Population Distribution Problem

[Stormlord]

Hello everyone!

Please allow me to ask for help, I'm not so familiar with Terragen 3.4 at the time, I just updated from the old TG 0.94 version and currently start to work with it since a few weeks.
I ran into a strange problem and do not understand what I'm doing wrong here?

I transformed a few Xfrog Files from 3DsMax into nice tgo Objects and start to use these as populations for TG. Therefore I created an island scene where I use them as green stuff.
To distribute my trees and plants in the area where I want to have them planted, I use a Distribution shader with it's alltitude constraint function to tell TG where it should use the population.

A short first test rendering show's a nice distribution mask simply in black and white. I use it as my population distribution mask (so to say) to tell TG where to plant my green stuff.
As far as I understand, black means (no population is distributed in these areas) and white means (ok, you can plant my stuff here!).

But, the final render doesn't create what I actually intended to create? I mean no underwater bushes, trees and stuff?##??!!
TG renders my XFrog Greenware underwater (where the mask clearly indicates it is black???)! HELP !!!

I guess, I simple understand not where the problem is, therefore I kindly ask for help :-)
To make it more clear to you, I attached 2 screenshots and also the population test rendering with bushes and trees underwater???
Thank you for your support folks in advance!

Stormlord
http://www.dirkkipper.de/Galerie_Terragen/Terragen_2/index.php

[KyL]

It look like its working as I cannot see any bounding box below water except the few of the shore. Did you try using a fuzzy zone of 0?

if you can post the .tgd it will probably help

Cheers!

[Dune]

Kyl is right, try a smaller fuzzy zone. Now you have set (let's call it) a margin of 50m (which is actually a bit different than I put it here), so logically some shrub will grow under the 250m. But if you make that say 5m, you're well on your way. And set the height to a few meters above water level, say 252.
As far as I can tell from your images.

[Stormlord]

Thank you for your response!
It sounds reasonable and I really understand what you explain to me.

I think, I have a basically problem which I cannot understand why the distibution in my scene does not work?
Therefore I created a simple setup for you with my basic scene and attach it.

Question:
Why distribute TG my trees also in the black area and not in the white, which is the proper one here ?
Why does my population distribution in the scene not work ?

I guess, I miss some basic understanding here what I'm doing wrong?
Can someone be so kind, answer the question, correct my failure in the sample scene and re-upload it here?
That would be highly appreciated, thx....

STORMLORD

[Hetzen]

You just need to plumb your surface layer into the density shader input on your pop.

You need the terrain input as well as a mask input.

[Stormlord]

Ahhh.... I thought I had only to connect it to the terrain input. Here's my fault!
But finally I got my lights on.

THX !!!

Stormlord

[Hetzen]

No problem. Post what you come up with.

Best

Jon

[Dune]

I've adjusted your tgd, and added something you might find useful (compute normal for a more refined control of rotation of trees with slope). If you only need to render that POV, it saves a lot of time if you keep the population area and size within the POV, like I did with the cards.

[Stormlord]

Thank you so much Dune!
This is really helpfull and the idea with tha cards is great.

What would be really helpfull for new users like me is a good manual written by the creators of TG.
There are so many functions, commands, options and so on inside this program, which are hard to understand (after only a few weeks).

So as a newbie, you really have no idea what they actually do and how you can use them in your projects?
So allow me to say one more time, THANK YOU Dune for your valuable input. Your idea is great and really usefull in further projects.

Finally, you probably would like to see where I'm at the moment.
I pushed a little bit the blue sky and water, scaled and implemented a few more plants and rendered the scene again.

Here is my result... :-)

[Dune]

You're welcome, Dirk. Terragen is so complex and has so many possibilities to achieve things, that it is hardly possible to write a comprehensive manual. A lot of information is in the wiki, and it helps to do some tutorials. For the rest it is a lot of reading here, and trial and error. And asking if you can't find the solution!
I learn new ways of combining nodes almost every day, with useful (or not so useful) effects, by mere experimentation.