Export multiple objects as one, also export populations

[gregsandor]

Anyone know of a way to do this?  I have a piece of terrain, with individual models of buildings on it.  I want to select them all and export as one model (without terrain or anything else, just the buildings.)

[dhavalmistry]

if they are buildings, dint you bring them from outside of TG2?....

[gregsandor]

Yes, as individual models.  I wish to export them as a single model in their positions on the terrain.

[dhavalmistry]

I think you can use the multi shader to connect all the buildings into one and export as lwo or tgo.....

not sure if this will work....but you can give it a try...

[Oshyan]

You cannot export models as a "group" nor can you export populations at this time.

- Oshyan

[gregsandor]

You cannot export models as a "group" nor can you export populations at this time.

- Oshyan

That's what I thought; as it happens I don't need to do that for this project after all, but it would be very useful to be able to in future.

[Henry Blewer]

I have been working with exported heightfields in Blender to make image maps and locate objects. I have not been that successful yet. But it is not that hard using Blender to group objects/models and export them as one large object.

The problem is that Blender units do not scale. They have to be re-scaled in Terragen 2 to the right size. More often than not, the re-scaling results do not fit the heightfield properly. It will work if an object imported into Terragen 2 is part of a larger, say building, which share a common center point.

[gregsandor]

I use Anim8or; it's scaling is 1m :: 1m

[goldfarb]

you could render the terrain from a top view and turn everything off (atmosphere etc) and turn the buildings off but let them cast shadows
you'll end up with an image you can use in another program to place the buildings correctly

HTH

[Dune]

Or open the TGD in a text editor and sift out the coordinates....

[cyphyr]

Or open the TGD in a text editor and sift out the coordinates....

I've asked about this before and aparently its not possible, the ppopulation cordinated for each member of a population are only ever calculated at either prievew or render time and their coordinates are not saved anywhere (or at least no-where accessable). Shame, if they were the masive amount of time spent in calculating pops could be knocked off the total render time. eg in my ringworld saga the populations take over two hours to calculate, would be nice just to load a "baked" pop. I'm sure theres a good reason why it works this way.

Richard

[Oshyan]

"Baked" populations should be possible in the future.

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

It would be great to save the population data as a separate file, by population as they were added to the scene. It would not be too bad to convert this into other apps. Besides, I really like how T2's populator works!