Population Instance Editing Woes

[PabloMack]

I just placed a log cabin in a workable location but there is a tree instance that is too close to the cabin. It has been a fair amount of work to put the cabin in a place where the terrain slope is right and there are no fake rocks interfering with its placement. So I read about instance editing in the wiki and my software doesn't seem to behave as described in the documentation. Once I get the population into editing mode easily enough, I hover the mouse over an instance and it never turns orange. Besides that, I don't see an instance marker in the preview where the tree shows up in the render. Working from the roughly horizontal camera angle is a bit difficult to work with so I had the bright idea to do the editing from "top view" in the preview window. I come to find out that the instance markers are almost completely invisible when in top view and are represented only by a single white pixel per instance! Now how can I see whether the pixel changes color when the cursor is on top of it? Hmmm...this is frustrating. If I can only get what I need to get done, the image will look terrific.

[Dune]

I found that you need to get quite close sometimes and view at certain angle for best manipulation. You can color the pop's lines so you know which ones to pay attention too, of course. And then when it's finally selected you can still move around to manouver it in best position, with the handles lit up. When very close you need to hit [ , for closer viewing enabled, or however you call that.

[fleetwood]

Make sure that show b-box in preview is checked for the population you are editing. If you happen to turn off the b-box the population instances show up but the editing handles will not activate.  I found this out the hard way since I was in the habit of getting rid of the bounding boxes once they were first set. I don't like the clutter they create. But if you want to edit a pop it seems you must have the area bounding box displayed as well as the objects.

[jo]

Hi fleetwood,

Make sure that show b-box in preview is checked for the population you are editing. If you happen to turn off the b-box the population instances show up but the editing handles will not activate.  I found this out the hard way since I was in the habit of getting rid of the bounding boxes once they were first set. I don't like the clutter they create. But if you want to edit a pop it seems you must have the area bounding box displayed as well as the objects.

That sounds like a bug. I'll look into it.

Regards,

Jo

[jo]

Hi,

I'm not sure why the instance isn't highlighting. Sometimes if you have overlapping instances you need to be about careful where you mouse so you select the one you want. Similarly I'm not sure why you aren't seeing the instance bounding box in the same location as the instance in the render. If you were able to gather the project and email it (or a link to somewhere I can download it) then I can have a look at it. My email address is:

jomeder@planetside.co.uk

Regarding using the overhead view, this is something we're aware of. The problem comes about because the orthographic views (top, right etc.) are set up by placing the camera a long way away. As populations are drawn using a level-of-detail system based on distance this means the population instances get drawn as dots, which isn't ideal for editing. It's best just to use the perspective camera for editing.

Regards,

Jo

[Kevin F]

I've had the same problem when editing pops. The more pops and I presume the more memory being used, the worse the problem. I find that disabling other populations will make the handles/individual bounding boxes appear, so a memory problem would appear to be involved (although I have lots of it - 32Gb). Also, performing a save can make them re-appear).

[ejgodwin]

Kevin, I've found the same thing. My system is pretty slow compared to today's offerings, and when I turn off other populations I find the mouse hover more responsive in population edit. Barring that, raising the current view where you're looking down on the instances helps some of the confusion & lag when the population is dense.

[PabloMack]

The more pops and I presume the more memory being used, the worse the problem.

My scene had something like 10M trees in it with population square bounds 70km on a side. When I reduced the bounds to 7km then repopulate, I could then edit like the docs say. But then the tree I wanted to edit was gone. It seems that trees that are within bounds end up in different places when you change the bounds even if those bounds are many kilometers away. But with only 7km population bounds, the nearby mountains are naked from this view point (not acceptable). It seems if your population is too large, you just can't edit. I guess I'll have to use the large population and hunt and hunt and hunt until I find a place that will work, slope-wise, rock-wise and tree-wise. Thanks Kevin.

[jo]

Hi,

I'm a bit surprised you have trouble editing with a population like that. I will try a similarly sized population and see what happens.

An alternative method would be to use a simple shape shader, or a painted shader, to mask out the area of the cabin. Using that as part of the density shader should prevent instances showing up there.

Regards,

Jo

[Kadri]

I was just going to say what Jo said.

Other then that you could try to use your high quality object in the near side or where your camera goes and low polys for the far side.
I haven't tried this and i am not sure if using low poly objects would have any effect for easier handling or not.

[jo]

Hi,

Something else to try if you're finding selecting instances laggy while editing a large population is to move the camera so you can see only the area you're interested in. The more of the population which is visible the more potential hit testing needs to be done while selecting instances. Try moving the camera so you're looking down on the area you're editing.

Regards,

Jo

[PabloMack]

I actually have 18.9M instances of Walli's medium-sized pine tree.

[Dune]

Something else to try if you're finding selecting instances laggy while editing a large population is to move the camera so you can see only the area you're interested in

That's exactly what I meant, works well, IMO

I found that you need to get quite close sometimes and view at certain angle for best manipulation

[PabloMack]

Under the very same circumstances where the marker is highlighted when using a small population, the marker never highlights when using the large population. It's not just laggy, it's never. I will use these other alternatives to finding a suitable location for the object.