Orthographic Cartoon Islands

Okay, so I really just wanted to get this filter finished and submitted but I've allowed myself to make it much more complicated and robust than my initial intentions. I've gotten it to the point where I'm happy with the result and want to just make all the exposed parameters work as intended, but the damn thing has become a real pain and work is just so slow because of render time lol. Surprisingly it's not as slow of a render as some of the editors choices so I'm happy with that.

What's taking so long is that I set up a pretty cool "lighting" system so you can set the time of day (1-24) and get the expected lighting conditions, but I only made sunset look truly good, now I get to try to make it look good in all lighting conditions without screwing up sunset.

I'm also constantly running into parameter logic issues where I can't have if's or any other conditional nodes for parameters, this would be a welcome addition for simplifying the end result that the user sees.

Anyway, I wanted to share this because it's just taking longer than I wanted. I thought it would be cool to show the progression and the current end result in a nice desktop size res (1440x900). This is 100% FF made, the cloudy vignette is a separate filter I made specifically for my desktop image.

I have since removed the cartoony wave pattern since the filter has turned out a little more realistic.

Latest Full Resolution

I'll have to clean it up before I post it. It's incredibly messy right now.

... makes me want to play mini golf

Wow, that's really impressive! Can't wait to see the filter. The lighting is great.

How did you get the tops of the levels to round like that?

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I'm also constantly running into parameter logic issues where I can't have if's or any other conditional nodes for parameters, this would be a welcome addition for simplifying the end result that the user sees.

I agree! Some basic excel-like if then logic would be a great addition to FF. Also some simple math functions would be great. Example you have a slider control, and you want another input to be that +2. Right now there is no way to do that. (That I know anyway)

fwiw, ThreeDee has done some interesting things with pixel-based 'logic', check out: http://www.filterforge.com/filters/6497.html

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How did you get the tops of the levels to round like that?

I attached the portion of the filter that produces the round edge, it's a simple offset of a blurred mask on itself. I'll post the rest when it doesn't look like spaghetti, lol.

garbanzo: The early style was influenced by Zelda Wind Waker, I took the wave pattern idea directly from that.

Anyway, thanks guys! I've been pretty busy the last few days and so the filter hasn't gone anywhere. I appreciate the comments, they're great motivation.

3D Level.ffxml

So I was going through some of my WIP filters. As usual I come across this one. I want to finish it, but I can't bring myself to. I'm posting it now so you can see why.

Cartoon Islands17.ffxml

This just made my day happier.

cool filter BenBeck!

Once you move all the nodes away from each other so they aint so clustered it's not such a nightmare.. still looks like someone lost a spagetti fight but easier to see what's what. Love some of the nutty colour combinations when you hit the next varient button