TGD Defaultness Editor

[WAS]

Was bored, and it seemed like a fun idea as I haven't messed with DOM in over a decade, so I created the TGD Defaultness Editor originally based on drju's need to edit translucency of many objects, which than got me thinking about my friends old xfrog volumes with no translucency, and how that would be a pain today. The idea here is you can throw all of your objects into a single project (or just what objects you need at the time in your working project) and then edit all the default shaders located in that project. I left out functions, as I didn't it was too necessary but I may be wrong, as this could be used for more than just editing translucency of an object/defualt shader.

https://pnwnetwork.com/defaultness

Supports:

• Terragen 2.x+ Project Files
• Default Shaders and Image Map Shaders

Notes:

• Backup your original project
• Do not overwrite your original project with the downloaded project
• TDE preserves whitespace, but only valid XML whitespace. Saving the project again in Terragen will fix this.
• Functions removed for sanity (the user being aware of XPaths outside TG is doubtful)

[Dune]

That looks interesting, and a classy look too! But I can never get on the web from my working machine, so I would be interested to have an offline version. Maybe never need it, but very good to have in the toolbox.

[WAS]

That looks interesting, and a classy look too! But I can never get on the web from my working machine, so I would be interested to have an offline version. Maybe never need it, but very good to have in the toolbox.

Oh that's right. I was curious of PHP Desktop would work with it, it's basically a tiny chromium browser with PHP built in, but alas it doesn't work on XP, and apparently it's document object model is broken. Opening a project yields all blank results. I'd have to port it to another language and GUI framework.

If you're willing to install PHP/WAMP Server on your machine from thumbdrives it would work. I developed it off WAMP Server and slapped it on my host with a cronjob to delete everything in the temp directory.

Update: I was able to get it working for Windows 7+ version of PHP Desktop (see screenshot)

[cyphyr]

Looks interesting. Thankyou.

I use a lot of KitBash3d Models that I have to convert through Lightwave.
The models come as a single model with about 30 buildings in it plus extras. Each building has to be separated out, world centred and exported as an obj.
Unfortunately Lightwaves obj exporter breaks the image paths so every time I import a building to Terragen I have to fix between 5 and 10 default shaders.
Mostly I do this by editing the .mtl file in notepad before the import but obviously I have to do this for each model.
This tool may provide a way of editing a whole set of models at once.

[Kadri]

Looks useful indeed. Nice.

[mhaze]

Would really like to see this developed.

[Hannes]

Cool idea!! Thanks for the work, Jordan!

[sboerner]

Looking forward to trying this! Handy to see all of the attributes shown in a spreadsheet-like view. Thanks!

[WAS]

Looks interesting. Thankyou.

I use a lot of KitBash3d Models that I have to convert through Lightwave.
The models come as a single model with about 30 buildings in it plus extras. Each building has to be separated out, world centred and exported as an obj.
Unfortunately Lightwaves obj exporter breaks the image paths so every time I import a building to Terragen I have to fix between 5 and 10 default shaders.
Mostly I do this by editing the .mtl file in notepad before the import but obviously I have to do this for each model.
This tool may provide a way of editing a whole set of models at once.

That's a good point with exporting from other formats. Even Blender can mess up materials exporting to obj.

I think also it may be appropriate to read off the image map shaders too, since their paths can be effected with project migrating when not gathered, and also various settings which may need altering if changing maps altogether.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[WAS]

Added image map support to web version. I have a version that can work offline, but it will only work in Windows 7+. I'd like to find an option that will work on XP. I know two people that use XP still with TG.

[N-drju]

This is useful on countless occasions. Good job.

[KyL]

That's really neat. Thanks for this WAS.

May I push a bit and ask if you could do something similar for Lights? I think it would be really awesome to have a light tool editor. For example copy the lights, paste them and be able to randomize their intensity and color based on a given range.

There are already tools for this in Maya for example, but when you export through FBX you cannot set the Radius, soft shadows, soft shadows samples, ect... Only the strength and color get carried in Terragen and having to use Maya for this is quite cumbersome!

[WAS]

May I push a bit and ask if you could do something similar for Lights? I think it would be really awesome to have a light tool editor. For example copy the lights, paste them and be able to randomize their intensity and color based on a given range.

There are already tools for this in Maya for example, but when you export through FBX you cannot set the Radius, soft shadows, soft shadows samples, ect... Only the strength and color get carried in Terragen and having to use Maya for this is quite cumbersome!

Seems like a interesting idea. Do you mean edit a project files light sources, or a lightsource populator? Both are doable, though an editor would be more straight forward.

[KyL]

Probably a project file light source. This would not create lights, but rather mass modify lights parameters in a more customizable way that with a default text editor.

The idea I had in mind would be to be able to vary the intensity and color of all lights in a project. For example say you want the intensity to be 100 with a 10% random, and all the lights get a value between 90 and 110.
I imagine the same could be done for colors by giving a specific rgb value then vary the Hue by the desired percentage as well.

[WAS]

I have moved all the tools over to NWDA's Resource Section under Terragen -> Tools