Feature Request after being in the trenches for some time

[fxsculpt]

Been working on a project for the past 12 months at our studio. Use Terragen a lot.

Id like to put in a few votes for needed, simple to add features. Allow us to save money and you make money because the tool will be more useful.

1. Add checkbox "Render Panorama Image" and "Render Cubic Image" checkbox option. Nice and clear in the render settings directly next to where it says "Render Image" button. Why not? This has got to be one of the primary points to use this application.

2. Allow imported obj meshes to be shaded continuously as you rotate the camera like normal 3d app. The Terragen primitives do this but imported objects don't and makes alignment and placing cameras so difficult.

3. Remove this requirement for the "Raytrace Objects" flag to be OFF for imported meshes to render with displacement nodes. And for this need to have UVs deleted on the imported mesh for the procedural displacements to work (took us weeks to net search to figure this out. Waste of our money and time ). Any imported mesh tri or quad, should just work with any displacement nodes with no tweaks out of the box.

4. Support cameras from Maya and Max. This current search the net workflow for old forums .mel scripts to export text files, edit them by hand and re-save as a .chan file makes ZERO sense from a user standpoint and makes your company less profitable.

5. Allow population of other objects on imported meshes. Allow the painted shader to work on imported meshes also.

We find Terragen gives great results but falls short in these areas and makes the tool difficult to use for creating background that need to interact with other objects of specific design and shape. Think film set extensions, backgrounds, or game env back drops etc...

Thanks

[jo]

Hi,

I have a few comments about your ideas. Some vague because the plans around them are vague, some vague because I'm not sure about them but some firm because I know for certain what the story is. I can say everything you've mentioned has been under discussion in recent times.

1. Add checkbox "Render Panorama Image" and "Render Cubic Image" checkbox option. Nice and clear in the render settings directly next to where it says "Render Image" button. Why not? This has got to be one of the primary points to use this application.

We will add panorama generation tools, although not quite sure where that fits on the roadmap at the moment.

2. Allow imported obj meshes to be shaded continuously as you rotate the camera like normal 3d app. The Terragen primitives do this but imported objects don't and makes alignment and placing cameras so difficult.

The next release will have a smooth shaded object preview mode.

3. Remove this requirement for the "Raytrace Objects" flag to be OFF for imported meshes to render with displacement nodes. And for this need to have UVs deleted on the imported mesh for the procedural displacements to work (took us weeks to net search to figure this out. Waste of our money and time ). Any imported mesh tri or quad, should just work with any displacement nodes with no tweaks out of the box.

If this was easy we would have done it already. It's a considerable challenge. We will have raytraced displacements but I don't think it's likely before the next major release (i.e. TG3). The tradeoff right now is that the micropolygon renderer can render displacements whereas the raytracer can't but renders at somewhat higher quality and faster. OTOH it's not surprising the raytracer is faster because it's not trying to render displacements!

Would it help you if there was the option to specify the rendering method on a per object basis? For example you might use the micropolygon render for hero objects and the raytracer for everything else.

I'm not really sure what the story is with the UVs, but it sounds like something we could sort out in the near term.

4. Support cameras from Maya and Max. This current search the net workflow for old forums .mel scripts to export text files, edit them by hand and re-save as a .chan file makes ZERO sense from a user standpoint and makes your company less profitable.

Can't really comment on this but it's certainly on our minds.

5. Allow population of other objects on imported meshes. Allow the painted shader to work on imported meshes also.

Also things we've talked about and certainly desirable of course. We don't have any firm plans about them at this time, but populations on objects in particular is something which keeps cropping up for me.

Regards,

Jo

[dandelO]

Would it help you if there was the option to specify the rendering method on a per object basis? For example you might use the micropolygon render for hero objects and the raytracer for everything else.

Oh yes. I already imagined this would be how it would work for objects, as it is now, it's kind of all-or-nothing when choosing a rendering method to use. I vote yes to that.
Sorry for the interruption, fxsculpt.

[Hetzen]

4. Support cameras from Maya and Max. This current search the net workflow for old forums .mel scripts to export text files, edit them by hand and re-save as a .chan file makes ZERO sense from a user standpoint and makes your company less profitable.

I find camera support to be very good. You need the right script for Maya and the right plugin for Max. Three major things to keep in mind.

TG needs a free camera, which is easy to get from a target camera, you just link a free camera to the directional, then bake the keyframes (another script plugin).
Make sure the rotation order of your Maya or Max camera conforms to ZXY. If it doesn't, link a ZXY free camera and use that to export.
Try and keep as much of the action close to 0,0,0 and the Unit Scale of your 3d app in meters. This last one doesn't matter as much as TG will allow you to scale your camera import, and allow a decent obj export to keep your models on the ground.

I've been using cameras in TG for a couple of years now. You do sometimes get some issues if you scale the camera, but if you keep all apps in 1m system units, you don't get these problems at all.

I've never had to hand edit a script to create a chan file.


For skyboxes, I wrote and posted a .tgc file here...
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=12043.0

Just need to enter your camera position and hit render sequence to get your six images.

[Matt]

Make sure the rotation order of your Maya or Max camera conforms to ZXY. If it doesn't, link a ZXY free camera and use that to export.

If your Maya/Max scene has Y up, then make sure your Maya/Max camera's Rotation Order is ZXY.
If your Maya/Max scene has Z up, then make sure your Maya/Max camera's Rotation Order is YXZ.

Matt