stick to using terragen for terrains I guess.

Very nice Eric! Is it possible to get  a tut on how to create those nice rings like in your shark picture? It states you also used EnhanceC. I have that too, but am a complete newbie.

I'm working on a second tutorial that will go over doing ripples like Mark did in the shark image and I did with the beach ball. Basically for those that want to play before I finish the tutorial, you drop an Intersect shader in the bump channel and use a Custom falloff to do the ripples.

Regards,

Thanks, Eric. I will be looking forward to you tutorials. I thought that you did the shark picture, sorry. Love the beach ball though, especially the stones under the water. Looks like the "beaches" where I grew up.

I really like the look of this plugin and tried it out in demo mode but when I try a test render the effect stops less than half way down the image and reverts to a normal plane. This even happens when I use the demo file I downloaded from the site.

I already own the anything grows plugin so I decided to take it on trust and buy it anyway but when I got to the payment page I found that paypal wasn't an option. As the money comes in via Paypal on my subscription site I obviously wanted to use it to pay for the plugin so its annoying that I can't do it that way.

Rids,

It sounds like the demo mode is timing out on you. It counts the number of shader evaluations and on that sample file it will run out real fast, since there are quite a few Surf and Beach shaders being used. Try playing with a single Surf or Intersect in the color channel.

I would like to add Paypal to the payment options, but last time I checked, they don't support a business model where they collect and remit the appropriate local taxes. I'm not set up to collect the sales tax (except in Pennsylvania, USA, and even there it's a pain), VAT, etc. and don't want to add that overhead.

Regards,

I think you only pay sales tax for sales in your home state and VAT shouldn't be due as its a sale from outside of the EEC.

Hi Eric

on the getting started page there is a dead link near the page bottom, i wanted to dowload the scean file but could not.

the line with dead link looks like this.

You can download the complete scene file from here.

the link worked ok for me last night and works ok now.

Tried again Works fine now. hhmmmm

Quote - I think you only pay sales tax for sales in your home state and VAT shouldn't be due as its a sale from outside of the EEC.

As of July 1st, 2003 VAT laws changed to include digital products sold in the US to customers in the EU. You've got to collect the tax which appears to be different for each country and forward it to the appropriate national taxing authority, which is different for each country. If paypal comes up with a service, like digibuy does, that keeps on top of all the rules, and handles all that for me, I'll add them.

Right now I believe to get educated in all that, get set up to collect tax for all the places I need to, and actually do it would take more time away from building product than I think I would recoup in sales to people who don't want to use one of the options digibuy offers.

Regards,

Thanks for the info on EU VAT, I appear to have missed that little change
I had to have this plugin so sucked it up and used the card instead.