TG2 shader on imported objects

[pagan]

Dear all
I don't know if anyone has  experienced the same thing, but I am finding very difficult to use TG2 shaders on imported objects.
Everytime I try to apply some coloured, fractal etc... shader on my obj files(this is because I want to model part of my landscape with an external application) I run into problems such us faces desappearing or randomly flipped normal.
Does anyone know of a good TG2 shader that I can use on both(imported object and tg2 terrains)?
I have tried almost all of them with the same negative result.
Thanks 

[moodflow]

I could be wrong, but I think this is still in development.  I've also noticed massive inconsistencies on some objects.  For example, I've imported objects that will not display texture/colors properly (usually overly dark and desaturated), which cannot be fixed from within TG2.  Its been a while so I don't have any examples to post.

[j meyer]

I've done that successfully a few times and others too,as far as i know.
There can be problems with displacement sometimes,but as far as colors
it seems to work properly.You just have to make sure that you don't
export a texture with your models,so that there is no mapping going on.
Depending on the modeling application you use,the export settings do
vary though.
It would help to know which  modeling app you are using.

[cyphyr]

You may find it impossible to use Terragens shaders on imported objects the way you would like. Of particular importance would be to avoid using displacements as these are very hard to control and can result in your object changing size or breaking apart. However most standard image mapped textures should work ok, just make sure you run the object through poseray first. If your using the default shader for texturing your objects make sure its configured properly, there are 3 places an image-map shader can plug in, main input node (first of left) the colour image and the image function. Try adding your image to each and all of these to see the difference.
Richard

[Oshyan]

The basic TG2 texturing shaders - Surface Layer, Power Fractal, Image Map, and Default shaders should all work well with imported objects *provided the object is properly formatted*. TG2 works best with OBJ format from other applications, however every application seems to have a slightly different way of exporting data. Many people have found a program called PoseRay does a good job at formatting OBJ's so that TG2 can handle them well. Here's a thread of discussion on its use: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=927.0

If that doesn't seem to help post some rendered examples of the problem and it should be easier to provide further assistance.

- Oshyan

[pagan]

Hi all, thanks for all the avice it has been very useful...
just wanted to ask if there is away of baking the displacemant of a shader so that I can achieve the same visual effect when applied on an imported object.
If I model part of the terrain(for example a cave) externally it would look quite different from the TG2 terrain when applying only the same color.
Are ther any other techniques to achive the same result of TG2shaders on imported object?

[j meyer]

According to matt it should be possible (see here
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2891.msg29313#msg29313 ),
but there are many problems you can run into actually,judging from my
experiments that is.

[Oshyan]

Hi all, thanks for all the avice it has been very useful...
just wanted to ask if there is away of baking the displacemant of a shader so that I can achieve the same visual effect when applied on an imported object.
If I model part of the terrain(for example a cave) externally it would look quite different from the TG2 terrain when applying only the same color.
Are ther any other techniques to achive the same result of TG2shaders on imported object?

You should be able to simply apply the same shader or shader tree to the object shader input to get essentially the same material, although scaling might be an issue. In that case make a copy of the shader/tree and adjust to match.

- Oshyan