WHERE IS THE GRASS!!?

Started by Emerald_Ice, January 31, 2007, 01:37:37 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Emerald_Ice

I have been having quite a few problems with rendering grass, as well as the cleavers that came with the xfrog pack. Grass almost never renders, and when it does, it insists on staying this flat, grey color, no matter what shaders I apply to it. Not only this, but if you do a population with a spacing of less than 2 or so, it not only refuses to render, but also crashes TG2. THe cleavers, I haven't ever gotten to render. Has anyone else had problems like this? please help, it is driving me CRAZY.

old_blaggard

I've had similar problems with the cleavers.  This maybe be a bug in the .tgo importing method, which will hopefully be fixed soon.  For the grass, I would recommend setting the area center to your camera position, and then working from there.  When it crashes, I'm guessing it's because TG2 has run out of memory - depending on the size of the area and the density of the population, TG2 sometimes has to create several million instances.  If you don't have at least 1GB of RAM, this can crash the program.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Emerald_Ice

thanks for the advice about putting the center precisely where the camera is. This seems to make a difference, getting the grass to show up, at least in the last render i did. Also, the flat, grey problem went away, when I discovered that all I had to do was change the shader color around... I was tweaking something elses color instead, the opacity I think *rolls eyes*. By the way, why does putting the grass's center at the camera location make it magically appear?

Kevin F

Quote from: Emerald_Ice on January 31, 2007, 01:37:37 AM
THe cleavers, I haven't ever gotten to render. Has anyone else had problems like this? please help, it is driving me CRAZY.

I think the problem is with the initial scale of the cleavers. They need to be scaled up to say 20 to be seen. Like you I couldn't see them, so I simply increased the size to 10, then 100 and there they were, like some big cluster of javelins growing in the ground! You then need to tweak size against area to be covered against spacing to get your desired effect.
Have a look at the attached .tgd file.
Regards
Kevin

Emerald_Ice

thanks a lot, I tried increasing the scale like you said, and immediately I had giant cleavers springing forth from the desert  :)

old_blaggard

QuoteBy the way, why does putting the grass's center at the camera location make it magically appear?
Your camera isn't necessarily facing towards the grass or even within its bounding range.  I'm guessing your grass wasn't visible from the camera - setting it to the camera's location put it within your camera's field of view.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

twistednoodle

I'm having trouble seeing my pops too so I downloaded the cleavers test by Kevin F.  however, when I load it into tg2 I get a message TGOReader: Unable to open file ...  How do I get around this so I can see his grass settings in action?  Any other tips re: Object populations would be greatly appreciated! ;D
I may be crazy but at least I'm not crazy!

buzzzzz

Quote from: twistednoodle on February 15, 2007, 10:08:31 PM
I'm having trouble seeing my pops too so I downloaded the cleavers test by Kevin F.  however, when I load it into tg2 I get a message TGOReader: Unable to open file ...  How do I get around this so I can see his grass settings in action?  Any other tips re: Object populations would be greatly appreciated! ;D

You need to redirect the reader to the TGO file it's looking for on your hard drive because it's probably in a different location than on Kevin's machine.