Your Top 5 Most Wanted Features

[Marlin]

I'd like to see the true transparency ( BW image ) as well. 

Also:

Scaling info kept in TGO files... and loading of all the proper materials related to the object ( object loader)

A glass shader that is transparent to light coming through for interiors and proper shadowing.

A river shader that has water and gives you the choice of eroding the river bed. Something on the order of VistaPro but far better. It could also recognize rocks and other objects in the river bed.

A real volumetric lake and ocean.

A means of easily creating flat places for buildings or any other thing you would like.

Import of Poser and Das Studio scenes, animations, ect......   

[jo]

Hi Marlin,

A means of easily creating flat places for buildings or any other thing you would like.

Although it doesn't help for freeform sorts of shapes, try using the Simple Shape Shader in displacement mode for that. You can create it from either the Colour shader or Displacement shader menus.

Regards,

Jo

[reck]

Unique variations would be sooo cool, but as you say that would need some Very close work with Xfrog or the development of an entirely new "Tree Growth" program
cant think of two more

I think if we could just place multiple objects into a single population this would be a good first step (with the option of colour variation for the leaves).

[reck]

Here's a modified list copied from another thread.

x64 bit.
Multi-threaded render preview window.
Improved multi-threaded efficiency, especially for higher thread counts.
Ability to displace ray traced objects.
Support for multiple objects and colours in one population.
"Sit on terrain" for single objects.
SSS.
Water features such as foam, waves, waterfalls.
Sky features such as rainbows and rain.
Depth of field.
Stars.
Improved erosion operators.
Controlling the look of clouds is very difficult, please make easier
A more stable paint shader.
Stop the sun from shining through the terrain without having to resort to rts.
A rock object that supports displacement.
Faster development cycle with more frequent updates, maybe let Oshyan near the source code 

...and then...

Full animation system.

...and then...

A vue-type Ecosystem with unique variations of realistic looking internal plants and trees that react to their surroundings and wind.

I don't think that's asking to much

[Dune]

You forgot one thing: a magic button to put everything in the right place and immediately render the greatest art ever, all in one go!

[Henry Blewer]

Isn't that called a camera? If you think my renders look bad, you should see the photos I have of my thumb.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

You forgot one thing: a magic button to put everything in the right place and immediately render the greatest art ever, all in one go!

Isn't that called a camera? If you think my renders look bad, you should see the photos I have of my thumb.

that would  be the mysterious camera 9 node

[Eikers]

1. Georeferenced images

Great support when masking with real world data.

2. Possibility to import position and scale for object populations.
   
Measured datasets for entire populations of trees exist in many forms today. In landscaping, trees are often plotted with use in 3D applications in mind. The widespread use of airborne lasers in geographic surveys produces huge amounts of forest data. These range from vegetation height rasters to point clouds for individual trees. Especially the last should be well suited for import.

3. Possibility to place individual objects on surface.
 

[Kadri]

I want at least 4 more coders for Planetside !
Then we will have all of these wishes very soon

[Hetzen]

Here's mine currently. Sorry if it sounds like a bitch. It's more of where I am with the program.

1/ 64 bit has to come out soon.
2/ Multi object populations with more random variance, like tilt in Y, and colour shift with fractals.
3/ A better lighting model for clouds. Even a setting for depth of shadow cast would be useful, rather than just on or off, or via how dense the shape looks. There are some magnificent layers of clouds outside my window today, with some fantastic pearl like qualities, which I know I can't model, because I know my layers will create too much shadow, and the clouds themselves will not project light.
4/ More control on cloud shape. The cloud node takes over, and has a habit of 'crunching' cloud shapes too much. I'd like to spend more time with this, but constantly get thwarted in trying to creat scale within the cloud depth restrictions, ie I'd like to set the percentage of flattening of the base of the structure, and I'd also like to control the coverage through the height of a cloud. I had an idea of just being able to modulate depth and altitude of the cloud layer, but as it is, the calculation requires a set boundry to work in. That's ok, but we really do need to be able to put more variation in easily.
5/ Caching. There has to be some sort of intelligent caching of GI AND populations. Matt has already aluded to that populations can be switched to real x,y,z co-ordinates rather than population x,y,z. This would allow for travelling population areas to be locked to the camera, and that only the newest parts of the landscape revealed to the camera are calculated, rather than having one massive area, with it's calculation baggage, per frame. I'd happily let a machine work the hours to work this out to file. It would save on render times, memory constraints, and edit time.

I don't really care about the animation module, because camera keyframes are irrelevant in this package. I can set up a landscape proxy in Max or Maya, and then ship over the camera data to render out my plate. Which is what I do at the moment. More control within the nodes via an A,B,C matrix is actually way more exciting than having a graph/dope sheet editor.

Anyway, my tupence thrown into the well.

Cheers

Jon

[jo]

Hi,

If you want multi-object populations can I ask why exactly you want multi-object populations? I certainly think it's a reasonable sort of thing to have, but I'm interested in the reasons that you want this.

Regards,

Jo

[Hetzen]

Hi Jo

Multi-object populations would be useful when you have several models of the same species of tree for example, or if you want to mask up a forest with a variety of trees, in one calculation. You could have a generic grass population, which would have a variety of models in it, that you specify what the odds of each appearing are, like scattering flowers etc. Ideally, you could have a probability on clumping them, so species gravitate towards each other.

I understand you can do this already with multiple populations and a lot of mask work, but I think this sort of feature would help a lot of people get goods results quickly, especially in short time restrictions.

It would also make the node network neater, ie you place your models inside the node, and connect it to one of sixteen inputs. A bit like the old material shader.

Cheers

Jon

[Hetzen]

Just to add Jo, being able to create modulised 'eco systems' or 'species systems' I'd think would be a great after sales revenue. Rather than buying 1300 random species with young, adult and mature variants, you could set up something like 'Pine Forest' or 'High summer grass' packages, which did give you the variation, in not only models, but also shadows within those sorts of textures those models create.

Especially if you allow fractal variance in the leaf colours.

[Hetzen]

  I'm on a roll.

It would also be very cool to be able to aply fractal or functional displacement on these models to give them some movement in tilt around their anchor points. It's a subtle thing to get right, but you rarely see vegitation remain still. It maybe something that needs a little more thought, but if you want this program to become the premiere package in natural realism, it is something to consider.

[pfrancke]

1)  64 bit - so more complex and larger images can be created - access to greater memory
2)  Developer written best practices manual - so that end users can learn more quickly and renders look better
3)  easier multi-view interface - need more natural user interface - TG2 not accessible enough
4)  better object integration (mainly the bmp/displacement ray tracing thing)
5)  better lighting support (IES, and different style lights)
6)  gpu rendering support (yes I know, stay reasonable)