Trees you can fit in your pocket and daisies the size of tower blocks - updated

[Mr_Lamppost]

Before I start let me say that this is in no way intended as a criticism or complaint against all those generous people who have made their objects freely available, without you I would be left using the three trees X-Frog gave away.  You are stars.

The process of getting a 3D model into a format that can be imported into Terragen can be quite convoluted, involving several stages and conversions  and I am sure that this is the source of much of this problem. The scale of objects can vary widely which can be a real problem and has spoilt more than a few images published here and elsewhere; how often do you read comments like "Great image but the trees are way too big"?

After several such instances I made myself a series of reference grids so that I could ascertain the size of a new object and scale it appropriately when I came to use it in a project.  After several months of good intentions I was so annoyed yesterday that I went back and tidied up my reference grids so that I could share them. Feeling that the Grid Pack would need a little explanation and not having a way to create universal .pdf documents I decided to include the grids as a download from my digital art web site, which is very much in the early stages f construction; so most of the links are not working although this will change over time.  

So that you can see what you will be getting, here is one of the example images from the page showing a tree against a 10 metre grid:



And this is the link to the page and download:

http://www.ironworld.org/mr_lamppost/TG2/guides/scale.htm

Mr Lamppost has moved. here is the updated link:

http://www.mrlamppost.com/tg2/guides/paintsky.htm

Any comments or suggestions for improvements are always welcome.

[scott8933]

That's brilliant, much better than the 1-foot cube I use in for my personal reference when creating scenes.

One minor suggestion, since yours is so complete - maybe a really low-poly stick figure of average-man-height, that way we can really relate to it almost instantly. I've always used grids but its such an instant "oh-yeah" kind of recognition when there's a person figure there. Really helps get the sense of scale immediately.

[Mr_Lamppost]

One of the things that has held me back on publishing these grids was that I had intended including a "Standard" human figure for exactly the reasons you give.  If I get the time I will be adding one and as I am only linking to a download it is easy to make updates. 

[lightning]

Hey thanks for this
I think my trees are pretty much to scale though well i will find out when i test them in this anyway!!!

[Mr_Lamppost]

Hey thanks for this
I think my trees are pretty much to scale though well i will find out when i test them in this anyway!!!

A couple of yours have come in at around a third scale unless you were making small trees, do you ever work in feet and inches when creating them?

As I put at the start I am not intending to criticise anyone, the conversion process is probably responsible for most of the scale issues.  I cut my teeth on 3D using POV-Ray way back in the early days, no graphical interface just a scripted scene description language.  The POV unit is arbitrary but once you decide what scale you are working to you become very conscious of the restriction, I have carried this forward into my other 3D work, so tend to work to "Real world" scale, this is reflected in things like placing the camera 1.7m above the ground, roughly my eye level. 

[lightning]

no i work in metric meters kilometers etc
my early trees I posted were supposed to be little like my acer and pinus trees.
but when i save them then reopen they seem to reset there size for some annoying reason?

anyway i don't mind being criticized and i appreciate you pointing this out if every one was brown tongued and sucked up to me then how could i improve my modeling skills?!

[Marcos Silveira]

Oh man, it's ssssooooooo usefull!!!!

[Mr_Lamppost]

Oh man, it's ssssooooooo usefull!!!!

Ah you found it while I was posting a link in your thread. 

no i work in metric meters kilometers etc
my early trees I posted were supposed to be little like my acer and pinus trees.
but when i save them then reopen they seem to reset there size for some annoying reason?

anyway i don't mind being criticized and i appreciate you pointing this out if every one was brown tongued and sucked up to me then how could i improve my modeling skills?!

Like I said at the start I am not criticising anyone, there are often so many steps involved in converting an object for use in TG that things can get rescaled without anyone noticing.  On my page I mention the Wings-Blender rout and don't even ask what units Plant Studio uses, no matter what scale it says you are working at the plants it exports are huge.  Theer is an option to scale the object during export but you have to be aware of the problem  before you can fix it.

One minor suggestion, since yours is so complete - maybe a really low-poly stick figure of average-man-height, that way we can really relate to it almost instantly. I've always used grids but its such an instant "oh-yeah" kind of recognition when there's a person figure there. Really helps get the sense of scale immediately.

I have had several offers of figures to include, Thanks for those but I have established that I can get reference figures out of MakeHuman with little difficulty so I will make a version of the Grid Pack that includes people when I get the chance.  Watch this space. 

[Harvey Birdman]

I took this concept a step turther. I created a web site on my in-house server for model images. They're hierachically sorted by type, and every model is depicted beside a standard 1m radius sphere (not as slick as the grid, but same idea). Any scaling necessary to get an appropriate size is noted beside the image so I know immediately what scaling factor to apply to a given model to get consistent results. It took a bit to get the site set up and a bit to maintain it, but I find the time is saved many times over; creating a scene when you already have the necessary scaling info is much, much less painful.

[Mr_Lamppost]

HB:  That's more or less what I am doing for myself   

[rcallicotte]

Good info to know about.  Thanks.

[j meyer]

Thank you Mr_L.! I see chequered skies.

[bobbystahr]

Thanks Phillip, meant to get this but was intrigued by another search at the time and spaced it out...Got it noe...LOL..nice work on preparing it...well thought out.. ...
pax et lux
Bobby*

[Mr_Lamppost]

Bobby thanks for the PM on Ashunsar, I had seen it here first. 

Hope you find the grids useful.  The title I used for this thread doesn't really promote them. 

I have not forgotten about adding the human figures, I will get around to it one day honest.