This tutorials ’ objective is to show a method of Comfortably blending textures within Softimage XSI’s rendertree in such a way,that the actual blending an easily be hanged right in the viewport,at any time. As an example, I would like to use the landscape I ’ve created for my short film “Ostbahn Kurtl ”.It is the adaptation of an old cartoon that tells the story of how the Austrian singer Dr.Kurt Ostbahn came to bear his name (“Ostbahn ” means “of the eastern railway ”) as a kid, and how he became a cool son of a gun.
The landscape consists of different soil conditions: grass, mud, and a pebbly structure. Around the little railway hut and the train tracks, the pebbly surface should appear. But under the trees and on the hills in the background, there should be grassland. In order to be able to control the different appearances quickly, the weighting of each structure is controlled by weight maps, which are defined directly in the viewport via weight painting, and an therefore be modified very easily,at any time. It also makes it a breeze to make eg. the grass show through around the trees (different geometries), as it an be painted right onto the geometry, without struggling with texture coordinates and the like.