I feel like theres something missing or wrong with this image. I can't quite place my finger on the problem though. I'm attaching two versions. I have a feeling that the problem lies in the snow. If you would like the tgd i can attach it. The fir is the free model from Xfrog.
Second image
You have a scale problem with the trees.They are too big.
There are maybe other problems too but one at a time :)
Are this mountains realy big ones or little ones in your mind?
Cheers.
Kadri.
Quote from: Kadri on October 18, 2009, 04:02:35 PM
Are this mountains realy big ones or little ones in your mind?
Big ones i thought.
I'd say the trees need to be scaled at least to 1/6th, even 1/8th of their size now to make it seem more realistic. You'll need to make the object spacing very much smaller.
The first one is nice, the sky looks good. I'm not sure about the green tint in No.2.
İ would try with at least 10 times smaller trees..and see what it looks like.
Maybe more or fewer would do it.
Edit : DandelO :)
Kadri.
Quote from: dandelO on October 18, 2009, 04:38:10 PM
I'd say the trees need to be scaled at least to 1/6th, even 1/8th of their size now to make it seem more realistic. You'll need to make the object spacing very much smaller.
The first one is nice, the sky looks good. I'm not sure about the green tint in No.2.
No.2 was supposed to have a blue tint to it, but i wasnt sure about it myself.
I'll see what i can do about the scale.
Alright, i believe i need to lower the scale even more, but I'll show y'all what i've got for scale. The trees are all one population, the varying scales were acheived just letting the populator vary the scales with minimum 0.5 and maximum 2.5.
That's much better. Good start.
yeah now its at about 1 million instances populated and only 21% populated. So it'll probably be an overnight render. But i reduced the object spacing again.
I wish I could figure out how to get snow on the trees themselves, but everything I tried never seemed to give me results.
Calico came up with the method. Here's the link.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7546.msg80462#msg80462
i'm trying the method out. hopefully the d*** thing will plant the trees sometime between now and 10 hours from now so it might have a chance of finishing the render before I get home from school lol.
İ haven't done this myself but if there are too many trees you may have render errors and such later.
I think try to restrict the trees to the camera...İf this is the problem of course.
In general if you won't see the trees outside the render border there is no need to populate it. And your render will end sooner.
Kadri.
yeah its probably a little wider than my render area, but its actually not quite as long as the render area, but it shouldn't be too bad, its just a little bit shorter. at least it's not taking an hour to populate 20%.
Typerextreme , what is the scale of your trees now?
Kadri.
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
:)
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.
The 3d preview isn't multithreaded unfortunately.I don't know the other...But it is maybe not too.
Kadri.
Hi,
Populating isn't multithreaded yet either.
Regards,
Jo
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
Sorry, I didn't mean a multishader but a surface shader...
---Dune
It got done in time for me to post this morning before i leave, but wont be back for about 8 hours.
Quote from: Dune on October 19, 2009, 02:27:17 AM
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.
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 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.
Quote from: domdib on October 19, 2009, 07:40:52 AM
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.
Quote from: njeneb on October 19, 2009, 07:57:36 AM
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.
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
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
Quote from: Oshyan on October 20, 2009, 11:19:02 PM
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.
Quote from: Dune on October 21, 2009, 03:05:41 AM
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?
Typerextreme, I don't know if you are still working on this, but I downloaded Dune's tweaked version and played around a little - just thought I'd share.
:P oops sorry. i forgot to put on here that i just stopped working on it. lol.
Ian
So was our help in vain?
Someone will have the same question someday.
Quote from: Dune on October 31, 2009, 04:18:40 AM
So was our help in vain?
No no no no no no, all of the help was not vain. I just lost the urge to make this scene. I'm actually trying something else now.
Ah, that's good to know. Thanks.
Quote from: typerextreme on October 18, 2009, 03:54:08 PM
I feel like theres something missing or wrong with this image. I can't quite place my finger on the problem though. I'm attaching two versions. I have a feeling that the problem lies in the snow. If you would like the tgd i can attach it. The fir is the free model from Xfrog.
Missing? It looks to me like your trees arent casting any shadows.
I've actually dropped this project edgeArchitect. While I appreciate your comment, i'm not willing to go back and try again now. And quite honestly, i do not have the time at the moment.