Snowy mountain

[Kadri]

Typerextreme , what is the scale of your trees now?

Kadri.

[typerextreme]

At the settings it's rendering at now, 1:1:1.   It took it 26 minutes to populate but it finally did it. I've gotta leave it rendering overnight, but should be done by morning. Object spacing on the population is 25, length A and B are both 50,000. I will post results when i get back from school

[Kadri]

[typerextreme]

Oh i noticed something that may just be specific to my computer or what it was doing at the time, which was almost nothing but terragen2. When the populator was populating my cpu was only about 50% used. Same thing when its just doing the 3d preview. Uses the whole CPU when doing actual renders though. Both of my cores were associated with and detected by terragen.

[Kadri]

The 3d preview isn't multithreaded unfortunately.I don't know the other...But it is maybe not too.

Kadri.

[jo]

Hi,

Populating isn't multithreaded yet either.

Regards,

Jo

[Dune]

Calico's method of getting snow on your trees would probably not work in your trees, as they are 'evergreens'. Put a multishader under the leaves, and color it white. Then all needles turn white. If you need to color only some trees white, or give it a subtle gradation, use an image map shader (some vague grey-black-white pattern, repeated) as a blend shader, attached to a camera pointing down, and hanging above the tree population. I developed this method only last week, and posted somewhere. Or use a painted shader, an additional idea Dandel0 came up with. He put it in a sticky post.
You can also use a painted shader for your tree distribution, and I wouldn't let them grow on top of the whole mountain, but restrict them to the valleys.

Hope this helps.

---Dune

[Dune]

Sorry, I didn't mean a multishader but a surface shader...

---Dune

[typerextreme]

It got done in time for me to post this morning before i leave, but wont be back for about 8 hours.

Calico's method of getting snow on your trees would probably not work in your trees, as they are 'evergreens'. Put a multishader under the leaves, and color it white. Then all needles turn white. If you need to color only some trees white, or give it a subtle gradation, use an image map shader (some vague grey-black-white pattern, repeated) as a blend shader, attached to a camera pointing down, and hanging above the tree population. I developed this method only last week, and posted somewhere. Or use a painted shader, an additional idea Dandel0 came up with. He put it in a sticky post.
You can also use a painted shader for your tree distribution, and I wouldn't let them grow on top of the whole mountain, but restrict them to the valleys.

Hope this helps.

---Dune

I saw what you're talking about somewhere in here, I'll hunt it down again if this doesn't work for me.

The distribution is controlled by a distribution shader with a maximum slope of 30 with fuzzy zone of 20.

I attached the tgd of this render in case anybody was wondering why my scale is so small.

[domdib]

To be 100% honest, I don't think you need the trees - the snowy mountain with clouds looks good on its own. But if you're determined to do it with trees, I'd say don't try to do it with one big population. Scatter smaller populations at various points, and try to get the trees clumping a bit more in each population, using a power fractal for distribution. The trees in this latest render don't seem to have rendered correctly - is this a result of your experiments with trying to get snow on the branches?

[Henry Blewer]

I use a distribution shader for my populations. You can adjust the slope and altitude with it easily. Also by bringing the density down to 0.4 or less, with a close population density the trees/plants clump together well. The density of the population wants to be close to the size of the largest scale of the object.

[typerextreme]

To be 100% honest, I don't think you need the trees - the snowy mountain with clouds looks good on its own. But if you're determined to do it with trees, I'd say don't try to do it with one big population. Scatter smaller populations at various points, and try to get the trees clumping a bit more in each population, using a power fractal for distribution. The trees in this latest render don't seem to have rendered correctly - is this a result of your experiments with trying to get snow on the branches?

I'm thinking about dropping the trees if I can't get it right. And yes i tried snow on the trees, I tried the method the njeneb linked me to earlier.   Although it just pissed me off. It was populating for 9 hours. It got 93% populated and then Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library popped up and said "the application has requested the program to terminate in an unsual way. Please contact the program manufacturers."

I'm attaching the tgd in case planetside needs it for debugging. I have a feeling it has something to do with there being roughly 19 million trees populated at the time it crashed. Well that and the only 2gb of RAM I have. (I'm upgraded as far as I can go) Although when I checked with Task Manger only 85% of my physical memory was in use.

I'm thinking that I am gonna go back to no trees, maybe figure something out to possibly put falling snow in.

I use a distribution shader for my populations. You can adjust the slope and altitude with it easily. Also by bringing the density down to 0.4 or less, with a close population density the trees/plants clump together well. The density of the population wants to be close to the size of the largest scale of the object.

I'm using a distribution shader, just one big one.

[Oshyan]

RAM is almost certainly the issue, especially if you only have 2GB of RAM. I don't see anywhere near that many instances in the images you posted, so there must be a lot of them out of view of the camera. It seems like you should be able to optimize the population area significantly.

- Oshyan

[Dune]

I had a go at your TGD, typerextreme, and changed some settings. Most importantly, your population area is much too big. No wonder it takes ages to populate. You should copy coordinates somewhere in front of your view, paste the into the area, and then try no minimize the area lengths, so the pop falls within your view area. Take a look from above and you'll see the boundaries and your camera.
You wanted snow on the trees, I changed it into my method of getting this, with a distribution shader. I reduced the tree size and decreased the distance between trees, and distribution up the mountain (differently, you'll see).
Now you'll have to import your tree again, and don't take notice of the mistakes that happen when opening the tgd (I work in a different build). Just import your tree, save and reopen. That should work.

---Dune

[typerextreme]

RAM is almost certainly the issue, especially if you only have 2GB of RAM. I don't see anywhere near that many instances in the images you posted, so there must be a lot of them out of view of the camera. It seems like you should be able to optimize the population area significantly.

- Oshyan

The images I posted never had 19 million instances, that one failed to populate so I couldn't render it.

I had a go at your TGD, typerextreme, and changed some settings. Most importantly, your population area is much too big. No wonder it takes ages to populate. You should copy coordinates somewhere in front of your view, paste the into the area, and then try no minimize the area lengths, so the pop falls within your view area. Take a look from above and you'll see the boundaries and your camera.
You wanted snow on the trees, I changed it into my method of getting this, with a distribution shader. I reduced the tree size and decreased the distance between trees, and distribution up the mountain (differently, you'll see).
Now you'll have to import your tree again, and don't take notice of the mistakes that happen when opening the tgd (I work in a different build). Just import your tree, save and reopen. That should work.

---Dune

I'll take a look at it when i get back from school in about 8 hours.

I see two tgd's, which one is the one you want me to look at?