TG2 tötet jedes bischen Kreativität !!

[cajomi]

Well, you are right. Coding sensful sliders costs some time. It is a question of priority:
Code as many algorithm as possible and then see, how to manage them
or code a algorithm, code the usuage, then the next, and see how far you come within the time.
The first will result in a very bad usable application, a car with unbelievable power engine and wood tires,
the second in a car with not so powerful engine but with really power grip tires.

Sometimes I got here the feeling, that this community is standing around a racing car and prising this damn powerful engine and if you then speak about the wood tires, all look away and back at the power engine.

[rcallicotte]

Part of this "wait and see" attitude is simple patience that the end-product is built well and powerful.  I'm willing to wait, if it means TG2 will be the very best it can be.

Well, you are right. Coding sensful sliders costs some time. It is a question of priority:
Code as many algorithm as possible and then see, how to manage them
or code a algorithm, code the usuage, then the next, and see how far you come within the time.
The first will result in a very bad usable application, a car with unbelievable power engine and wood tires,
the second in a car with not so powerful engine but with really power grip tires.

Sometimes I got here the feeling, that this community is standing around a racing car and prising this damn powerful engine and if you then speak about the wood tires, all look away and back at the power engine.

[cajomi]

That is a great honourful religious attitude.
Sure your trust is so big, that you have of course purchased TG2.

[l.a. akira]

The node editor is great and I hope it doesnt change at all and to me, it makes sense the same way nukes node editor makes sense.

[Oshyan]

Many of the slider ranges have already been set explicitly and with specific "sensible" settings in mind. What makes sense for one person or group of users doesn't necessarily make sense for others though. If someone feels that a value of 20 on a particular setting is the "only way" to get a particular effect they will feel that limiting that slider to 1 doesn't make sense. But in reality there are probably many ways to achieve the effect they are looking for, some of them perhaps better than what they are using.

So simply because there is one way that works ok to create an effect by using a potentially extreme value for a setting doesn't mean the value range for the slider should be changed. You can still use the high values if you wish, but you should also pay attention to the default slider ranges and consider that they may be this way for a reason and there may be other, perhaps better ways to achieve your desired effects. Naturally these slider ranges will also be tuned further in the future, but it's important that you know that already they are not random or senseless in most cases.

In the end we could continue talking indefinitely about Planetside's development approach, the choice to release the Technology Preview, our pace of updates, etc. There is certainly validity in some of these criticisms and we're well aware of the limitations of our process and the consequences of that. What matters for most is the end product. If you don't like the way things are being approached now that may be a warning sign for you, but keep in mind most other products go through similar stages behind the scenes where years of development go unseen, and so the user community may be spared these moments of doubt and can judge the final product on its own merits.

We were aware of the danger of premature judgment of the product based on the Technology Preview when we decided to release it and we still feel that it has resulted in much more positive outcome than negative. For many this approach has given the opportunity to get an early start on learning a new approach to scene creation. For those who simply get frustrated at the pace of updates and feel more and more skeptical about the final release quality, it is probably best just to take a break and wait for the finished product. Then it can be judged on its real capability, ease of use, polish and overall value. Any previous issues with update frequency, etc. do not necessarily need to factor in - the important part is that we will have set a release date and met it, with a finished product that can stand on its own merits. If the end product reasonably lives up to expectation then it is fair to say that the process that led there, while not perfect, was workable.

We are continously evaluating and improving our processes and you can look forward to many positive changes in the future. The simple fact is that making major changes in the middle of later stages of development on a significant flagship product is difficult and disruptive, so while we have implemented many improvements internally, it will take a while to see what may be more desirable external changes. The bottom line is we are working hard to bring you a product that will be powerful, usable, functional, enjoyable, and that we at Planetside can all be proud of.

I hope that you will all revisit your opinions and concerns when the final product is released later this year. In the meantime enjoy the Technology Preview for what it is, but don't let it or the lack of this or that feature, or even the pace of updates, frustrate you. Take some time away if you need to. Those who have purchased are still entitled to an update to the final, release version, and that is ultimately the major benefit of pre-purchase - a significant discount on the price of the final product. Intermediate updates have been promised and will continue to be delivered, but the final release is really our focus.

- Oshyan

[rcallicotte]

Yes, I am an intelligent believer.   

Planetside has my vote and my $$.

That is a great honourful religious attitude.
Sure your trust is so big, that you have of course purchased TG2.

[rcallicotte]

@Oshyan - "...most other products go through similar stages behind the scenes where years of development go unseen, and so the user community may be spared these moments of doubt and can judge the final product on its own merits."

Thanks for making your process and reasoning clearer.

[Volker Harun]

Hi Cajomi,

I really like that engine and those brand new high tech wheels of this vehicle. Maybe those wheels are not for some old and muddy roads - but the car drives. The amount of dials and switches may seem odd and sensless but fine tuning will help ,-)

I have purchased it for some reasons. One reason might be that this program is yet so powerful that I do not need a polish. Speeking for me.

I have watched the development states of the early Terragen versions. And always the sliders were reasonable. The presets were reasonable, too. There was no luck, but thought about the sun's diameter, horizon's curving and so on.
And of course, the sliders give you good results.
I am too lazy to use sliders, as I have a number in mind that I simply type in. This is just as I was going through some trial and error approaches, which I learned from. It is very (!) seldom that I use numbers beyond the reach of sliders, but.

Volker

P.S.: The 'old roads'-term used above is for old computers, not persons.

[Matt]

Hi all,

As Oshyan says, most of the sliders have been given min and max values that correspond to "reasonable" ranges of values for that parameter. There may be some exceptions, and it's useful if you can let us know where they are so we can fix them.

For many parameters the idea of "maximum" value is almost meaningless because it would be very, very high. Who is to decide what the maximum value should be? In these cases we have to choose an upper limit that is reasonable for the majority of scenes, otherwise the slider would not provide enough resolution (even with a power function on the slider, Cajomi, which I use in many cases). We also have to limit the range of the slider to suggest what values might be good, but again there is not always a simple rule for this.

If there are some sliders which you believe have badly-chosen minimum and maximum extents, please let us know so that we can either fix them or discuss the reasons for the current values.

Thanks,

Matt

[cajomi]

That sounds good, and I did not have proofed the sliders. Here I trust what others said about the higher value.

To give you a better understanding for my frustration:
GeoControl is developing fast. It has now some strong features, for example, a river and lake tool, which produces natural rivers and lakes.
Well, to get those river and lakes rendered and to get them look really good, the render application must be able to:
fade out the colour in deeper parts of the water, must be albe to handle two terrains at the same place without mixing them, must be highly accurate (else the water parts will not fit).
After some tests I found, that Vue is not exact enough, Bryce has no fade out, Carrara has no fade out and a bad atmosphere.
When I start on GeoControl I had up from the beginning TG2 as the most important renderengine in mind. I had to develope GeoControl 2 with only assumption, how TG2 will work, what it will be able to render. And still I am forced to do that.
How about tilings? How about file formats for placing a "close up" terrain in a existing terrain? How about 16bit mask import?
I bagged, that you give me a chance to develope GC2 with many matches to TG2, but not success. I bought the tech preview to get closer to the developement. Else no success, because I definintly have not the time to read through the many tutorials, that are needed to use the tech preview. Also it is not really "optimized" at time on importing terrains.
GC2 will release end of the summer. And I am fully in the fog, how the workflow with TG2 will be. I am building a racing care, but damn, I have no streets to drive it.

[Matt]

Hi Cajomi,

TG2 was designed to be much more flexible and extensible than v0.9 was, and unfortunately supporting a purely heightfield-and-mask workflow is only one of possibilities that need to built on top of the low-level components. If we had poured all our resources into that too soon then the procedural flexibility may have suffered and we may have locked ourselves into a particular workflow too soon. One of the most important goals for the TG2 Technology Preview is to give the artist/TD many choices for procedural scene construction, and we still have some work to do until the top-level intuitive layers are completed.

I developed Terragen v0.x from scratch so I know very well how quickly a relatively focused application can be developed to a high standard, but Terragen 2 has been a much more challenging project with longer term goals.

You can import any number of heightfields, and although they cannot be rotated (currently), they can be positioned. Have you considered developing an exporter for Terragen clip files that can be imported into TG2? Of course this is not as good as a tiled reader that can keep unused portions out of memory until they are needed, but that is a difficult problem anyway when ray tracing is involved.

Matt

[Matt]

I also wanted to say that I am now working on improved transparency and reflections, and when that is completed the water shader will be given many new options to control its appearance at various depths.

Matt

[rcallicotte]

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!   

I also wanted to say that I am now working on improved transparency and reflections, and when that is completed the water shader will be given many new options to control its appearance at various depths.

Matt

[cajomi]

The tiling would not necessary be a equal tiling. GC2 will be able to put together terrains with different resolution to a seamless tile set. A kind of manual LOD.
Well, I am not sure, what you mean with "clip" files?
Greatest problem so far I can see is, that the imported terrains are sitting on a tangential plane.

At all, I am aware, that the project TG2 is another dimension than my GC2. And I can understand very good, that you do not develope TG2 in a way, that you afterwards will be dependend from terrain generators. But on the other hand, the concept of TG2 was not the all in one wonder. Trees, objects and so on must be imported from other applications. I did expect, that TG2 will be a "stage", the final superb renderer, which is able to put together all the different parts to a complete scene. This is exactly what is totally missing in the market, while a procedural world is available with mojo world. So, this goal, that you have, well, it is fine to have a better "mojo world" but every minute you spend on the procedural approach, keeps you away from filling the hole in the market.
But of course I know about a good to do list. Although seamless tiling is one of the most important features of GC2 it will be developed at least, else it would cost to many time. And so it may be with TG2 import functions.

I will have to improve my river and lakes, which btw cost me 6 weeks only this tool. But I need a final renderer to see, what must be improved, to get at least real rivers, with a real river bed, with formed underwater parts, underwater shading and a real water surface.
So, looking forward to the next update TG2, with transparency like the old TG.
Johannes

[ThinkPink]

ups .......

Sorry, but the following is in german, because I think this would be a little bit clearer what I think and what I want to say. If somebody want to translate in english, feel free   

Was ich mit meinem 'slider-Beispiel' und dem posting sagen wollte war folgendes: Die Software TG2 ist grundsätzlich sehr sehr gut!!! Da gibt es nichts zu meckern.
Es gibt jedoch aber auch einige Dinge, die sind (bislang) unglücklich gelöst und die verwirren. Zumindest eine so neuen und unbedarften user wie mich, der seine ersten Gehversuche auf dem Gebiet der Rendersoftware macht. Vielleicht bin ich ja auch nicht die eigentliche Zielgruppe? Vielleicht wurde die Software ja wirklich NUR für Profis und die absoluten Render-Cracks entwickelt (fände ich jedoch schade).
Das Problem der freien Vorab-Bereitstellung von Software ist, dass man aufgrund der enthaltenen Bugs einen sehr großen Teil potenzieller User (und Käufer) abschreckt, da sie mit der Software fast nur Frust erleben und nicht zurecht kommen. Ich bin auf meiner Suche nach Tutorials in Internet immer wieder über Aussagen über TG2 gestolpert: "Zu komplex.", "zu fehlerhaft", "Rückschritt gegenüber TG09", "chaotische Handhabung" etc. Nicht gerade eine gute Werbung. Vielleicht hätte man die Alpha- und Beta-versionen erst mal einem ausgewählten Nutzerkreis zur Verfügung  und nicht gleich frei zugänglich ins Internet stellen sollen.
Ich selbst habe mir TG2 als Preview heruntergeladen und kämpfe seither damit - sowohl mit der Software als auch mit der Entscheidung, ob ich sie kaufen soll oder nicht. Ich habe mittlerweile (ohne Handbuch, nur mit zusammengestückelten Tutorials) Stunden und tage damit verbracht und hatte mehr Frustmomente als Highlights. Was das tolle an dem Node-System ist, habe ich bis heute nicht begriffen. Vielleicht kann es mir ja mal einer erklären. Ich benutze es jedenfalls fast nie! Die Einstellungen kann/muss ich auch in den normalen Eingabefelder machen. Und das bisschen Drag&Drop von Input/Output kann ja jetzt auch nicht der Brüller sein. Aber wahrscheinlich habe ich was übersehen .... Ich bin ein sehr ruhiger und geduldiger Mensch. Aber in den letzten Wochen war ich hinsichtlich TG2 wirklich mit den Nerven am Ende. Deshalb konnte ich auch den allerersten Kommentar hier sehr gut nachvollziehen. Auch ich war schon kurz davor, nach dem 5. Absturz in Folge, die maus gegen die Wand zu werfen .......

Auf mich macht TG2 den Eindruck, als wollte jemand eine schicke Oberfläche gestalten, weil es andere auch machen. Um dann diese schicke Oberfläche als genial einfaches Instrument zu verkaufen - das sich natürlich nur den wirklichen Profis in seiner Genialität erschließt. Der Rest - so wie ich - bleibt dumm, weil er's nicht versteht oder verstehen will.
Ich spreche ein bisschen aus Erfahrung, da ich fast 20 Jahre Softwareentwicklung, Softwaredesign und Softwaretest hinter mir habe - allerdings auf einem anderen Gebiet. Ich habe einiges an Software gesehen und selbst entwickelt (die ich selbst genial fand), die aber bei den Anwendern nur Unverständnis auslöste. Da musste ich lernen, dass sich Softwareergonomie nicht am persönlich Geschmack oder an dem einiger weniger eingefleischter User ausrichtet sondern an der Tauglichkeit in der Masse.

.... oder kurz gesagt: ich wünsch mir einfach nur eine Software, die absturzfrei läuft und von solch Laien wie mir intuitiv bedient werden kann und die tolle Ergebnisse liefert ..... einfach eine Eierlegende-Wollmichsau .....