Populator v4

[reck]

A few suggestions for the populator. Not sure how feasible these are.

1.   Multi-threaded. A combination of a high number of dense populations results in very slow population calculations. It's not nice hitting render the first time you open such a project only to have to wait 10 or so minutes before it actually starts rendering. Also I've noticed that Terragen sometimes recalculates the populations when it doesn't need to resulting  in more waits each time it thinks it needs to recalculate. For "quick" renders it's possible for the the population calcs to take longer than the actual render. Please multi-thread the populator.

2.   Support for multiple objects. It would be nice when adding a population if you could select a number of different objects to be in the same population and then weight each one to tell Terragen how much of each object there should be in the population. I have a number of tree objects for instance that come with a variety of trees with different looks and heights. At the moment I have to create multiple populations in the same spot to load each object.

3.   Colour tone variety. When creating a population it would be great if the populator could  make slight adjustments to the colour of the leaves, for instance, to give a more realistic look to the trees. This make some of the leaves slightly brighter and some slightly darker to give a more varied look. I've seen attempts on the forum but I think an option like this should be added if possible.

Do you think these could see the light of day?

[Upon Infinity]

You might get away with number 1 and 2, but I think number 3 would be nice, but not probable unless they implement a new, separate kind of populator because the current one does not assume you are populating trees, nor should it. 

[reck]

Well number 3 would be an option, you probably wouldn't want it for manmade objects but you could use it for all types of plantlife, grass, bushes etc, trees was just an example.

I suppose the way it would have to work is for the user to tell the populator which part\shader in the object that this effect would be turned on for. So staying with the tree example you would go into the tree object where you'd see all the different parts, trunk, branches, leaves etc and then select the part that needs the colour variety. So in this case you'd select the leaves so that the bark on the trunk and branches would not get affected. Then you could select the strength of the effect to set how much colour variation there should be.

[Hetzen]

I would agree with all of your suggestions, 3/ can be achieved with some blue perlin functions btw.

I would also add another...

4/ Object spacing works in 3 dimensions rather than just two. ie, trees don't thin out on steep gradients. The distance is calculated with surface relief in mind.

[reck]

Hetzen that's a good number 4

When I tested out adding colour variation from files on here it never worked too well for me. All I got was a much darker set of trees.

Do you have a clip file that demonstrates the perlin function you mention? It would help until populator v4 is released   

[Tangled-Universe]

#5 set up multiple populations' coordinates, wireframe modes, sit on surface, planet, density shader, etc. etc. with a masternode or by drag-select and right-click or...
Basically anything which saves me copy pasting tons of similar settings from one population to the other...

This is actually #1 by my preference

[dandelO]

I usually do my populations, if I need lots in the same area, with the object maker in the main internal network view and reassigned to the populator there. Then you can duplicate the populator node without duplicating the internal object, waiting on an object reload etc. only to then delete the object again to replace with the new object you're populating.
A bit quicker than copying every pop' parameter but you still need to reassign terrain tab inputs, seed and density shaders etc.

[yossam]

Reck,

When using the color variation clip files, you usually have to increase the value of the color shader to 1 or above. This actually depends on the individual models, but a lot of the color values are set at .5.........

[reck]

Thanks Yossam i'll have another look. I thought I had increased the colour value to greater than 1 in an attempt to get the now black tress some colour again and didn't have much success.

[Tangled-Universe]

I usually do my populations, if I need lots in the same area, with the object maker in the main internal network view and reassigned to the populator there. Then you can duplicate the populator node without duplicating the internal object, waiting on an object reload etc. only to then delete the object again to replace with the new object you're populating.
A bit quicker than copying every pop' parameter but you still need to reassign terrain tab inputs, seed and density shaders etc.

Hmmm...if I duplicate the populator, but need to re-assign an object then that's equally slow/fast as making a fresh population and copying all the stuff from the other without having to re-assign any object. If it has any difference in speed then it is very minimal if you'd ask me.

[reck]

1.   Multi-threaded. A combination of a high number of dense populations results in very slow population calculations. It's not nice hitting render the first time you open such a project only to have to wait 10 or so minutes before it actually starts rendering.

It seems I was being a bit optimistic with the 10 minute time. In my current project i'm having to wait nearly half an hour each time Terragen decides to run through the population calculations.

The 7 populations are taking 27 minutes to calculate.
The actual test render took 22 minutes.

I'm using a 4ghz core i7-2600 with 8GB of ram.

With these times it really stifles the creation process.

[Oshyan]

Sounds like some truly massive populations! I'm actually surprised they fit in 8GB of RAM for how many instances there must be. Is there a lot of heavy masking/blending going on with very large/dense population areas, where it ends up to actually not have a huge number of instances, but still has a large area to calculate? If so you may be able to significantly speed it up by using smaller population areas in more specific places.

As to the broader issue, I think making population calculations parallel (as in calculating *separate* populations at the same time) is probably pretty easy to do, and it's something I'd like to see implemented soon. Actually parallelizing single population calculations to use multiple threads is more challenging (I don't know how much more). Population caching is another possible future option which would help with some aspects of this.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

Yeah this time for a populater sounds crazy to me too. I haven't run into any issues like your describing. Not that I need to see it to believe it. But you must be doing something massive in terms of population number?
I was going to say I did not care much about "#1", but now Im very curious!

I do like the sound of #2 & 3! The way you described it, I think they sound like great ideas. You put into words perfectly what I think when I'm trying to design a scene. Have no idea at all how hard it is for staff to do it though

Basically anything which saves me copy pasting tons of similar settings from one population to the other...

I also suport this statement^^
But I would simplify it to, "Basically anything that saves me time "."" Because anything that is repetitive I would like to see go faster. But hey, this is a wish list thread.

@Oshyan
Sounds like positive statements from you! Can you please give a tiny hint at the next update. Just something to hold an addict over untill the next fix/update.

[RArcher]

I've had scenes that take a couple of hours or more to populate.  Not really a matter of too many instances, more an issue of wanting small clumps of trees spread out over a very large area.  Think 20k x 20k area - 1 meter or less spacing blended by a powerfractal to get small clumped areas of trees.  If I recall correctly this scene: Mission Peak Preserve took around 3 and a half hours to populate.

[Oshyan]

Yes, that's what I figured Ryan. I know it's not as convenient, but I wonder if you couldn't instead use a number of smaller, specifically placed populations, blended by the same input as the single large one, but simply confined in area to where the trees actually show up. Obviously not ideal, but for a scene you're working on for many hours/days, it could save quite some time and could be worth setting up.

- Oshyan