#@$%$% grass clumps...

Started by Harvey Birdman, March 18, 2007, 08:53:45 AM

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child@play

yep, same here, you beat me to it ^^
perfection is not when there's nothing more to add, it's reached when nothing more can be left out


Buzzzzz

To start with this file has a Individual object where as an Object population is easier to control simply by checking set on terrain. Single objects need to be set manually which can cause one to curse loudly! LOL  ;D What I do to control the area of coverage of a population is to create a overhead camera or just move the existing one up a couple thousand meters and look down at -90 degrees. Then you can check and uncheck your pop show b-box a couple of times to see where it is and what to move. First I size the pop to my desired coverage area and then select it via the cross hairs and drag it to where you want it. I don't put much pop behind the camera for obvious reasons. Do you want the entire scene covered by grass? If so I will see if I can set it up for you, then you can see what I have done? If not I'll shut up now.  ;)

child@play

#17
buzzzzz *cough* , pass this guy some grass ;)
perfection is not when there's nothing more to add, it's reached when nothing more can be left out


Harvey Birdman

Buzzzz -

I know the file has a single object; I understand the difference between a single object and a population. If you read the sequence of postings, I was initially working with an object and population - the object being a member of the population. No objects would appear although their bounding boxes were properly placed. It was only after deleting the original object and population, then inserting a single object, that anyhting at all appeared. And as I said (quite clearly), the 'set on terrain' checkbox was checked.

Thanks for your help.

Buzzzzz

Quote from: Harvey Birdman on March 18, 2007, 05:22:28 PM
Buzzzz -

I know the file has a single object; I understand the difference between a single object and a population. If you read the sequence of postings, I was initially working with an object and population - the object being a member of the population. No objects would appear although their bounding boxes were properly placed. It was only after deleting the original object and population, then inserting a single object, that anyhting at all appeared. And as I said (quite clearly), the 'set on terrain' checkbox was checked.

Thanks for your help.
So sorry, I guess the file causing the problem would have helped if you had been able to save it. Sorry I upset you, just trying to be of help. I guess I should keep to myself as I normally do.

twistednoodle

@ Harvey - don't worry, you are not the only one to have had a nervous breakdown over populations - I've bought some shares in a wig factory!!!  I can now pretty much place the pops where I want (... mostly) but my initial attempts were incredibly frustrating!  I'm still trying to change the colour of the grass but with little success I just don't have the time to wait for the renders AND I've been trying to get nice &^&%$#$ cumulous clouds.  I can pretty much predict that you will start a thread %&%$# cumulous clouds (unless I beat you to it!) LOL, anyhow I'm hoping that it makes you feel better that others have had their tanties as well, my computer was lucky to survive mine!!   ::)
I may be crazy but at least I'm not crazy!

Oshyan

Harvey, I certainly agree that the population and object positioning controls need some work. Keep in mind of course that you're working with a pre-release Technology Preview so there is a ways to go. We will certainly be improving the object handling systems for the final release.

That being said I do think it's reasonably straightforward to work with objects right now. They key I would say is to not go too fast and jump in to a complex or unusual scene from the get-go. Start with the default scene and make a grass population. If you can get that to work (it should be dead simple), then add a procedural terrain and again adjust so that it works as expected. This simple approach should give you a better handle on how populations work and also give you more confidence that you can even make them work at all - there is nothing as singularly frustrating as never getting any results at all. Once you've been able to get those scenarious to work you can start getting more complicated, but don't necessarily jump straight to adding the grass to an existing scene. You may instead learn more by building up the example scene to a more complex level, keeping the grass population working as you go.

I've taken a look at your current scene and it's unfortunate that you couldn't include your original population since I can't now see what the problems might have been with it. I do note that your planet is heavily displaced and your current scen is significantly *below* the normal surface of the planet. This can cause problems sometimes. In particular it makes positioning of the population bounding box difficult since it is always referenced to the surface of the planet. The objects should still sit on the terrain properly because they are feeding off the Compute Terrain node which provides surface positioning, but the bounding box will appear to be in the wrong place, floating well above your terrain. The preview instances should show correctly at least.

With a few minutes of tinkering I've managed to get the grass rendering in your scene by scaling them up a bit and offsetting the base object vertically a bit. This is a quick fix when objects are below the terrain for some reason. Usually "Sit on terrain" will work but in some cases it doesn't seem to get proper samples for the terrain or perhaps is not accurate enough and thus you need to apply some manual adjustment to positioning, particularly in the vertical. This should be done through the base object that is being populated, inside the population node. You can see an example of this in the attached .tgd illustrating my changes to make the grass appear.

I hope this will be of some help. Do rest assured that things will get easier as development continues, and in the future I recommend you not spend hours struggling with a problem before asking for help. Don't assume the problem is you when you're dealing with early software such as this - it's probably the software's fault. ;D

- Oshyan

Harvey Birdman

Thanks Oshyan, thanks, T.N.; no problem, Buzzzzz.

;)