WIP - Rogue's entry

[N-drju]

Just when I think I'm done, and despite the model looking perfectly fine in Blender and Poseray, TG decides to render the OBJ like this (see blocky wire, ignore cube)

I'm afraid that loose vertices cause the blocky wire. This is exactly what have happened to me, while I was designing my recon crafts:

https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,27883.0.html

If you have made a cut-through of a block for your wire, TG may simply be reading "complete" faces, ignoring all else.

I really hope you can solve this in time.

[Dune]

Weld them in Poseray may help.

[sboerner]

Can you post a screenshot from Blender of a closeup of the wire model? Maybe in wireframe mode?

I'm not sure if the contest rules would allow it but, if so, I'd be willing to have a look if you want to send an obj of the wire by PM. I made extensive use of wire objects in a recent scene and had no problems.

This is certainly frustrating. The background and lighting of the last image you posted look terrific. It would be nice to get this sorted.

[Barefoots]

Hey Rogue,

I agree with previous post..last image you posted looks great. Don't give up on it. Having technical issues is so frustrating. Knowing something should work but not knowing why it isn't causes major irritation.
Your'e not alone in that. 

This is my first NWDA comp I am having a go at. I don't have Terragen, so I using 3dsmax & vray (I work part time in arch viz). I am not fluent in these tools either and never have to do big environments. This has been a massive challenge for me with hours of technical frustrations & somewhat wasted effort. Fortunately & unfortunately, due to slow start to year and co-vid I have had less work. I chose time to sit down and work at it & view the process as training or "personal development/getting balder"!

Looking forward to seeing your final. 
Hopefully I can finish mine too.
Greetings from across the Tasman.  

PS. EVen though i don't own Terragen, I am a big fan. I remember when I was in my early teens and my father bought home the first Terragen. It blew my mind! I spent hours making mountains.   I joined the forum because I aiming to enter the comp & have been following the conversations being had about it. Hope that ok with everyone. 

[RogueNZ]

I tested the model in a fresh scene, and it seems to render perfectly fine Oo It also looks fine in Blender/Poseray. I'me trying to debug why my scene in particular renders it incorrectly. I've tried creating default render and camera nodes and nothing seems to help. Now deleting all other nodes to find a cause.

[RogueNZ]

3d preview with mouse over the object (object shows correct when hovered, but renders blocky). This is in a project with no other nodes, and default render node 

[RogueNZ]

This is definitely a bug, and somehow related to world position. The object renders fine near the default scene origin, but move it to where my contest scene camera is located, and it renders blocky.

[sboerner]

Very strange. How far from the world origin are you? Any displacements applied to the object?

I don't use Blender so I could be wrong here, but the edge loops in your wireframe look suspicious to me, as if there might be some nonmanifold geometry lurking there. Could just be the screenshot, though.

Welcome to the forum, Barefoots!

[Dune]

Maybe the problem is in the initial off 0/0/0 location of your object? Though I wouldn't understand that, but that has its issues with pops. It looks as though it's displaced... so no displacement added, rendered the default way?

[N-drju]

I don't use Blender so I could be wrong here, but the edge loops in your wireframe look suspicious to me, as if there might be some nonmanifold geometry lurking there. Could just be the screenshot, though.

Good point. I also found these somewhat puzzling.



@RogueNZ - I'd suggest you remake the object in Blender using a stretched and bent cylinder primitive for the line. I used it several times now for wires and it has never been a problem. I can even make you one if you wish, as long as you provide the specs.

[RogueNZ]

No displacement applied to any objects. The model does look weird, I believe that was after welding vertices in Pose Ray. The tutorial I followed uses individual cylinders duplicated along a curve, but I re-meshed in blender, and again in Poseray, the mesh looks better but still the same issue.

That's an Xfrog model loaded into the same location, so I'm now less concerned about my model quality. In some of my previous renders there have been similar looking issues but ignored them - see the blocky tree (leaves removed).

At the start of the project I centered the planet at 0 0 0, so the scene is located somewhere near 30669, 6160570, 1653730. I guess this is my problem. I don't think it's feasible to shift my entire scene as the fractals will get messed up etc.

[N-drju]

@RogueNZ - I have just made an object test at the coordinates you have shared above and can confirm the same happens in my case.

Here is how my scout craft looks like when rendered at your coordinates:



Which, of course, has been carefully sculpted in Blender and Poseray first.

This is definitely Terragen's fault.

[Dune]

Still strange as people have rendered starships off the planet as well.

[N-drju]

Also, take a look at how the object is "dancing" when the camera is being moved. A telling sign that something is just not right:

As if the renderer could not resolve the object's exact location and trying to haphazardly "average" the vertex / face coordinates.

Still strange as people have rendered starships off the planet as well.

Perhaps they were putting the spaceships near zero coords and adding planets in the distance. Planets do work well, regardless of coordinates.

[amandas]

Clipping planes? Try setting near clip plane as huge as possible, far clip plane as low as possible. I am pretty sure it is a floating point inaccuracy, not a TGN bug. Rule of a thumb is to have camera always close to world origin or render in a localized coordinates (not sure TGN allows that).