Population wierdness

Started by mhle, May 22, 2011, 03:18:48 PM

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mhle

When I try to populate with some trees they always end up below the terrain... how can I make sure they are on the ground?

Thanks, Mads

Tangled-Universe

#1
Before I explain, first two little things:
It's better to put these questions into the appropriate section, like Terragen 2 Discussion (support section is mostly for possible bugs or features, where the discussion sections is more about "how do I do/get this/that...?".
Secondly, there's plenty about this (actually everything) on the forums, so a search might help :)

Basically you need to check a few things if populations do not fit your terrain:

In the terrain-tab of your populator you can find two settings, the "sit on terrain" setting (which needs to be activated) and the "Planet" setting.
Make sure the name of the planet defined is the same as the name of the planet present in your network on which you've created your terrain.
By default the "sit on terrain" shader is "Compute Terrain". Check if this node indeed is the last "compute terrain" node in the node-network.
You may have deleted it or have replaced it with one with a different name.

If this all is correct and not the source of the problem then it's likely because you have (big) displacements after the last compute terrain.
Then you either need to add another compute terrain at the end and use that as "sit on terrain shader" or define the very last shader in your node network as the "sit on terrain shader".

After checking this at least 99% of the cases are solved.

I once made the mistake to enter a value in the Y-position in the object maker (NOT the populator node, but the object maker which actually contains the model you use to populate).
If you do so you offset your population by that given value.
So also make sure you didn't enter any value there, should be all 0 by default.

Hope this all helps.

Cheers,
Martin

mhle

My apologies, I was under the impression that I was posting in duscussion, but seems I was more tired than I thought :) And your suggestions panned out, I put the compute terrain shader in another place and it works great now, thanks!

.. Mads

Tangled-Universe

No problem, these things can happen.

Great to hear it works now :)
Please show us the results ;)

Cheers,
Martin

mhle

It's far too early to be thinking about showing anything ;) I am far from happy with the terrain - I have yet to master getting procedural terrains to look even remotely real (and aesthetically pleasing) - it's much easier when one has a DEM, but I like the idea of "creating" a world form scratch.

.. mads

mhle