Texture limitations

[DanD]

Well..Thats a good way for really small models.. But..No way am I going to bust up a
600 object model..Its tedious, The model and its actions cant be animated and it cant be used in a population,basically it boils down to..No matter how good it renders,It cant do the job ..yet..Till then..I'll use another app for everything
  IF TG2 cant do what we need..we'll look elsewhere, thats the bottom line.
Hell..I even have some plants and trees that go over that ridiculous limit.
So..We'll just take a wait and see approach. Oshayan says its on the burner
So...I'll wait...If it happens that for some odd reason it cant be overcome
  Then we'll switch to something else

[gregsandor]

It seems to me that any model that requires 500 textures is just UV mapped incorrectly, ar at best inefficiently.  For a sailing ship made entirely of wood, why not map materials like Wood Dark, WoodLight, Wood with image map texture, etcetera.  Writing a separate matrerial for each part of a model seems insanely complicated to me. 

Having said that I add that I do want more than 16 materials per model too.

[sonshine777]

I agree with gregsandor, while having more than 16 materials is the goal most of us would like to see. It shouldn't be required because of inefficient texturing when the model was created. One material can take on many appearances on a model when correctly placed and thought out.   

[otakar]

I think one of the reasons for the frustration is that other apps don't have such a limit and therefore it's hard to see why TG is so severely restricted. Another reason is that sure, you can play with the model, select your top 16 materials - that cover most of the visible surface of the model -  and then use that modified model in your scene. But that's extra time spent outside of Terragen that would be better spent on scene generation in Terragen and you are really degrading the model especially in high-res, up-close renders. Some people just want to use their finished models in their scenes, not edit them in any major way.

I think the hobbyist-professional distinction is very valid. I just move on if a model proves to be too complex to use, but if you have a commission that more or less requires the use of that model (and you have maybe paid for the model), then you need to find ways to make it work. JimB's suggestion is intriguing. Any renders done with this technique?

IMHO that issue should definitely feature prominently on the list.

[dhavalmistry]

I see that lot of people are getting frustrated with lot of thing not working....some people are complaining and some people are quitting....after all we can only hold our emotions inside for so long......and I think this is the limit for some people....

Matt, I think we need an update soon....a small update with minor bug fixes will do too....if not the whole beta version....

[JimB]

JimB's suggestion is intriguing. Any renders done with this technique?

I'm a 3D matte painter, so it's the kind of thing I do quite often.

I suspect where Dan's problem really lies (most importantly) is the ability to animate as well, especially if the sails of the ship need to billow, etc. Importing .chan files for the overall motion is one thing, but I don't see how we will be seeing the necessary features to import the fully billowing sails, etc, unless there was something like a Collada import at some point. If the ship is supposed to be rendered in animated sea, well that's another issue altogether. 

Personally, I'd render the ship in another 3D app and try to output the model on a per frame basis, but that would need a script or means of importing the per-frame-models into TG2. If the script were possible, I'd render the ship in TG2 as pure constant black which would create a holdout matte for compositing the model render from the other 3D app, as well as casting shadows in the TG2 landscape.

Initially I thought it was for a still, but a fully animated ship of the line is a different kettle of fish altogether. At the end of the day VFX is about slight of hand, and similar problems used to exist (and still do in many cases) when elements of a shot were created in, say, Maya, and others in XSI, and even others in Houdini, etc.

That's only my opinion, BTW.

[DanD]

   Ok ...First..Oshayan said it'll be fixed, so..it'll be fixed. I trust Matt and Planetside.
Second...Not one of my models is "incorrectly mapped", They're just...big,I've been doing this,longer than some of you been alive. We know we can composite.
Its not the point.
     I figure ,and correct me if I'm wrong, That since TG2 can instance 12000
trees,from a 45 meg model...Then it could handle 200 Ships of the Line,from a
200 meg model,and guess what ?...It does. So...Its just a waiting game.
In my opinion,Tg2 is going to be big,and I've thought this since.....since
Heh..I cant remember that far back LOL .

[DanD]

And..I almost forgot..re,the billowing sails,wouldnt that be great ?
and..once the SDK is released, I can show this to the folks at Mentamagic.
  They have a series of plug-ins,that were released for Truespace initially
They simulate the movement of cloth, AND water,another is for atmospheric
effects,such as billowing smoke or...wisps of steam from a cup of hot coffee
wont those be fun ?

[rcallicotte]

   <--me drooling   

...wont those be fun ?

[Oshyan]

Just to be clear, I don't think animating individual object elements is going to be very attractive to work with in TG2 any time soon. Possibly importing existing animations in some common format, but even that may not be best if the object portion of the render can be accomplished faster/better in another app. So if you're going to be needing a lot of sophisticated object-focused animations, it's probably best to work out your pipeline issues now rather than see if it will be necessary later. We're going to be working on interoperability as a big focus as we move forward from the TG2 release so any feedback on desired formats and data would also be useful.

- Oshyan

[gregsandor]

Why can't we use vertex shaders for billowing sails, something like a seawater shader?  It works in realtime apps, why not TG? 

And I still say that if you need 500 mats for a model youre doing it wrong.

[MooseDog]

...We're going to be working on interoperability as a big focus as we move forward from the TG2 release so any feedback on desired formats and data would also be useful.

don't forget about the .mdd format.  for reference take a look at what modo is up to.  no object animation creation capabilities (bones/ik graph editor etc etc) per-se, but it can stream .mdd files to create the illusion.  it shares a common capability with tg2:  both have a great renderer.  called playing to your strength yet still playing nice with others .