Export Terragen terrains and all displacements and color details to Arnold?

Started by vinyvince, July 21, 2018, 03:18:03 PM

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digitalguru

Hi Falcooat,

Just uploaded a Maya and Terragen scene based on your heightmap. Terragen is a gathered project so if you work out of the downloaded directory all the paths should be relative. If it doesn't work for any reason, just re-point the paths (for the heightfield for example) to the correct directory on your disk.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ocjaiaig80ktw7q/project_gather.zip?dl=0

There is also an update to Terraman which includes the Boolean function - just replace all the files in the installation.

I made a micro export of your entire terrain and loaded into Maya with Terraman.

Then created a Projection camera - close_Projection_cam, selected the imported terrain and the projection camera and used Boolean Mesh from Projection camera to cut a hole out of the terrain that was close to the render camera.

I could then export that projection camera to Terragen and used it to render that smaller patch of terrain using the Bake Micro Close render node.

Re-import that .obj back into Maya to give a much higher-rez terrain that fills the hole made by the boolean.

Didn't include this mesh to keep the upload file size down, but try it on your machine.

To get even higher resolution I then created a 3 x 3 tile of the close patch of terrain - again you can try baking these 9 tiles out using the Bake Micro Tiled x 9 render node -

Just use Render Sequence on the render node to bake the sequence of obj files.

Hope that helps, any questions, give me a shout.

falcooat

Great, thank you! I will take a look at all of this and see what I can accomplish. I really do appreciate all your help on this. I will report back once I play around a bit. :-)

digitalguru

QuoteI will report back once I play around a bit. :-)

Please do, especially if it relates to the Terraman script. It can get a bit complex, especially if you're new to Terragen :-)

falcooat

Quick question. I am trying to batch clean my newly made obj files in TerraMan and I keep getting a failed to load error (specified module could not be found.) This is the first time running into this specific problem and I am wondering if it is related to your update?

digitalguru

sorry to hear that,  I'll have a look:

- what version of Maya?
- where is that error message? Maya or the cmd window for Meshlab that pops up when running Process Mesh?
- copy paste the full error message and post it here

QuoteThis is the first time running into this specific problem and I am wondering if it is related to your update?

does that mean the same operation is ok with the previous version of the script?

p.s
Quotespecified module could not be found

that sounds like a Maya error message - could be Maya not finding the objExport.mll?

falcooat

okay, I reinstalled the previous version of Terraman and it is working, so I think the problem is your new version.

digitalguru

ok, if you can, let me know what you were trying to do with the new version so I can narrow it down a bit

falcooat

I was at the batch step in TerraMan to clean up (terrain_clean.mlx) the obj files that were created in Terragen and the create the Udims. Once it is finished processing I will reload the new version again and try to run it.

digitalguru

thanks

sound like you were doing something like this?
[attachimg=1]

if you run the "terrain_clean" process on its own it will invoke Meshlabserver outside of Maya.

Selecting "Create Udim/UV" will then take the list of .obj files after the Meshlab filter has finished, loads them into Maya to apply the UVs/Udims and write them out to disk again.

I'm guessing that since you got the "specified module could not be found" that would be a Maya error and suggests it might be that Maya hasn't got the objExport plugin loaded to export the UV'd mesh.

When Terraman is loaded it automatically checks if the obj is loaded and loads it if it isn't - so just restarting the script could fix (if that's the problem)

I'll have a proper look at the weekend.