Terragen 2.5.5.0. Updates for everybody!

Started by Matt, April 27, 2013, 03:39:02 AM

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Matt

Terragen 2.5 updates for everybody! We've released an update for licensed users of the full edition with some bug fixes and other enhancements. For everbody else, version 2.5 of the Free Non-commercial Edition is now ready to download.

Build 2.5.5.0 includes:


  • More robust OBJ reader
  • Corrected normals on the Card object
  • Heightfield Shader "stepped" mode now works (fixed a crash)
  • Fixed a crashing bug when moving keys in the Dope Sheet
  • Mac only: Fixed a 64 bit problem with writing TGOs
  • Mac only: The 64 bit PPC version works again
  • Fixed bug that would prevent populations from knowing they need to repopulate
  • Fixed the problem where cloud layers or atmospheres were not positioned and scaled correctly after changing a planet's position or radius
  • Other user interface improvements

If you're updating from Terragen 2.4, Terragen 2.5 brings significant new import and export functionality. Industry standard FBX format is now supported for both import and export, and can include cameras, lights and nulls - all with animation - as well as terrain geometry. In addition, Nuke .CHAN files can now be exported from Terragen as well as imported.

Significant changes in 2.5 include:


  • Export of camera, lights, nulls and animation to FBX format
  • Export of camera data to Nuke .CHAN format
  • Export of terrain data to FBX format
  • Import of cameras, lights, nulls and animation from FBX
  • New Card node that can be populated and used for billboards

Licensed users of the full version, please use the built-in Help -> Check For Updates feature.

You can download the Free Non-commercial Edition here: http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen-2-free-download

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Henry Blewer

Yes. I am glad that the population update is fixed. Had to use small pops for a bit.
http://flickr.com/photos/njeneb/
Forget Tuesday; It's just Monday spelled with a T

pclavett

Thanks guys for the update and especially for that fix for the Mac platform concerning the tgo's....had to go back and forth from 64 to 32 bit to deal with this ! Your work is appreciated ! Have a great weekend !
Paul

TheBadger

It has been eaten.

digitalguru

I'm getting different behaviour with the populations since the new upgrade.

In the scene I'm working on, when I render - the populations recalculate every time. My understanding was that, if the repopulate every frame box was unchecked and nothing had changed in the population it wouldn't recalculate. Since populations had been changed in Terragen 2.5.5.0, I used an old scene I made just to test the population function and tried in in the last version back (2.5.4.0) and it works as expected - populate in the scene file, and it doesn't populate again during rendering. Then I went back and tried the test scene in the lastest version (2.5.5.0) and this worked as expected also!

I'm just wondering if there's some legacy code in the other scene I've been working on that's causing this or a maybe a bug? It's a big scene and I wonder what the trade off would be in debugging the scene vs waiting for the populations to calculate (adds a over a minute to each render).

Or, please point out if I'm just missing something obvious   :) - I don't have Repopulate Every Frame on for any population node.

Matt

#5
When you start a render, the populator is supposed to automatically repopulate if it thinks something in the scene has changed which might affect the population.  Typically these are the density shader, the terrain shader and the planet connected to the poulation. There was a bug in 2.5.4.0 (and some earlier versions) which caused it to ignore most changes, therefore it "forgot to repopulate". More precisely, it would repopulate for changes that were intended not to require repopulation (such as Preview mode, bounding box settings and things like that), but if you make a few different changes in the scene you might not realise it's doing anything wrong. You might think it was working properly most of the time.

I've fixed that for 2.5.5.0, so it will now repopulate in the cases where it's designed to, and not repopulate when it recognises that the only changes are harmless. That's the theory, but in practice I know that it may be a little over-zealous in some cases. Sometimes seemingly innocuous changes to the scene will result in a repopulation even though we, as humans, know that it doesn't need to.

In your case, in your new scene perhaps there are more things connected to your population, or you made different kinds of changes that resulted in repopulation.

This problem has been raised by our alpha testers and I plan to improve this. One suggestion is to make population a manual process only - you would always have to tell Terragen to repopulate, unless you've just loaded a project. One problem with this idea is that your population might look different when you reload the project compared to when you last rendered an image, if you forgot to repopulate when there was a change. I think that Vue avoids this discrepancy by storing all instances in the scene file, but we don't do that yet. It hugely increases the size of the scene file. When we introduce population caching in future, this would solve the discrepancy but greatly increase the size of the project file. Another idea is to make the populator much more careful and intelligent about what changes require repopulation.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

digitalguru

thanks for the info

the scene I'm working has projection cameras feeding into a couple of image maps shaders combined with an add color node then into the density of the population nodes (don't ask!) so maybe it's something to do with that setup that's triggering the repopulate at render time -  though it didn't do it in the previous release. No probs with a simpler scene though.

Like the idea of a manual "set it and forget it" mode, I'm guessing the repopulate every frame is only really useful if you have clip to camera on?

Matt

#7
Quote from: digitalguru on April 29, 2013, 05:11:08 PM
Like the idea of a manual "set it and forget it" mode, I'm guessing the repopulate every frame is only really useful if you have clip to camera on?

Yes, or if you animate your density shaders or terrain in a way that the populator can't recognise, such as an animated image sequence.

EDIT: If you key frame animation, the populator will see that something has changed and will repopulate, but if you're animating using an image sequence you need to check "repopulate every frame" in case it doesn't recognise that anything has changed.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

digitalguru

mind you  - it's quite amazing how much geoemtry you can chuck at Terragen and it doesn't complain, I haven't reached a point where I needed to clip to camera yet  :)

mogn

I am currently running tg2.5 32 bit in my laptop (windowsXP), but have lost all contacts with the internet.
I can't even load the internet browser.
I have therefore bougth a Windows 8 64 bit laptop.
Can I move the TG2 directory to thw win8 maschine, and from there download a 64 bit version of tg 2.5.5.0 ?

regards mogn.

Oshyan

Mogn, that *might* work. We can also just send you a link to download 2.5.5 directly. I'm assuming you're a license owner. If so, send an email to support AT planetside.co.uk (or use the contact form on our website) and let us know your registration information and we can send you the link.

- Oshyan

mogn

Copied the whole planetside folder contaning all my tg data (including the key) to c:/documents.
Then I executed the tg program with success, and downloaded the 64 bit Windows version.
Now all is ok, thanks.

Oshyan

Glad to hear it. Enjoy the new machine!

- Oshyan

rcallicotte

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Chinaski

#14
Hi guys!

Is there a 2.5.5.0 64b free version of TG2 (I use the 2.5.5.0 32b)? And, if it exist, can we find it somewhere on planetside (the download links of old builds are broken)? Thanks!

nb: I would compare the render time between my old computer and a modern (new i5) one (which is in transit at home).
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