Rearrange object order under objects tab

[reck]

Can someone tell me how I can rearrange the objects that are listed under the objects tab? I have all my tree populations at the top followed by all the other objects in the scene (quite a lot). Now i've just added a further tree population and it's appeared right at the bottom of the list as expected and i'd like to move it up to the top with the other tree pops. The shaders tab has a move up and move down button to move the shaders up and down the list but there doesn't appear to be one for the objects.

I'm at a point where i'm making a lot of changes to the tree pops, copying and pasting cords etc and i'm finding I have to keep scrolling right down to the bottom to get to the last set of trees.

Thanks.

[cyphyr]

I don't think it can be done internally in Terragen. However if you open up the tgd in a text editor it's a simple job to find the relevant population and move it higher up the file. That should move the population to a higher position in the list.

Richard

[reck]

Thanks Richard. I'll load up the tgd file in Notepad and manually edit the order. Pitty there's no up\down arrows for objects like there is for shaders.

[Oshyan]

That's because the order of shaders in the network actually matters since they are hierarchical. The order of objects does not matter as far as rendering, though I understand it's useful for you in terms of your organizational approach. I would favor the node network at that point (the lists become cumbersomly long fairly quickly) and just use grouping.

- Oshyan

[reck]

Yeah I did change over to the node network in the end. I think it would be nice from an organisational point of view if we could create folders\groups in the list view so we could organise objects into logical groups that could be collapsed\expanded and that we could drag-and-drop objects between them. Once you start getting into double figures for populations and objects without anyway to organise them it can become a bit messy. In the meantime i'll carry on with the node network.

[Oshyan]

At present object node hierarchy does have some other significance, at least for certain nodes (e.g. population with an object inside it), so allowing arbitrary hierarchy might require quite a bit of rejiggering. I agree though that node hierarchy is a useful organizational tool so perhaps in general node hierarchy should not have a *functional* effect (i.e. it should not mean that an object is "parented" to another when it's inside its node network). Overall I think we just need to rationalize and homogenize the way the network works in terms of parentage, internal vs. external networks, etc. Long, long ago it used to be that everything was nested, but that was a pain for navigation because you had to keep jumping up and down levels. There's also the idea of a "macro" system that would not fit explicitly into this, but might require some similar adjustments so may come into play.

Bottom line, I agree all this needs some more thought and adjustment.

- Oshyan

[reck]

You phrase things so much better than I do Oshyan. Who knows what the future holds for Terragen (well I suppose you do).