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General => Terragen Discussion => Topic started by: cedmen on November 21, 2017, 08:30:39 PM

Title: importing vdb?
Post by: cedmen on November 21, 2017, 08:30:39 PM
Hey Guys,
I modeled the eye of the cell storm vortex then converted as vdb into Houdini and rendering in Clarisse. I am not entirely happy with the render so I was wondering if it is possible to import a VDB in Terragen and render it there.

Cheers
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Matt on November 21, 2017, 11:06:12 PM
This isn't possible at the moment, but it probably will be in a future version.

Matt
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: cedmen on November 22, 2017, 11:35:09 AM
ok thanks, that would be great because your renderer is awesome.
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Matt on November 22, 2017, 06:06:51 PM
Thanks!
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 02:25:09 PM
Please Terragen devs, Importing VDB should be a priority for you guys now.

Vue has it and pretty much most of the standard major 3D packages.

Personally I only have a license of Lightwave, but uses Blender more and more right now.
Ivé been on and off wrestling with the Disney free WDA cloud asset trying to emulate the look you get from Disneys hyperion render.

Lightwave isn´t there with it´s GI volume bounces, and blender does a decent job at getting the VDB to look nice, but it still can not match the wonderful scattering that takes place in hyperion with the powder effect.

Now since Terragen supposedly should have a better scattering function to emulate similar to that of hyperion, it would have been great to try it out.
what I would prefer than the other way around, so pity the import function wasn´t there before the export, I will have more use of
importing a vdb designed, fluid or modeled volume in to Terragen than exporting cloud volumes from Terragen, so I kind of think vue did the right thing with implementing VDB import.

Personally I can both sculpt or model clouds, or use gas solver for cloud fluid sims in lightwave, or use blender for cloud modeling with fluid sims, to create the "hero" clouds, or use houdini´s cloud fx to paint, or model or fluid sim the cloud volumes, all these final created cloud volumes can be shared acroos all these platforms, going from houdini to lightwave, houdini to blender, lightwave to houdini, lightwave to blender, from blender to lightwave, from blender to houdini..

So a simple vdb import would enhance the way you can design your cloudscapes in Terragen enourmously..and it will help designers, artists, visual effects artist to complete what is needed, and not just relying on.."that is not how nature does it" 
The limitations of not being able to design the cloudscapes as you want ..that is a limitation, not an option.

here´s a link to blenderartist.org, where I have started a thread around shading the asset..
https://blenderartists.org/t/vdb-wda-disney-cloud-scattering-tests/1227871

My profile over there is MI65
And my profile at newtek is prometheus.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PrometheusPhamarus/videos

I rather look in to getting a terragen license than vue someday(but vue has som major features Terragen hasnt, including VDB import), but that day isn´t still after many years here, there are too many features missing or UI workflows that are missing that I think is necessary for me before a purchase, I will rack these issues up and link with descriptions on where I think terragen could simply rise to another level, and ergo will probably get a lot more attention and licenses sold, in the end it will probably be a matter of intention, and having enough coding guys to work it out, which by no means tells anything about it being easy to do. :)

(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148706&d=1600305387)


(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=148693&d=1600202354)
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Matt on September 18, 2020, 09:21:17 PM
Hi Prometheus, thanks for showing these tests.

VDB Import is high priority on the roadmap. I share your belief that this is going to be an important tool and will open up tons of new possibilities. We will be working on it.
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 10:43:24 PM
Quote from: Matt on September 18, 2020, 09:21:17 PMHi Prometheus, thanks for showing these tests.

VDB Import is high priority on the roadmap. I share your belief that this is going to be an important tool and will open up tons of new possibilities. We will be working on it.
Awesome, will be checking in, if possibly try and implement sequenced VDB as well, that would allow for build up of clouds, or clouds swirling around mountain areas, provided it is simulated around the same mountain type or dummy mountains that are in Terragen finally, loads of ways to adress that by either exporting out a low res mountain and simulate around.  If possible, try and see if you can get full data in from temp, heat etc, that could render nicely as well..it would open up a lot for rendering out not just clouds directly in Terragen, but also vulcano smoke, forrest fires etc.

My current focus will be on trying out embergen a lot though, both for fire and smoke, but also for clouds, I saw someone made very nice cloud movements with it, and that was what I expected it should be able to do as well, great mostly realtime inside of Embergen (depending on resolution) then saving out to vdb.
Thanks for answering that it at least is thought of as being implemented in some priority list anyway.

Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 10:48:37 PM
And a little scattering guide for those who may need it :)
(https://forums.newtek.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=142204&d=1531343972)
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: mhall on September 18, 2020, 11:33:01 PM
Quote from: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 10:43:24 PMmostly realtime inside of Embergen
It's funny that you've been posting about this today. I've been thinking of this since I first saw Embergen and had just done a search to see if TG imported VDBs yet (I visit these forums everyday and hadn't yet seen anything I could recall).


So Matt ... just another voice in support for importing VDBs.
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: pokoy on September 19, 2020, 07:49:50 AM
Quote from: Prometheus on September 18, 2020, 02:25:09 PM...and blender does a decent job at getting the VDB to look nice, but it still can not match the wonderful scattering that takes place in hyperion with the powder effect.

Maybe you missed this, you need to use forward scattering for clouds. Some renderers allow to change the directionality of scattering within volumes - negative for backwards, positive for forward scattering, mostly the parameter is in the -1...1 range, where a value of zero produces isotropic scattering. I tested this against Hyperion's look and I believe I got similar results in the 0.8-0.9 range.
I could not get the exact result however, Hyperion does some magic to simulate high numbers of bounces within the volume, most renderers aren't optimized for this and will take ages to deliver similar result or just fail entirely to clean up the noise.
Title: Re: importing vdb?
Post by: VFXtion on February 24, 2023, 08:01:12 AM
Hi Matt, please make this importing VDB feature, we need to render the specific volume shape in Terragen.