Okay, importing my first object from 3D Coat into Terragen. I noticed that the details are lacking compared to the preview I get in 3D coat itself. This is actually a new problem for me as I've found imported objects to actually end up with higher detail than I expected. I have tried tampering with Ray Trace Objects (looks the same), smooth normals, and increasing detail and sampling of the scene to know avail. Also included is the texture bitmap itself. Thoughts, anyone?
Did you apply bump in the default shader?
Did you convert the voxels into a mesh before exporting?
Dune: I did. But even without, the color map alone should match, I think.
J Meyer: I did not. Is that necessary? Does Terragen simplify over-complex objects unless its a mesh? If you have experience with 3d Coat, I'd like to know how that's done.
Solved (for the most part). Now I just have %^$#@$@ ngons! Grrr...
Good to see you found a solution.
As for the ngons you could try the retopologize tool or fix those
in a modeler that can handle lots of polygons.
Good luck.
Just to clarify, Terragen does not do any simplification of the model. But it's critical to keep in mind that actual "baked" geometry, not bump or displacement maps, are going to give you the best results when imported. You want to get the highest density of geometry out of your source application as you can. Terragen can deal with pretty high geometry counts. The ability to do actual displacement on imported objects is currently quite limited, it works when Raytraced Objects is off but even then the results are not always great, so real geometry is best.
- Oshyan
Yes, thanks Oshyan. I didn't think it was Terragen. 3D Coat is a fairly complex program so these sorts of issues are to be expected when learning a new package, I suppose.
Just to add to Oshyan's last post, for people who may be reading this and are new to these concepts. The issue Oshyan explains is NOT a fault that terragen has but other soft is without. In maya and mudbox for example, you do the same as Oshyan directed. That is, The higher the geometry level of the base model the better the model will take and represent the maps. only the balance a user needs may be different.
But where Maya (again just for example) may have more tools to make things of this nature work, Terragen does not need them. IN Terragen you can populate an entire scene with the high polly and no need for simulated displacement... Literally globally (if you have the system to handle it) something Maya CANNOT do.
But really, once you get beyond the foreground, its not necessary to have real displacement or geometry, then bump will usually do fine anyway. My point is that this give and take that Oshyan describes seems universal across all 3D software I have seen so far. And again, Im just saying so, for any new users who come across this thread.
As someone still relatively new to 3D my self, this was an important lesson for me to learn. And once I finally got it through my thick scull, I was able to start making the images I wanted to.
Just saying.