fakestones or populations ?

Started by wolle, September 07, 2014, 04:47:56 AM

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wolle

Hi
I am quite new to terragen3.1 (since march this year)
My question is this: How can I populate self edited Stones (i.e spheres,cubes etc with PF as surfaceshader)?
These can only saved as Clips. (as far as I know, or did I miss something???) But Clips can`t be loaded as a
Population. The fakestoneshader is a great tool, but I have my difficulties with that.
Terragen is a very powerful piece of Software, I like it very much !!!
A useful tip would help me quite a bit, thanks in advance

Wolle

Dune

Welcome to TG then, and to this forum.

If you locate the population for the rocks and stones at the area where these stones are, all you should have to do is anchor the population to the stone. But you can't populate on populations (yet), only on individual objects. So if you have 10 stones, you need ten populations and anchor each to each stone. If they are small stones, set the spacing small.

I hope this answers your question.

wolle

Thanks for your reply ! I tried to do, what you said, but failed...  What kind of Population should be used ? (Card, tgo/obj Reader) Inside the populator is a tab called "anchor", and an objectmaker.
How do I anchor the populator to my Stone ?It`s easy to place the area where it should be, but now ? The Goal is to multiply that single Stone via the populator. The problem is the fact, that the stone cannot be saved as tgo, only as clip. Every tgo (obj too) can be loaded as Population. If I could do just that, then this problem wouldn`t be there.
Maybe you could send a screenshot from inside the populator, and a view from the nodeview to show exactly, what you mean.

Wolle

bobbystahr

You can save the .obj as a .tgo by right clicking on it in the network view and select Save Object File. it will take you to a navigation window where you select where to save it, often it opens the Dir the .obj comes from so that's ideal. Make sure you have .tgo selected, hit save.
It has to be a single object, not a population by the way so load the rock and save it as a .tgo.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

I've made you a simple sample. Check this out and try to replicate. Also look inside the objects (rightclick on node... edit internal).

wolle

 Hi guys, again thanks for your quick response. I`m afraid, there`s a misunderstanding. Maybe, my question wasn`t clear enough. I do not want to populate on objects.
In TG I load a displaceable object (sphere, cube etc), add object/displaceable/sphere. Now, this object is transformrd into a decent Stone (PF3, 2 colours) see attached Picture. This Stone appeares in the objectfolder of the nodeview. Rightclick on that brings up the window to remove or save this object. It can ONLY be saved as clipfile. Not as tgo/obj !!! Thats the Point, because this Clip can`t be used as a Population, only obj/tgo/lwo etc can !!! Shure, I could copy/paste a few hundered times to produce a nice field of Stones, but thats for the populator to acclomplish. It just doesn`t do this with clips. Why can`t such objects be saved as tgo`s ??? (again, did I overlook something?) I hope, my question is clear now.

Wolle

j meyer

As far as I remember you can't use the displaceable objects
as a population at all.

bobbystahr

Hmmm, didn't know that. I assumed you were trying to save your .obj as a .tgo. This is obviously something that needs fixing/changing.
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

bobbystahr

#8
Quote from: j meyer on September 08, 2014, 11:02:32 AM
As far as I remember you can't use the displaceable objects
as a population at all.


That's why he's tryin' to save as  a .tgo which TG3 doesn't allow you to do....wonder why?
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

j meyer

Because they are procedural objects not meshes I'd say.

Dune

Ah, misread your question indeed. No you can't save the displacable objects as populatable objects. Perhaps if you stick with TG3 long enough, it will be included....

wolle

hello there! yeah, that`s it then. Procedural objects... so the next step I will make, is to build me some stonelike objects in blender and save them as wavefront-objects. These have to be optimized inside TG, then stored as obj/tgo, and after that, well,it has to work. And i`m looking forward to see, if that problem can be solved.
happy rendering    Wolle

bobbystahr

Quote from: wolle on September 08, 2014, 02:32:39 PM
And i`m looking forward to see, if that problem can be solved.
happy rendering    Wolle

Aren't we all....heh heh heh
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

PabloMack

What I like so much about fakestones is that they are procedural. They do not take up memory proportionate to their numbers. But they are what they are and they don't give you the control over how they look as objects do. I wish TG had Fakegrass, Fakelichens and Fakegroundlitter that didn't have to be populated. I would use those a lot. For that matter, it would be really great if the Fakestones shader had a lichen subshader. Maybe the PS staff will give those things to us for Christmas. This is inspiring me to start another thread about lichens.

bobbystahr

Quote from: PabloMack on September 13, 2014, 10:31:03 PM
What I like so much about fakestones is that they are procedural. They do not take up memory proportionate to their numbers. But they are what they are and they don't give you the control over how they look as objects do. I wish TG had Fakegrass, Fakelichens and Fakegroundlitter that didn't have to be populated. I would use those a lot. For that matter, it would be really great if the Fakestones shader had a lichen subshader. Maybe the PS staff will give those things to us for Christmas. This is inspiring me to start another thread about lichens.

In the Free Preset Package there is a "procedural grass" that is made from Fake Stones you should look into Pablo
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist