http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/
A free program to generate ivy around your trees or other objects - just remember to press "birth" before exporting.
Helen
Very Sweet
Thanks ;D
i can't get the ivy to show up though, it loads the obj fine, but when I hit grow or birth nothing happens
Same for me.
you need to double click somewhere on the scene to "plant" a seed
Quote from: mrwho on March 15, 2007, 07:29:24 PM
i can't get the ivy to show up though, it loads the obj fine, but when I hit grow or birth nothing happens
You have to double-click at the base of your tree, wall or where ever you want the Ivy to start growing.
Basically you are giving the ivy a root to start from. Once you have done that then you can click grow, let
the vine grow until you think you have enough on the tree then click grow again to get it to stop. Now you
can click Birth, you may have to adjust the leaf and branch size and click Birth again until it looks the right size.
helentr, thanks!
Excellent find! ;)
Yeah, the results look great. I have to wonder if there is going to be any more development in this region but knowing university work, these normally are one time wonders.
This is so cool! :)
monks
Is this a stand alone program that you import your object into first?
Looks pretty neat. I'm at work so I don't have time to play but if someone could explain the mechanics, I'd appreciate it as I'm a model dummy. :-\
Wow. The ivy looks cool!
Yes, you import any object and the Ivy just grows up and along the object.
just a warning to you guys those the exported file gets pretty big.
Regards,
Will
I at export receive a file obj zero length? What do I make not correctly at preservation of result?
Did you press "birth" before exporting to generate the geometry?
Helen
cant open the download any reson why
Thanks John
hi, what exactly is your problem with the dl? broken file or smth? or what do you mean with 'open'?
well I click on the link and just a file opens and thats all nothing els happens trys to like down load but when i save it and open it it opens a net blank page and thats it mmmmmm doing somthing wrong i'm sure ???
hm, mac or windows-machine?
or wait, did you actually find the executable after unpacking tha archive? maybe it just opens up slow on your pc, java ^^
don't know about the mac-version
Thanks! The file now is exported well. But other problem - leaves of an ivy have white color, and a trunk of normal color.
Quote from: Victor on March 20, 2007, 07:27:15 AM
Thanks! The file now is exported well. But other problem - leaves of an ivy have white color, and a trunk of normal color.
The Ivy generator uses a .png image, and TGTP doesn't work well with them. What I do is to convert the .png files to .tif files in the image editor of your choice (I use Photoshop) and load those in the object shaders for your ivy once it is loaded into TGTP. :)
I can't see the birth button because the window is too big and I can't get to the bottom to resize it. Help Please. iBook Mac OS 10.4.
Trial job. :)
(http://keep4u.ru/imgs/s/070322/91c088ca5f2971cda0.jpg) (http://keep4u.ru/full/070322/91c088ca5f2971cda0/jpg)
Looks great, nice stones btw...
Yeah, Victor, great job. Looks very nice. Second on the stones - realistic!
Great job! This ivy generator is really cool ;).
And is free :)
This is pretty cool. Great job. Argh, I envy people that create things such as this!
Thanks for responses. But it is trial job, it is necessary to correct position of stones (they settle down unnaturally) further, color of leaves seems to me too bright. The greatest problem - it is very difficult to arrange object in the necessary place :( :( :(, it is very inconvenient to move object in space of a stage, a lot of time for achievement of good result leaves. Sometimes it seems, that they are in different coordinates at render camera ???.
Just a ? when i put a file into the Ivy generator i grow it then save it and when i load it to tg2 just the Ivy comes out with no object am i missing somthing
Thank you
John
In the Ivy Generator you are only creating the ivy. You then can import the object (separately) into TG2 and then the ivy object. Then you must align the two objects inside of TG2.
I ran a test and the leaves came out wrong. I switched the pics to converted tiffs in the multishader but,
Edit: I'm guessing now that I did not save the tiff correctly. The pic should be transparent aside from the leaf right? Any help out there with the conversion in photoshop?
when you open the ivy generator do any of you have a problem of not seeing the bottom right side under leaf probability?... how many settings are under there as it doesn't have a scroll bar >:(
In the grow section I have 8 sliders and in the birth section I have 3 sliders.
It's almost like the vine is upside down. The test was at a fairly high setting, somewhere in the 8's.
so the last button is birth?... odd when i maximise it cuts the birth button off the screen...
When I double click the top of the window it max's correctly.
Quote from: Mandrake on March 23, 2007, 09:00:03 AM
I ran a test and the leaves came out wrong. I switched the pics to converted tiffs in the multishader but,
Edit: I'm guessing now that I did not save the tiff correctly. The pic should be transparent aside from the leaf right? Any help out there with the conversion in photoshop?
Photoshop should recognize the transparency in the .png file you just need to tell to use the transparent color when you save it as a .tif. Also make sure you use that same .tif as your "Opacity image" and that the "Use alpha channel" box is checked.
Thanks sonshine, I looked at the pic a 2n't time and realised what happened.
Transparency was not checked. Done deal thanks.
Great! Have fun there are many way you can spice up a scene using it. I am currently working on one with the ivy climbing up the walls of an old ruin, I will post an image this evening. (currently at work)
sonshine, have you noticed that the bounding box and xyz arrows are out of sinc?
hi how do we set up the node's has someone a pic of the node shader for the ivy
???
Thanks john
Quote from: Mandrake on March 23, 2007, 12:06:23 PM
sonshine, have you noticed that the bounding box and xyz arrows are out of sinc?
Depending on the model you grew the ivy on will determine the angle that it comes into TGTP
some of the Xfrog trees come into the ivy generator laying on their side. The ivy grows on them
ok but comes into TGTP rotated and enlaged in scale. What I had to do was rotate the ivy as
follows "x"= -90 "y"= 0 "z"= 90 and scale it to .25 on all axis'
Quote from: ozijon on March 23, 2007, 12:09:47 PM
hi how do we set up the node's has someone a pic of the node shader for the ivy
???
Thanks john
John, this is what worked for me.
1. make dir c:\tg2\landscape\obj\ivy\
2. In photoshop save the three png files as tiff files that are in the ivy\texture dir to the above dir.
make sure you save the tif with transparency checked. ;)
3. make your ivy obj and save to #1
4. go to your ivy dir and edit the mtl file to reflect your new tiff files.
If someone knows how to add and opacity section that will work in TG2 chime in.
5. start TG2 and add your ivy.obj.
6. Go to the multi shader for each leaf and copy the tiff file, go to the opacity tab and paste it in opacity image,
check off use alpha channel, I set my opacity to 1.
I seem to have lost the top of my vines branches in this test. I changed the default bark to.
I don't know if it something I'm doing wrong or what but
Ivy obj. seem very unstable when it comes to TG2.
Both "Tests" Revisited do NOT preform WeLL!!
If the Ivy obj. is in my FACE as in the 2nd test
As soon as I use the ALT Mouse to adjust camera,
TG2 Fails...
Work fine up until, I save... and revisit. Anyone else notice this?
Mandrake, I've seen this with other objects. If I get to close to the object and/or get close and make a rotation around it or move the camera for a good position when I'm very close to the object, TG2 just blips out. I've noticed there's something about being too close to an object to increase the amount of RAM TG2 uses, which I think might have something to do with the RAM error messages we get in those circumstances. It might just be that the object itself runs out of RAM on our computers and doesn't cache to disk.
It seems like TG2 is having a difficult time with large object textures or increased amounts of RAM based upon object related events/materials/objects.
@Mandrake I've found this problem too and seems to be linked to a image shader... since when i disabled the image shaders/ deleted them i could then pan around in the preview window
...and the image shaders are related to an image...textures...and memory issues.
Quote from: king_tiger_666 on March 25, 2007, 09:03:08 AM
@Mandrake I've found this problem too and seems to be linked to a image shader... since when i disabled the image shaders/ deleted them i could then pan around in the preview window
A new textures pack from the creator of Ivy generator is now available with a short tutorial for Blender.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92010
Thanks for pointing that out :).
can anyone please help me with this....
why am I getting white dots in ivy???...
TGD attached
It's the images you're using. I had a hell of a time with this myself. It seems alpha plane interpretation is pretty iffy with TG2. There is a new set of leaf textures available at the guy's web site. The textures included are jpeg, with the alpha plane split into a separate image. These work fine and avoid the whole alpha plane issue.
There is another issue with the generator that no-one here seems to have picked up on. The author seems to have trouble with his model orientation/vertex winding. With the original version of the program, models were incorrectly lit and I would have to click the 'flip normal' switch to get the seed to appear on the outside of models. The new version (1.3) of the program has corrected this - the same models now appear correctly lit and the seed appears on the outside, without having to click 'Flip Normals'. The models are still mirror-imaged, though - put ivy on the left side of a model in the generator, and any other program (PoseRay, TG2, MilkShape) will show it on the right side of the model.
This may also affect the orientation of the leaves, but I'm not certain of this. The author notes on his site that most of the images submitted to him have had the leaves pointing in the wrong direction. If you look at the original leaf textures, the leaves point to the left. All the images in the new texture set point to the right. Sure enough, if you use the original textures, the leaf tips point back along their stem, instead of in the direction the ivy is growing. I suspect that the author's model orientation problem tricked him into creating the first set of textures incorrectly, but I'm not sure he understands the real problem - after all, the generator is still rendering models backwards.
So use the new jpeg textures that contain a separate image for the alpha data and it should work.