Anybody knows what is the deal with this model?
What is the black square and how to get rid of it?
Looks like it's not reading the alpha map correctly. Where did you get the model and is it OBJ or TGO?
- Oshyan
Looks like an Alpha image to me................... :)
It was a free model at Xfrog. and it is an obj.
When I open the alpha tiff file it looks okay.
The OBJ versions sometimes aren't configured right for Terragen (but if you did not say "yes" to "is this an Xfrog object" when loading it, you should try that first). I would try manually re-loading the alpha image in the alpha image field.
- Oshyan
Thx. I did clicked yes and will see if the manual way works. :)
BTW thx for sending my new TG4 license super fast 8)
Manual worked. I loaded the tiff under Opacity and inverted it. All good now. :D
Quote from: Oshyan on September 14, 2016, 03:42:53 PM
The OBJ versions sometimes aren't configured right for Terragen (but if you did not say "yes" to "is this an Xfrog object" when loading it, you should try that first). I would try manually re-loading the alpha image in the alpha image field.
- Oshyan
This has has always been an issue, I have hundreds of obj XFrog plants that I have shelved from TG use because of this. The Flowers series, Agricultural, Blossoming, Fruit Trees & Home garden packs load with multiple alpha errors per model?? The time it would take to fix all these would take days. Not mention the time it takes to individually generate previews for the the library which I use often. Is there ANY short term plan to fix this?
If you contact Xfrog they are often cooperative in offering model format exchange, so you could probably get the TGO versions if the OBJs aren't working for you.
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on September 16, 2016, 02:32:22 PM
If you contact Xfrog they are often cooperative in offering model format exchange, so you could probably get the TGO versions if the OBJs aren't working for you.
- Oshyan
That was not my qyuestion. Everyone knows they can contact Stewart for the tgos but like many of us I only have so much space on our HDs, Having to store doubles of every model is just silly. Ok .. so no short term goal .. Thank you
I actually don't know what the problem is, whether it's a misconfiguration in their MTLs or something TG is doing wrong or what. As you should well know OBJ is not a "standard". There is no one specification or implementation. I do think that since we already have an Xfrog "compatibility option" that if they're doing something specific that we don't want to be a general expectation of the OBJ reader, we could implement it for the Xfrog compatibility mode. I'll look into it.
Update: Cinema 4D doesn't even load textures for that object at all. MODO warns that textures can't be found but prompts to locate at least one, which I did, and still the flower comes in without alpha. This does not seem to be a TG-specific issue. Please direct complaints to Xfrog, their models are broken.
- Oshyan
I have found many / mos xFrog models to be 'broken' in some way. Not always the same way, and the fixes are different. They are good as a starting point, but can be greatly enhanced by converting Large TIFFs to PNG or Lossless JPG format, adding textures to bark and even creating entirely new bark or leaf images (including opacity images for leaves) for use. Takes a while, but once you're satisfied with the end result and wrap them up into TGO's they can produce pretty decent results.
I reached out to XFrog about this issue, on behalf of Stewart and XFrog he wanted me to post this tgo model as a solution to this particular issue http://xfrog.com/product/GC17.html (http://xfrog.com/product/GC17.html) He was kind enough to explain in detail what is happening with Tg currently reading XFrog alpha maps. In short XFrog worked very hard getting every obj converted to tgo to avoid these errors, so for now when possible just stick with Tgo. If you are stuck with an obj, just know that's the issue. Many Thks to XFrog for the hands on feedback
It's definitely best to work in TGO when you can (from Xfrog certainly). But I'd like to reiterate that this same free model that I downloaded did not work properly in either Cinema4D OR MODO in my own tests here. C4D loaded it without textures, MODO only loaded partial textures and had the same alpha issue as Terragen, and worse, with some parts/textures missing entirely. So actually TG is doing a better job than either of these other two major apps. ;)
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on September 16, 2016, 09:52:20 PM
... So actually TG is doing a better job than either of these other two major apps. ;)
- Oshyan
Why, of course it is! Was there ever any doubt? ;)
Actually I have never used any XFrog plants just off the shelf. There is always something that needs to be adjusted. But that doesn't bother me. I can edit the plants I need and save them, so that I can use them later.
The same here. Always needing to make adjustments but always saved as TGOs to make it more convenient. Not too much an issue. Just somewhat time consuming under certain circumstances.
Quote from: Oshyan on September 16, 2016, 09:52:20 PM
It's definitely best to work in TGO when you can (from Xfrog certainly). But I'd like to reiterate that this same free model that I downloaded did not work properly in either Cinema4D OR MODO in my own tests here. C4D loaded it without textures, MODO only loaded partial textures and had the same alpha issue as Terragen, and worse, with some parts/textures missing entirely. So actually TG is doing a better job than either of these other two major apps. ;)
- Oshyan
Oshyan I certainly wasn't attacking TG or its abilities nor was I comparing it to any modeling software packages. I was just asking a question in regards to a fix IN Terragen
I hear you Danny, but my point is I'm not seeing that a "fix" is necessarily possible just from TG's side. These appear to be fundamental issues in how the Xfrog objects have been created or exported to OBJ, at least in some cases. We could end up trying to implement workarounds for any number of quirks in the Xfrog model import process, and these days there are a lot more plant model sources, we can't have custom imports for all of them.
- Oshyan