Mojotech (not only) for Bryce Users: Tutorial

How To
Make a Mess

Those straight cliff tops in the picture on the top of the previous page just don't look good. Let us mess them up a bit to make them look like in the picture above
Open the Texture Editor for the Terrain Height and create a second Leaf. Re-name it "Terrain 2", set the blend between the two Leaves to "Average", leave the Curve Editor as is, and edit the default Monofractal like in the screenshot below. Because this was so easy, you might play for a while now and experiment with different settings for "Largest Feature". You can follow in the two little Terrain Preview Windows what's happening. Remember, the bottom one shows you the Texture you are working on, and above that, you can see the combination of both. And don't forget, you can zoom in and out.
That's all, there's nothing left to explain, really. You've probably done things like this many times in Bryce, if you use the DTE. It's just like using the Average option to blend two Texture components.

It still doesn't look like the little picture on the top of this page, though. We need to mess up that other straight line as well - the transition between sand and vegetation. We use "Domain Distortion" to achieve that.
The altitude mapping calculation is a Function. Functions are rules how to take a set of Numbers, called the Domain, to calculate another set of numbers, called the Range. The visual result of the calculation (a kind of 3D graph of the function) in our case is that boring straight line.
Our Domain are the Altitude values for which we calculate the transition. If we scramble those values, then the transition between sand and greenery will also be scrambled.

Open the Terrain Material Editor and change the blend option between sand and vegetation to "Blend". Blend is the most versatile of all blend options. It can include a complete Texture Leaf which can be used to create interesting mixtures, like using 3D Alpha Channels in Bryce, or Latitude for climate Zones since Mojoworld 1.1. When you are done with this, look at a Bryce Material which contains the "Basic Altitude" texture, like the "Whole Mountain", and explore the texture of it in the DTE. It's pretty much the same thing, only that the programmers left the inner workings of it (and the really fine control) hidden away.

Set up the blend like in this screen capture. I'll explain in a moment.

How did I get there, and what does it all mean?
Changing "Altitude" to "Blend" opened the Kickstand . You are actually looking at a complete Texture Leaf. The default looks like this:

First you'll have to select the controls you need for the purpose of the blend. It's all about distorting the Altitude coordinates. So, change "WorldPosition" to "Altitude".
The next DDLB above it is the important one. It lets you select a method for distortion. Change it from "None" to "MonoFractal" Any Fractal will do, but MonoFractal is the quickest to calculate.
Next, above this, there's the DDLB which lets you choose Fractals and noise for a texture. We could use it like an Alpha Channel in Bryce to blend the Sand and Vegetation, but we are using Altitude instead. Set it from the default "MonoFractal" to "None".

The Monofractal will distort our transition line in a nicely random-looking manner, just like it might appear in Nature. Click to open its Control Stack and change the default settings.
Set the Largest Feature to 4000 meters. This means that the places where the sand creeps up highest into the vegetation will be up to 4000 meters apart.
Set the Result Scale to 2000 meters. It tells Mojoworld to make the sand creep up to an altitude of about 2000 meters.

If you render pictures now, they should look a little like what you see on the top of this page. Alas, they'll look like that all over the Planet! There are no large stretches of sea and there's no land bigger than Manhattan. And there are still no textures.
Making Worlds isn't a quick and easy job. You should perhaps allow six days for a good one, and you might need a day of rest at the end of it.