First Render

[denders]

Well, here is a first render.

I used the Daniil Kamperov Classic Erosion addon. The rest is all basic Terragen.




This is what I want to use Terragen create scenery and spherical hdr renders for:




The aircraft was modeled in Modo and textured in Substance Painter. The Terragen render was used as a camera backplate and the Terragen spherical render was used as an environment in Modo. The final was rendered in Modo.

Dave

[pixelpusher636]

Nice render Dave! The plane looks really natural above the landscape.
You are quite a good modeler and fine work with the texturing as well!

[denders]

Thank you. This isn't the final that's in my mind's eye. That includes at least two aircraft, perhaps 3 or 4, in different positions. Those aircraft are camouflaged brown and green. But this was a starter to see how it looked. I did send this one off to FineArtAmerica to have a phone case made with this on the back. Guaranteed that no one else has one like it.

[Dune]

That is one hell of a model indeed! Why not render all in TG?

[denders]

That is one hell of a model indeed! Why not render all in TG?

Well, I haven't gotten that far yet. 

[Hannes]

Why not render all in TG?

That's what came in my mind as well.

[Ariel DK]

Well, I haven't gotten that far yet.

Well, is 100x better than my first Tg render, that's for sure haha

[denders]

Why not render all in TG?

That's what came in my mind as well.

Well, I did an export of the aircraft from Modo to fbx, lwo, and obj.

When I import the obj into TG the textures are messed up. I think that obj only uses one texture map and the aircraft is textured using multiple udims. When I imported it back into Modo I get the same results.

When I test the lwo, it's even worse. No textures at all. At this point, Modo could be not exporting an lwo correctly.

When I test the fbx, I get nothing in TG. There's an object there but it appears that it might be rather small, perhaps I need to scale it up even more than I did. I used 39.37 in two places when importing the fbx (I have the units set in Modo to inches.) Perhaps I'll try 3937 for scaling. The other problem is that the fbx is imported in all its little pieces and it doesn't allow me to select all those pieces to be able to move and scale them all at one time.

The Modo scene has Instances (engine cylinders) and rigged characters (aircrew posing) which don't seem to translate well into some of the file types. The cylinders instances probably need to be turned into geometry. Things like the bombs and propeller have what are Item level transforms which probably need to be frozen. The posed aircrew need to be frozen too. And it would seem like the textures would need to be redone to fit into a single texture.

The aircraft can be rendered and composited into the TG render but the spherical render from TG is still necessary for lighting for the aircraft render.

So, I think I'll stick with the current process.

Dave

[Kevin Kipper]

Hi denders,

Nice image, and it would be great to see a render from Terragen that includes the aircraft.

Just focus on exporting the aircraft from Modo as an OBJ.  Terragen's Lightwave support is limited to older versions of the LWO format and importing an FBX is limited to cameras, lights and null objects (with motions).  Terragen's units are 1 meter = 1 unit, so whenever possible export your FBX files with that scale.

If you can export an MDD file for your rigged characters, Terragen can read it via an object's "Read MDD file (motion)" parameter under the Mesh Modifiers tab.

UDIM's are fine to use for texture coordinates, you just need to chain the Image nodes nodes together in the object's internal node network and increment the "Position" parameter for each UDIM.  See attached image.

Sounds like you've already worked out the spherical environment image for lighting the aircraft in a third party application, but here's my shameless plug for the "Terragen for VFX" videos anyways:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0dtt4IusJM
03:43:13 Part 27 Spherical Environment Render

[denders]

Kevin,

Thanks for the udim and the mdd info. I'll have to experiment with it. The final object is still pictures. The engine propeller and the wind powered generator propeller are the only items that are animated. That is to have some motion blur on those items. The characters aren't actually animated, they're just rigged for posing, turn heads, position hands, arms, legs, feet, etc. A quick check shows that Modo doesn't allow me to export an mdd for the characters because I haven't added animation to them. It does show the ability to export an mdd for the propellers. I'll have to experiment for those too.

I think I'll still have to convert the instances to real geometry for the engine cylinders.

I tend to work in inches/feet instead of meters or SI units, probably just because I'm a bit more 'senior'.  I'll see whether changing Modo's units to meters or SI makes a scaling difference on the import.

Thanks for the info on lwo and fbx. I suspect that Modo's lwo export might be in the 'older' category too. Have you folks ever looked into being able to import lxo (Modo)?

I've already watched the vfx series. That's where I looked for info on setting up the spherical camera. I took the exported exr into Affinity Photo and saved an hdr (not sure I really needed to) to use in the environment slot for Modo's renderer. It works very well. The Modo render is only lit by the environment. No other lights are active.

Dave

[denders]

Well, I haven't gotten that far yet.

Well, is 100x better than my first Tg render, that's for sure haha

Wellll, perhaps it's the first render I'm willing to post. 

[Dune]

Thanks for the explanation of your workflow. Obj import has its pitfalls too, as you often need to adjust maps and settings to the specific TG requirements. But it's all very doable, some workflows are just faster and easier than others. But you can do a lot of extra's in TG, combining procedural dirtmaps with UV, etc.
I'm looking forward to your further renders anyway.

[Hannes]

Wow, UDIMs possible in TG!!! I never thought that. I once had an obj textured with UDIMs and didn't find a way to do that in Terragen.
By the way, @Kevin: you set the image map shaders to Plan Y. Shouldn't it be Object UV? Or is your screenshot just to show the shader chain?

[Kevin Kipper]

Hi Hannes,

Good catch, yes the Projection Type should have been set to Object UV.  

Kevin

[WAS]

When did TG FBX get cameras and lights? That was lacking before, hence the FBX2Terragen I was working on.