Terragen 2 Beta Discussion

[sonshine777]

Sounds Awesome!!! I guess I will have to start saving up for a better machine so I can take advantage of all the new goodies.

How about a core i7

I've been salivating over some of the stuff in this thread:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4981.0

It's just a matter of time/money.

[sjefen]

This is great news.
I'm really looking forward to the painting tool and the rock object.

- Terje

[PorcupineFloyd]

Multi-threaded cloud speed optimizations, that's always good ;-)

[gregsandor]

Great news.  I'm really looking forward to the painting tool. 

Have you added a mask channel for object specularity?

[Matt]

Have you added a mask channel for object specularity?

Not yet, sorry.

Matt

[monks]

Been using TG a fair bit of late -this is great news! 

monks

[Oshyan]

so this is just like painted eco systems in vue thats awesome!

It has a similar functionality, but I believe it is generally more versatile in that it can be used to mask or apply color to any surface, as well as populations.

Unfortunately the 16 shader material limit for objects remains. That will likely be fixed in an update following release.

- Oshyan

[jo]

Hi,

With Vue you end up painting individual instances, whereas with the painted shader you're effectively painting the density mask for the population, and the populator still places the instances as before. You can get a similar effect to Vue's ecosystems by creating a number of populators with different models and using the same painted shader as the density mask for each. With the painted shader you can currently paint in the 3D Preview at any angle, wheres with Vue you only seem to able to paint in a plan view. It's still early days with the painted shader though and we may need to change the way it works in the future. It's not especially refined right now, but you can do some cool stuff with it nevertheless.

Regards,

Jo

[gregsandor]

Will we be able to export that painted density mask?

[lightning]

Hi,

With Vue you end up painting individual instances, whereas with the painted shader you're effectively painting the density mask for the population, and the populator still places the instances as before. You can get a similar effect to Vue's ecosystems by creating a number of populators with different models and using the same painted shader as the density mask for each. With the painted shader you can currently paint in the 3D Preview at any angle, wheres with Vue you only seem to able to paint in a plan view. It's still early days with the painted shader though and we may need to change the way it works in the future. It's not especially refined right now, but you can do some cool stuff with it nevertheless.

Regards,

Jo

um this actually sounds better than the eco system
its really going to cut down recorces as well because you will be able to paint your mask only where the camera is pointed which is great!
Also are you going to add more options to the object preview? i think bounding boxes are very crude and thus not very accurate what i would like is just a very simple openglbillboard option  (like vues) with a simple click i would be able to see exactly where i have placed each of my plants without having to render every 2 minutes to see if everything looks ok will this be added in future releases?

[lightning]

Will we be able to export that painted density mask?

yes this would be good if you would want to edit your mask in PS or something

[rcallicotte]

Wow.  It took me a while to get to this.  Awesome!

[Matt]

Will we be able to export that painted density mask?

Not yet, but it's on the to-do list.

Matt

[Oshyan]

We probably won't be able to make any significant improvements to object previews before release, but we definitely want to in the future. We recognize it's difficult to work with objects right now partly because of that.

- Oshyan

[Mohawk20]

That's good to know Oshyan 

Oh, and nice logo Lighting, you're really getting that site on the road!