Importing animatable characters from Blender...

[Hauksbee]

Over the years I have periodically checked in and watched Terragen grow. On this visit, it seems that it's really come of age. But while I'm seeing mouth-watering landscapes, I'm not seeing any people. Is it possible to import characters from other programs and walk them through these fabulous terrains? I have been away from 3D for a few years, so my knowledge of what's possible is a bit dated. Coming back to it, I've settled on Blender as a modeling/animation app. I think that characters from Blender in a Terragen world would be a marriage made in Heaven.

[TheBlackHole]

No. Terragen can load character meshes but animation of these meshes is so far impossible with TG2. You can, however, pose the model in Blender and load it in TG2 and stick it in your scene wherever you like.

[Hauksbee]

That's a great disappointment. Are there any plans to add this feature?

[Henry Blewer]

I have not tried this. I think the Wavefront obj exporter can save a series of meshes from Blender. A rigged character for example could be exported by using the Apply modifiers option. But this might mean deformation data, not am object series. http://www.blendernation.com/ might have more information. At least it may point you in the right direction.

[cyphyr]

Poser can export obj sequences and there was talk of supporting obj seq loading at one time, I don't know how far this developed.
Richard

[Oshyan]

Object sequences will be supported in the future. Most likely this will be a feature of the finalized Animation functionality.

- Oshyan

[goldfarb]

this was pretty much the first thing I tried to do with terragen...
one solution, though not the best, was to edit the .tgd file...

if you load an .obj file you'll get a new section in the .tgd file called 'obj_reader'
formated like this:

<obj_reader
name = "fireworks"
bla
bla
bla
filename = "fireworks.obj"
>
</obj_reader>

what you can do using a script (python in my case)
is write a series of new .tgd files with the 'filename' parameter changed to one of a series of files
like this:

<obj_reader
name = "fireworks"
bla
bla
bla
filename = "fireworks_001.obj"
>
</obj_reader>

<obj_reader
name = "fireworks"
bla
bla
bla
filename = "fireworks_002.obj"
>
</obj_reader>

<obj_reader
name = "fireworks"
bla
bla
bla
filename = "fireworks_003.obj"
>
</obj_reader>

then render each .tgd to an image name that matches the obj name (or whatever)

here is a test I did using Houdini to create some fireworks, with cubes at each point, then into terragen (default scene), then comped in Houdini.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd2tiFnE09Q

[cyphyr]

Impressive, I always knew it should be possible this way (or rather could see no reason why it would not be). Good to see it is
Richard

[goldfarb]

Impressive, I always knew it should be possible this way (or rather could see no reason why it would not be). Good to see it is
Richard

yeah it's pretty simple and if I was better at scripting I'd fix the stupid script I used and pass it around..I'll get to it at some point...
it could be extended to understand multiple obj_readers etc ...

[Dune]

Maybe someone else does this scripting in a minute and is willing to post an understandable version.... it would be quite handy for some interesting animations!

[Matt]

Object sequences in the same fashion as image sequences, using %04d (for example) to represent frame number, will be possible in the next alpha build and in the next public release. They cause a delay and other GUI problems every time you move to a different frame, but you will not need an external script anymore.

[goldfarb]

Object sequences in the same fashion as image sequences, using %04d (for example) to represent frame number, will be possible in the next alpha build and in the next public release. They cause a delay and other GUI problems every time you move to a different frame, but you will not need an external script anymore.

fantastic!