Mask Renders

There currently is no specific mask render setting in MojoWorld Generator, but there is a way to fake it. This tutorial will first discuss making a mask for only the sky. The second section will discuss making a mask for only the water. Given those two masks, a third mask for only the terrain can be either rendered using the techniques below or created in your image editing program by combining the other two masks.

Making a mask render involves many changes to your world, so you'll want to set up your specific view and save two copies of the planet in that view - one for the full color render and one for the mask render(s).

The color render is just rendered as-is. In the mask render copy, however, we'll be making changes to the lighting, the sky and atmosphere, the water material (if there is any) and the land material.

PART 1 - SKY ONLY MASK

Land Material

For the mask, the land should be plain black. Since some of the land shaping can come from the material in the form of displacement, the material can't just be swapped out.

For each leaf in the material, make the following changes:

  • Set all colors to 'widget' and set the color dots to black. This includes 'diffuse', 'specular', 'glow' and 'transparency'. (If you are using transparency on your land material, this may complicate matters. Setting the transparency to a solid black color dot widget will remove all transparency effects.)
  • Set the shinyness to 'widget' and set its value to something large, in the 50000 range. (Remember, 0 == perfectly shiny, large values == not shiny!)
  • Do Not Change the displacement!

Water Material

It may be important to preserve the wave displacement, depending on your camera view. In the water material, make note of any displacement textures. This tutorial will assume a one-leaved water material with a texture-driven displacement. Go into the displacement texture editor and make sure that the displacement texture has an obvious name.

Back in the water material editor, create a new material. This will be a default displacement materal. Change the diffuse to black, change the shinyness to something large and change the displacement to a texture. In the new texture editor that opens for the displacement, use the DDLB in the upper left to pick the displacement that your water material had been using.

Sky and Atmosphere

The first thing to do is to delete or disable any and all cloud layers. Next, set the Atmosphere to 'None'. Make sure the Sky Background is a Simple Sky and set the Sky Color to a widget. Set the color dot to white. NOTE: The sky will come out _almost_ white, and not a solid white, either. You will need to use a tool such as the 'magic wand' in Photoshop with a tolerance of 16 or so to select the rendered sky and force it to be a solid white after rendering.

If you have any moons or sun in your sky, those should be made invisible by opening the Object List dialog and clicking on the eye in the left-hand column to turn off the render objects associated with the moons and sun.

Lighting

For the mask render, there should be no lighting to create any depth in the landscape. To turn off the lighting, again use the eye icons in the Object List dialog to turn off the Ambient Light and the SunLight (and any other lights you may have added).

You are now ready to do a mask render. When completed, you will have a full color render and a mask render for the sky:

PART 2 - WATER ONLY MASK

To make a mask that covers the water only, make the following changes to the planet file:

  • In the Sky Backdrop, change the Sky Color color dot to black instead of white. NOTE: The sky will come out a very dark grey, and not a solid one at that. You will need to use a tool such as the 'magic wand' in Photoshop with a tolerance of 16 or so to select the rendered sky and force it to be a solid black after rendering.
  • In the Water Material editor, change the diffuse color to white and change the glow color to white. NOTE: The water will come out _mostly_ white, but again, you'll need to do some post-processing on the mask to ensure that it is a full, true white.
This is what the water mask looks like when post-processed:

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