State of terrain texture channels

Hey guys,

I'm a bit busy at the moment, so just wanted to ask it here:

What is the state of the terrain texture channels? Which channels and textures are used for what? And are there any free channels? There was some talk that Deferred Shading might clear something up.

Base, macro, detail and normal as always. Normal map uses alpha channel for parallax effect and the alpha channels in the other textures are unused. I can't see how things how things could be cleared up there.

A) https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/development/Engine/source/terrain/hlsl/terrFeatureHLSL.cpp#L1180

Kept your reserved channel in the gbuffer in the #color buffer in place for blending to play with

B) https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/development/Engine/source/terrain/hlsl/terrFeatureHLSL.cpp#L1218 stand in for #material though odds are come pbr we'l want to fill that gba with the usual smooth/ao/metal for projected reflectivity

C) the #material slot gets filled via https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/ee6d9961e3ccae0adb7d10a804eda40cbce73893/Engine/source/materials/processedShaderMaterial.cpp#L1155 and referenced via https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/ee6d9961e3ccae0adb7d10a804eda40cbce73893/Templates/Full/game/shaders/common/lighting/advanced/vectorLightP.hlsl#L199-L207 so if you absolute need to treat terrain like a speci snowflake, that's quite possible (at the moment head's only using 2 'bits' out of the 8 potential), though

D) since we combine the results one frame behind via https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/ee6d9961e3ccae0adb7d10a804eda40cbce73893/Templates/Full/game/core/scripts/client/lighting/advanced/deferredShading.cs#L58-L59 + https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/ee6d9961e3ccae0adb7d10a804eda40cbce73893/Templates/Full/game/core/scripts/client/lighting/advanced/deferredShading.cs#L68 + https://github.com/GarageGames/Torque3D/blob/ee6d9961e3ccae0adb7d10a804eda40cbce73893/Templates/Full/game/core/scripts/client/renderManager.cs#L52 should have no particular issues slipping things in in it's own step if needed.