Hey,
I had been working on a greek city for a long while. But I got sick of looking at it and quit it for a good long time. But out of no where I could not think of anything else and got started again.
This is the first test render (there wont be more for a while), but at least I managed to get a RTO off test done. The fine detail is from a image map (BW) RTO off. My corners are holding together pretty well throughout, despite being not very high polly.
I need to try and use a fractal to mask where the image map is displacing in order to have more smooth areas. But I also need to decide if I am going to sculpt major decimations and weathering... I would prefer not to since it will take forever... Probably not a better way though.
[attachimg=1]
Zlain likes what he sees...
looking forward to future renders.
Thanks. Here is a slightly better treatment.
[attachimg=1]
Happy you found your boneyard useful as well. That's where my Living Room Suite came from....looking good btw
Cool, Michael. A pity you abandoned your city. I was under the impression that was a high goal of yours, though a bit vague ;)
I like it.
I hope you will finish it.
If it was a big project (because it is you and you said city, it is probably) it is sometimes easy to get tired of it in the long run.
I finished just today the last major scene of my animation after a long break. You know what i mean. Just do it :)
:)
Badger : I hope this is what you wanted to see. This is my procedural crack pattern used on a cube (approx. 1 meter in TG) made in C4D. Ray Trace Objects was off with small displacement (0.015). Larger displacements could be used but that gets spikey unless more is done to tone them down.
In order to match the Martian terrain reference, my specific goal with this pattern was variable cracks that change width in places as you follow them as opposed to a simple mix of fat cracks and thin cracks.
Now that really works, but... I'm missing the small pebble features in the cracks if I remember the image you made.
WoW! That is working even much better than I guesed ;D Nice.
Well, I believe there is a good chance that I can do all in TG now, so if so, that will save me much time and also be far more simple both in pipeline and trial and error.
Now only to complain about not being able to export the power here out to other soft ;) ;D Or can I? ??? I can't export a model with TG texturing can I? No, no, thats not something I could forget.
What is the scale here? What are the dimensions of that cube?
Quote from: bobbystahr on July 05, 2015, 08:43:40 PM
Now that really works, but... I'm missing the small pebble features in the cracks if I remember the image you made.
Yes what about that? I can't seem to remember a reference thread at all about populating face stones to an object. Can we?!
The cube I'm using is about 1 meter per side in Terragen units.
Yes, you can apply fake stones to an object.
I have an example rendering now...
In my understanding, Fake stones are a specialized form of displacement shader, not a real population, so since Ray Tracing is Off for this render the fake stones have height and substance. With Ray Tracing ON they still appear but as spots on a bump map.
I can only repeat what Kadri wrote ;)
I know the need of breaks sometimes too.
Quote from: fleetwood on July 06, 2015, 09:41:57 AM
The cube I'm using is about 1 meter per side in Terragen units.
Yes, you can apply fake stones to an object.
I have an example rendering now...
In my understanding, Fake stones are a specialized form of displacement shader, not a real population, so since Ray Tracing is Off for this render the fake stones have height and substance. With Ray Tracing ON they still appear but as spots on a bump map.
Do continue fleet. How long does your set up add in render time to the simple shape cube? I ask because right now I get VERY fast render times rendering my object (relatively).
I ask because its always a concern... Do I save time and energy using a set up like yours, and pay for it later when rendering for real. Or Would it in that case be better to sculpt that detail into the object (and maybe bake it in)... Not sure.
It would be a LOT of work to make all those cracks and chips by hand. And there are some issues other than time and energy too.
Anyway, the detail has to be real. Bump and other trickery wont fly for me on this. I want to be able to get my nose up against the stone if I feel like it, and have it show all that extra detail from being so close. The displacement/geometry must be real. That is the only way to have a totally real model.
@ Kadri,
Yes I know, "don't worry about polygons on the other side of the planet". But in this case I want one model to use for all possibilities. So every object will be a "Hero", despite that once the city is finished (10 thousand years from now), I will have to be far back to get it all in one image, and that detail will be lost to a degree.
...
At least I decided that I will hand paint the models, rather than using images to create the color, for this I will use MUD. And anything I can do in TG on top of that.
LOL!
Here is the cube with some small fake stones confined to the dark areas and 50 degree slopes or less.
I tested the plain cube I have with no displacement takes 37 minutes to render at detail 0.8 AA8.
With all the cracking pattern displacement and fake stones this render took 46 minutes at the same 0.8 detail AA8.
Made the small fake stones orange just so they can be seen and used the slope restriction to keep them off the vertical surface.
Thanks!
QuoteI tested the plain cube I have with no displacement takes 37 minutes to render at detail 0.8 AA8
Um, I guess I did not even think to adjust setting for my OP. The image was default except for RTO.
I re rendered to take note of the time
[attachimg=1]
With RTO off, and no other changes to settings i got 35 seconds.
What is effecting you to get such long render times?
I will re-render with your settings to see what happens.
Did it with your settings, there is very little difference on the edges of the model, in my case.
Much less displacement and no procedurals of course so that is one thing... What else?
1m:35s so a big jump from default with detail increase and AA.
But why does your cube with no displacement take so long? just curious is all. Maybe some info here that can help in the long run.
But why does your cube with no displacement take so long?
I think it's mostly due to size and quality settings I used because if I render at 800 X 450 as you did, and use detail .4 AA4, the plain cube with a totally flat planet terrain and 16 atmosphere samples and no prepass the cube renders in 31 seconds.
Other thoughts.
1. My example renders are 1600 x 900 and yours are 800 x 450, so the bigger has 4 times the pixels to calculate. It should take at least 4 times longer just based on size.
2. My machine is a Window 8, asus I7 desktop with 12 gb memory - 8 threads possible
3. My scene includes a large amount of planet terrain surface that has displacement and shadows that have to be calculated where your example scene has no planet terrain.
4. I have my Atmosphere quality set at 64 samples.
5. I used large diameter soft shadows. No reason, just tried it for looks.
6. I used a detailed supersample GI prepass with settings 4/5/8 - the prepass alone can take 5 minutes.
Thank you!
Here is some of the inside. Just got to get some energy to finish the detailing/age/ruin now.
[attachimg=1]
Quote from: TheBadger on July 07, 2015, 03:14:32 PM
Thank you!
Here is some of the inside. Just got to get some energy to finish the detailing/age/ruin now.
[attachimg=1]
Now that you've shown that as well as the exterior I'm afraid
you must finish it now....hee hee hee
;D Thanks B.
Here is the last self pleasuring test image I will post until its all done.
[attachimg=1]
I remember that I said I would break a part of this off to share. And I will too. Remember that it took me forever to share those shrooms. On the plus side, this is a much better done model than my shrooms, so I hope it will be worth the time and effort.
THis is a side project to my mushroom thing. THe mushroom project is my life goal, and may not get gone in my life time, But this fantasy city may... maybe not.
Looking really good.
Sweet.
Just one question.Why is there a line at the edge of the stones? Just curious Michael.
I am sure I can give you an answer, but what line are you seeing?
This one:
[attachimg=1]
The same issue can be seen on a simple cube. Positive displacements move the faces generally outwards, but the edges remain original dimensions, leaving small step like structures along the edges.
[attachimg=1]
I believe it is from a combination of too high "bounce to the ounce" as well as slightly too high displacement settings regarding the image map and RTO off.
I believe it is fixable without altering the model out side of TG. It happens in a few other places as well but not as bad.
If you look just to the left of the line you highlighted, you will see that those edges are showing as displaced, these edges should not be visible as displacement, I must have moved them inward. THis is also happening throughout the model. I need to fix that for sure. I spent a lot of time making the stones and making them the right size and shape. These rouge edges are pissing me off even more than the line you pointed out.
Quote from: fleetwood on July 07, 2015, 04:27:56 PM
The same issue can be seen on a simple cube. Positive displacements move the faces generally outwards, but the edges remain original dimensions, leaving small step like structures along the edges.
YES! Thank you! I was thinking about it before when I set my displacement settings, and I thought maybe I should make this negative. Well now I need to try.
This is the same issue maybe :
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19431.msg190539.html#msg190539
Basic smoothing might help hopefully.
Quote from: Kadri on July 07, 2015, 04:37:55 PM
This is the same issue maybe :
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,19431.msg190539.html#msg190539
Basic smoothing might help hopefully.
Mesh displacer. OK, I have to read that thread real close again now. I am in T3 and the full pro version. It is interesting though. When I open this project, "displacing/deforming mesh" happens automatically before the project is fully open. I am not sure what that is doing?
Not sure what problem you have. But the important part is in Matt's answers on that link in the second page.
You have to smooth the normals of your object before importing to TG3 if you want to render with Ray trace object OFF.
If this is your problem it might be easy to fix hopefully.
not even sure what is meant by smooth normals. I know how to smooth geometry, but is that the same? I am modeling this in Maya if that maters?
OK really last one. JUst wanted to do some better post.
[attachimg=1]
Don't add more polygons (don't subdivide). You only smooth the normals. The polygon count doesn't change.
If you need to have more polygons that is another thing.
The most basic way (i don't use Maya) is our standard friend Poseray .
Maya sure must have a similar option.
Edit: http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17384.msg168591.html#msg168591
There are better threads around too i think about this.
But you have a Mac i think?
I think this could be what you need in Maya. But not sure how-in which shape the OBJ file is exported.
http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2014/en_us/index.html?url=files/Editing_polygons_Edit_the_vertex_normals_to_affect_polygon_shading.htm,topicNumber=d30e163432
I think J. Meyer's recent post on 3d models is probably very relevant to this.
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20209.msg199715.html#msg199715 (http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20209.msg199715.html#msg199715)
What I just found is that unchecking Double-sided surface in my cube object gives the edges a much better look.
Yep, same solution for a different problem.
Quote from: Kadri on July 07, 2015, 06:36:44 PM
Yep, same solution for a different problem.
Ah ha...yes it's a solid...double sided is mainly for single pixel thick planes/windows and stuff like that.
unchecking Double-sided surface blows up my model.
[attachimg=1]
:-[ ???
Try "smooth normals" or whatever it is in Maya. That was what i mean.
We can try the most basic way. Upload one rock without any texture to me if you will.I will try it.
Something else I notice, but I might be wrong; are your corners really rounded? Looking at the poly edges you don't see the corner in the smallest corner polys move inward slightly, if you get my point. Hard to see though.
There's that; and I noticed they needed a rounded bevel as they look razor sharp and an ancient building would have a fair bit of the sharpness worn off over time.
Promising project.
Regarding the maya screenies: to me that looks like you are modeling these blocks
as if they were to be rendered with a renderer that adds subdivs on render time
and utilizes a smmoth modifier (or whatever that's called in maya).
Provided that I'm right you'd have to either change the modeling style and use hard
edges her or you'd have to subdivide you modle before exporting twice.Or even better
change that doubled? center edges to single edges and then subdivide twice.Thus you'd
get nice smooth corners with the help of the stopping edges you already have at the
corners.That's what they are there for usually.And they are absolutely pointless,if you
export your model as is.
Hope the above is understandable.
I'd like to address that in the other thread in the next days btw.
Quote from: j meyer on July 08, 2015, 12:08:11 PM
...
I'd like to address that in the other thread in the next days btw.
Would be good to have all those kind of things in one place.
Michael if you can find the equivalent "normal smoothing" export of obj files like in Poseray. You should do this without much problems.
The balance between subdivided polygons and suited degrees of normal on edges isn't so hard to find.
With high degrees for normal smoothing you can even displace a very low poly cube quite drastic as you can see below.
There is just one place you can see a little what is happening. And you don't need this kind of high displacement on edges at all.
Without smoothing to a certain degree it breaks apart.
Quote from: Kadri on July 08, 2015, 12:58:49 PM
Quote from: j meyer on July 08, 2015, 12:08:11 PM
...
I'd like to address that in the other thread in the next days btw.
Would be good to have all those kind of things in one place.
Michael if you can find the equivalent "normal smoothing" export of obj files like in Poseray. You should do this without much problems.
The balance between subdivided polygons and suited degrees of normal on edges isn't so hard to find.
With high degrees for normal smoothing you can even displace a very low poly cube quite drastic as you can see below.
There is just one place you can see a little what is happening. And you don't need this kind of high displacement on edges at all.
Without smoothing to a certain degree it breaks apart.
Could you maybe put that base cube in File Sharing as a lot of us don't have the software to make one?
Here is it.
@ Kadri
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/57133/importing-smooth-models-from-maya-.html
I found this. I will try it and see if it does what we are talking about today or next.
Thanks all.
No answers in the Maya forums Michael?
That link is still a little confusing...to me at least.
Quote from: Kadri on July 09, 2015, 03:24:03 PM
No answers in the Maya forums Michael?
That link is still a little confusing...to me at least.
I saw this there that seemed helpful:
0
I had the same problem - on maya select your mesh, under polygons menu go to Mesh-Smooth then set your divisions. then save you file
hope this helps
Is that what you were aiming at?
This looks kinda close...?
http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=4
Yeah it sure does...
Quote from: Kadri on July 09, 2015, 07:17:17 PM
This looks kinda close...?
http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=4
How so? I know how to save out an OBJ. I thought you believed the problem was normals?
Its difficult to understand what the difference between Maya and PoseRay, since I can't use PoseRay, and no one can explain what PoseRay does or how it does it.
I think I have to do this (from my link):
Quoteselect your model then goto Normals > soften edge. next step is to add the normal maps to your model and pretty soon you'll get that 'press 3' look.
I won't think Ill get to it tonight though. I got sunburned real bad and feel like crap from it... Fishing is totally worth it though! ;D... Anything to be warm after this past winter ;)
Quote from: TheBadger on July 09, 2015, 10:06:23 PM
... Anything to be warm after this past winter ;)
I hear ya big time...they seem to get worse as I get older....
"Recalculate Normals: will force any two faces that have an angle larger than the crease angle to appear to have a sharp edge.
If the angle is less than the threshold the edge between the faces will appear to be smooth.
This is accomplished by creating or removing normals at the face edges. No vertices are created with this option.
The crease angle ranges from 0 to 180 degrees. If it is set at 0 then all the faces in the model will appear flat.
If it is set to 180 then all of the faces will appear to be smooth. Smoothing only works on faces that share edges.
If two faces seem to share an edge and smoothing does not change their appearance then most likely the edge is not shared and each face has its own edge.
To fix this you can weld vertices (PoseRay will suggest to smooth when you check on weld vertices).
As a general rule organic-type models should use 180 degrees and mechanical objects should use less than 90 degrees. There are 4 methods to calculate normals:
Normal sum calculates the normals at each vertex by direct average of the normals from the faces sharing that vertex.
Angle-weighted sum will weight the average according to the face angle at the vertex. (This method usually gives the best results)
Unique normal sum uses the unique normals at each vertex to calculate the average.
Inverse area sum weights each normal at a vertex by the inverse of the area of its face."
From here:
https://ca217bf218386ade28595be56ca98f5ee45ce5d2.googledrive.com/host/0B0MYeki9vLYYLXQzcVVua0lST2s/poserayhelp.htm#Vertices_and_normals
Hi Man.
Well it worked. I got to it tonight after all. I am rendering it out now but I can already see the difference. So that is good. Thank you much, Kadri, and J.
I will post the image so you can see for your selves when its done... A few min from now.
What was it Michael?
Just as you said, normals. I only had trouble understanding the difference between what is meant by normals between all the softwares and how to effect them IN TG and the other soft.
In my case, using Maya & TG, all I had to do was like the quote from my link (last page), the effect was auto saved to the OBJ, which TG is now translating correctly on its own. Still not sure how to manually do anything with normals, or why we can not use normal maps in TG, or what the difference between normal maps and normals like we were talking about here are... But I can live with my ignorance for the moment.
Here is the render showing the change in TG:
Would not another test I can do, be to increase displacement like your stone, Kadri? I mean, if I make extreme displacement and the model does not explode, then that proves it works, right?
The edges look good so far i can see.
I got so curious that i installed the demo version of Maya tonight. Which Command did it?
There are some places that made a difference but i could not find the way to make the cube explode like in the file i uploaded here Michael.
Curious of your test.
"Normals > soften edge" then?
IN the polygon tool set, go-> NORMALS-> Soften Edge.
MAke sure the object (s) is selected (IT will be green if selected, and additional parts will be white when multi selected)
Then save out the OBJ. To save out the OBJ you have to make sure that OBJ is turned on, in the plug-in manager, if you did not know that.
It did not work: see below.
I think this problem is the edges not normals. I think that the edges are not straight up and down in the Y.
I Have already started to rebuild the section.
In this render, the bad effect happens after rendering, when bounce to the ounce kicks in. IN the previous render the problem is not there, but I stopped the render before bounce to the ounce kicked in.
Hmmm...Have you seen the last post about Poseray? Are the vertices welded (i think it is merged in Maya) at the edges for example?
Quote from: Kadri on July 10, 2015, 01:43:06 AM
Hmmm...Have you seen the last post about Poseray? Are the vertices welded (i think it is merged in Maya) at the edges for example?
I was just thinking that. That maybe there are some verts not merged on that corner! I will go through it in a second. Right now I turned up the displacement a good bit to see where the model explodes and does not. Its rendering. I am guessing that if that corner is a mess but the reset of the model is not, then that is the answer. ?
I don't know Michael.But i think we are forgetting that converting between different programs can have different results so much you try.
There might be a solution but it might be the way the 3D object in Maya is handled and the OBJ file is exported too.
No, verts are fine. those edges were all created by edge loop tool, so its not even really possible that they are not merged.
I will send you that part of the model in a few moments. I still have your email. At least then you wont be guessing anymore ;D
I will send it to J as well, I told him a long time ago that I would, but that was before I got sick of the project ;D
And of course how Terragen handles OBJ files at import too.
That would be good. The fastest way for sure :)
Sent to you both
Maybe you should set the displacement to a negative to have it explode less, or use an offset, so it averages the displacement. As a bypass, I mean.
Quote from: Dune on July 10, 2015, 02:02:36 AM
Maybe you should set the displacement to a negative to have it explode less, or use an offset, so it averages the displacement. As a bypass, I mean.
But I really don't think its exploding!
See here, I turned up the displacement real high, and the corners are holding just fine.
OK, so it's working fine.
lol, but what about that line?... we do not have enough emoji here. I need one where the little face is animated and pulling out his hair.
Sorry Ulco, hope I did not come off wrong, just confused is all. Here is a close up from TG
[attachimg=1]
I am rendering a even much closer test now, I can already see something funny is going on :-\
Here is the closer shot.
Can anyone explain this?
[attachimg=1]
All I did was zoom in.
This is your original file Michael:
[attachimg=1]
And this after smoothing in Poseray:
[attachimg=2]
But there are still problematic parts. At some edges like on the lower right side.
I would try to get rid of the double surfaces near the edges of the stones and would try to see how a more basic cube with only one inset would look.
If that makes sense. Just as a test. Make a render were you see this and just change that part.
The last one was with less displacement.This is the same as the first render but with Poseray smoothing.
[attachimg=1]
By the way there are Non Planar surfaces in the object that are mostly problematic too.
Have to sleep :o See you later :)
I am just going to rebuild the damn thing! The walls part I mean, the rest of it looks fine to me.
Thanks Kadri, let me know what else you learn.
In LW I occasionally get double surfaces, especially when hitting 'e' and pulling out edges, points or polys for extensions. They cause problems, and I wouldn't know how to find them easily. Also, same technique often gives inverted polys when extending surfaces. So when I first saw your black corner, I though that poly could be inverted. If you then add displacement/bump in TG it renders very dark. Did you check the normals?
Kadri's renders look fine, don't they?
Not sure in LW, never used it much, but in Maya you can do a poly clean up which gets rid of extras etc and then you can do an auto stitch and it will run over the mesh and close all the seams .
@Dune,
Yeah, it is easy to break things in Maya too. But also, Maya has a lot of bugs. You probably don't remember, but before when I was working on this, the reason I quit it, was Maya destroyed all my UVs when I used an auto function called "layout". I spent so much time doing the UVs (making every stone have its own UV space so every stone would look different in TG) and when Maya broke it I went temporarily insane. PArt of my problem is I modeled every stone out of one larger part using edge loops, as I rebuild it I will make all the stones on their own.
@clay
Are you talking about the "clean up" tools, or something else? If you are talking about something else, please give instructions.
My normals are all fine. They all face out as they should. I know how to model. The reset of the structure is fine, its just that interior structure (the walls). I also had to redo the floors and steps twice because "layout" destroyed them. I quit because of the walls, but I have the energy to redo them now.. Like I said, I'll just model them easier way so Maya wont break it.
It would indeed be easier to model a new building rather than a ruin. But even then, I would want every stone to have its own UV space for difference. So almost the same amount of work.
Anyway, I will wait to hear from Kadri, and J about what they find. I still want to redo it for some unrelated reasons, but I should make sure what the darn problem is.
@ Kadri & J
THe reason it is so troublesome is that all of those edges were added by hand, one at a time, with the edge loop tool. I wont do it that way again, ever >:( what a pain!
THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE! I have many other /greek/roman models that are not finished. I would very much like to fully understand the problem here before I finish those.
...
@ Matt Osh and Jo
Would you guys like to have this model to see if there is any improvement that can be done to TG to make importing from Maya better? I remember that Jo fixed a problem with Maya models not coming in with the image maps attached. Even now I still have to go in manually and turn up the color image to 100% from zero, but that is better than when I had to re link every image map by hand! Maybe there is something? Who knows?
Even an addition to Terragen to change the normal angles for imported objects would be great.
Would like to hear from Matt how easy-hard it is to implement?
Your object renders fine in Lightwave. The main problem is to get it work better in Terragen with displacements and ray trace off .
Maybe you could try vector displacement or small real displacements if nothing works.
MODO would work too based on paq's post in the other thread. So everything works right out of the box but not Maya. THere must be a setting some place that I don't know about.
Maya forums? I would spit, but I am in my house ;)
Would like to hear some input from matt too, on this thread!
QuoteMaybe you could try vector displacement or small real displacements if nothing works.
THe first idea was to sculpt on top of what you have seen, and then import high res sculpt. But after seeing fleetwood's work and talking with him, I decided that doing it in TG would be best, since that is where I will render. Now I don't know... Kinda irritated by this.
Quote from: TheBadger on July 10, 2015, 05:24:21 PM
...
Maya forums? I would spit, but I am in my house ;)
...
:D
Have you tried to export from other programs you might have?
I tried some more.
If you uncheck "Do ray traced shadows" in the "Extra" tab in the render node it looks more like it should be.
That is maybe why the object surfaces don't look like they explode but still as they are exploded.
Only a shadow problem maybe like talked about in Jmeyer's thread.
shadow?
Quote from: bobbystahr on July 11, 2015, 08:04:09 AM
shadow?
I mean this what Paq said.Not sure how right or wrong but it looks as it is so:
"Gouraud shading will smooth the normals to make a polymesh looking smooth, but raytrace shadow use the 'real' geometry to compute the rays. As a result gouraund shading and raytrace self-shadow dont match.
You can easily see why if you render the mesh without any smoothing."
From here:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,20209.msg200039.html#msg200039
Only an option if you don't need drop shadows,though,mind you.
Quote from: Kadri on July 10, 2015, 05:33:08 PM
Have you tried to export from other programs you might have?
No.
I don't have anything else like Maya. I know that I will buy modo as soon as I have the cash. But nothing else right now. Curious how Houdini would act in this situation as well.
I will try everything we talked about in this and the other thread. IN the end I may just sub-devide. but I want to learn more about re- applying normals in maya before I move on.
It appears that the corners are breaking apart because the displacement is displacing outwards along the face normals. In the test where you put the displacement up really high and said that the corners were not exploding, it looks to me like it is still breaking apart because there's a bright band in the middle of the pillar in the foreground; it looks like we can see through to the other side where it's in sunlight.
At every position on the surface, the surface is displaced (moved) in the direction of the normal. If your model has built-in normals and "Use smooth normals" is checked in TG, the model's normals are used and interpolated across each face. If not, normals are derived automatically from the faces, and they are not smoothed, although we are planning to add a feature to do this in future. More on that below.
Face normals aren't the same as vertex normals. We need vertex normals to tell the renderer how to shade the edges and vertices identically across neighbouring faces. Otherwise each face ends up doing its own thing and can break away from the others when displaced.
If the normals are continuous across the edges of faces, displacement shouldn't break the surface, but often the normals are not continuous.
When you generate these normals in another program, the creasing threshold or creasing angle (may be called something different) affects which edges the program decides to smooth. If this threshold is set to create some sharp/creased edges, then it does this by creating different vertex normals on each face. If this happens, the displacement will not be continuous across the edge, and it will break apart.
Maybe there are different smoothing groups. I am not sure how that affects the normals that are seen by Terragen.
We are aiming to add an auto-generate-smooth-normals option in future, so you don't necessarily have to do this when you build your model. However, even with such a feature, you need to model your corners in such a way that the smoothing does what you want.
IANAM (I am not a modeler), but...
At these corners you need to model in some extra polygons to round/fillet/chamfer (or radius) the corners (I see that you've done this). This is a good way to tell a renderer exactly how sharp or smooth you want to the corner to be and what normals it should displace along. Then use your modeler, or PoseRay, or in future Terragen, to generate smooth normals.
If this isn't working, try displaying the normals in the Maya viewport and see what they are doing. Face normals aren't the same as vertex normals. If it's showing you one normal per face, that won't give Terragen enough information to smoothly transition across edges of faces. You want to see a normal at each vertex. If there is more than one normal at a vertex and they point in different directions, then that will produce a sharp edge when shaded and will tear apart when displaced.
I'm not a modeler, but IMHO you should take care of normals as part of the modeling process, and this only becomes more important when you intend to render it with displacements. Think about what those faces will do when they are displaced along the normals. As long as "Use smooth normals" is checked in TG, these normals will be change smoothly across the surface when rendered by Terragen. If neighbouring faces share the same normal, it should render smoothly without breaking apart.
Let's look at what happens when you don't have these vertex normals, or if the vertex normals are set to produce sharp edges. Try to imagine you are a renderer (!) Here is a face that you've been asked to displace. Everything you know about the face (the polygon and the normals) tells you it faces in direction X. So you are going to move all of its surface in that direction. Any other direction would probably be wrong, because you want the bumps in the surface to displace in and out of that normal. Then there's another face adjacent to the first one. The second face has a different normal. You displace the second face along the second face's normal. This makes the two faces move away from each other, creating a gap. Let's try to patch up the gap. How? Add more polygons at render time? OK, that might work. But the texture on the patched up polygons will be stretched across the gap, due to both edges sharing the same UV. That won't look good. It would be better if the model had these "patch" polygons built into it to begin with. They would have UVs and normals so we could simply displace those surfaces with the displacement texture.
Perhaps the renderer could automatically generate these patch/chamfer/rounding polygons for you. This is possible. The user would need to tell the renderer the radius of the corner. Maybe this could be set per model or per material, but there will be many times where you want control this at different parts of the model. If the model already has these round edges built-in, it would be wasteful to add additional polygons. It would be difficult to try to detect whether these already exist, although I can imagine some kind of "minimum radius" approach to analyzing corners prior to rendering.
I've seen that V-Ray has a "keep continuity" option for this kind of situation. I'm not sure how it works, but I guess that it might smoothly interpolate the displacement normal across the whole face and ensure continuity with the neighbours, decoupled from the shading normal which is kept sharp. I've thought about offering that as an option. It might work well for organic models but I don't think it's ideal for architecture.
Do other renderers have better ways of handling this? I don't mean the "auto generate normals" idea. We're already planning to add that in future, but you still need to be careful about how you model corners in architecture.
Matt
Quote from: TheBadger on July 10, 2015, 01:14:25 PM
Yeah, it is easy to break things in Maya too. But also, Maya has a lot of bugs. You probably don't remember, but before when I was working on this, the reason I quit it, was Maya destroyed all my UVs when I used an auto function called "layout". I spent so much time doing the UVs (making every stone have its own UV space so every stone would look different in TG) and when Maya broke it I went temporarily insane. PArt of my problem is I modeled every stone out of one larger part using edge loops, as I rebuild it I will make all the stones on their own.
I don't think that's a bug. Isn't this exactly what the Layout feature is designed to do? Modify your UVs?
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya-lt/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/MayaLT/files/Edit-UVs--Layout-htm.html
Matt
I hate to write so much about normals without adding a visual anchor, so... maybe this helps. (Nothing about displacement or chamfering though.)
http://www.3dtutorialzone.com/tutorial?id=86
Quote from: Matt on July 13, 2015, 06:33:08 PM
..We are aiming to add an auto-generate-smooth-normals option in future, so you don't necessarily have to do this when you build your model. However, even with such a feature, you need to model your corners in such a way that the smoothing does what you want.
...
Nice. And good info.The last link is very informative too.Thanks.
Quote from: Matt on July 13, 2015, 06:38:53 PM
Quote from: TheBadger on July 10, 2015, 01:14:25 PM
Yeah, it is easy to break things in Maya too. But also, Maya has a lot of bugs. You probably don't remember, but before when I was working on this, the reason I quit it, was Maya destroyed all my UVs when I used an auto function called "layout". I spent so much time doing the UVs (making every stone have its own UV space so every stone would look different in TG) and when Maya broke it I went temporarily insane. PArt of my problem is I modeled every stone out of one larger part using edge loops, as I rebuild it I will make all the stones on their own.
I don't think that's a bug. Isn't this exactly what the Layout feature is designed to do? Modify your UVs?
http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya-lt/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/MayaLT/files/Edit-UVs--Layout-htm.html
Matt
Thanks in advance for all you wrote. Ill read it tonight.
On UVlayout. IT does do what it is supposed to, that is layout your UVs in space. But it also destroyed the project (the part I was working on at the time). I could no longer open it in mud box for example. and there where other issues it created too, there were known bugs with it. But I have since upgraded, I don't know if the issue was fixed, and I don't want to try it either, at least on this model due to all the faces, it took a very long time to unwrap and put back together.
It worked really great for what it was supposed to do, but it ruined it also did things that it was not meant to. I can't recall now after all this time what it did and I don't want to try and recreate the problem to get the warnings or search out the bug description on line. But at the time, I learned it was a known bug. I posted on it in this forum at the time.
The only fix was to re-unwrap and put back together all of my UVs with the cuts where I wanted them. And that is what put me off on this project until now.
That does sound pretty bad. Do you use incremental save (either Maya's built-in incremental save, or just old fashioned saving with a different number each time)? If something goes wrong, you always want earlier versions of your project that you can fall back on.
Matt
I read through your posts above,
gotta say that was about the most helpful posting on this topic I have come across on the net for this topic.
Really appreciated the sentence
QuoteIMHO you should take care of normals as part of the modeling process, and this only becomes more important when you intend to render it with displacements.
I have to agree now.
This thread has turned out to be rather educational for sure.
QuoteDo you use incremental save
Oh man, I am really terrible about this. I know in that respect it is my fault. But thank you for the sympathy.
The optimist in me says everything will work out fine, which is funny because I am a pessimist waiting for the sun to explode. I will start saving incrementally from now on.
I'm glad to hear it's useful. I haven't really modeled anything for a long, long time, and what I know is somewhat biased towards Terragen. So I have to be careful what I write. I hope others who know more can correct me if I'm giving bad or outdated advice.
Matt
Quote
Perhaps the renderer could automatically generate these patch/chamfer/rounding polygons for you. This is possible. The .......
..... I've thought about offering that as an option. It might work well for organic models but I don't think it's ideal for architecture.
.........., but you still need to be careful about how you model corners in architecture.
Mental Ray has such a feature too - or at least it had some time ago - and it did not
do anything good to my models.You're way better off modeling that in.
Especially for organic things I found it to be pretty unusable.
Glad to hear you are planning to add an auto generate normals feature.
Although the 'use smooth normals' feature one could apply to e.g. ZBrush
models then can be problematic from time to time with hi poly stuff.
Just my 2 cents.
Thanks Matt,for chiming in on normals. :)
Quote from: TheBadger on July 14, 2015, 12:58:25 AM
. I will start saving incrementally from now on.
You can set it to do that automatically in the preferences...was one of the first things I set...I simply don't save often enuff is my problem.
@kadri,
I believe you said that you found duplicate faces someplace in the model... Two faces right onto of one another... Can you tell me where about you saw that?
If you mean "Non Planar surfaces" i have to look Michael.
Other then this it was probably my bad English :)
If it is that what you mean Maya should have an option to show them probably.
There are 1734 nonplanar surfaces. A picture wouldn't much help.
Quote from: Kadri on July 21, 2015, 09:27:26 PM
If you mean "Non Planar surfaces" i have to look Michael.
Other then this it was probably my bad English :)
If it is that what you mean Maya should have an option to show them probably.
Ah ok, well no planer faces don't pose any problems really, they are basically a non issue usually. Double faces an un-welded verts on the other hand are a problem.
I have some other things I like to do so I had been doing those things, but now I have to get back to this project. I am trying to apply everything related that had been discussed in this and other threads now. Hope that this will look right tonight, so I can proceed.... Still got a tone of modeling to do :(
TO tell you the truth, I am thinking about stoping with the ruin part, and build all the structures like new. I had want the same image with ruins and one with new building. But it is terribly time consuming to model a ruin compared to a fresh structure.
Think of the temple of athena in athens. #-4 times more work to make as a ruin then a new building.... Ahhh but I would be so happy to have a ruin and a new structure for all my models for this project! :-\ Part of me must like suffering... Why else would I go into the arts?
I haven't tried it but if you have the features in Maya you could go the lazy way (i unfortunately do this all the time).
Make a normal block of rocks and try to fracture it automatically in specific ways.
Or make some broken parts and put them in different ways to smaller blocks for example.
Yeah I have a script I bought (fracture ninja, or something) it works well but creates lots of 5 sided faces. or will work in tris. Maybe that won't be a n issue since I am going to TG now rather than Mud... Will have to try that again with just TG in mind.
OK, ALL IS FIXED!! ;D ;D :D :D :)
Here is the model with the normals averaged and construction history properly deleted on the entire model (as opposed to most of the model like before ;))
Here the displacement is positive. And you can see there are issues with the global shading created from averaging normals. (But that is fixed and I will show it in the next post)
[attachimg=1]
[attachimg=2]
[attachimg=3]
Now with all the above but the displacement map given negative value. As you ca see the global shading problem is resolved as well as the corners now totally correct.
[attachimg=1]
Next will be the last test. In addition to all the above I turned off "2 sided" in the object node.
:)
And now with 2 sided turned off
[attachimg=1]
K now here is the last one quickly post processed.
[attachimg=1]
Thank you to everyone who helped me learn the new stuff (new stuff for me) in this thread and in J's! Feel much better now :)
Next will be applying texture in TG like fleetwood, I will start a new thread for that since it will have new problems ;)
Cheers!
All right. I spoke too soon as usual. Did anyone notice how flat everything got? I can't get a hard shadow to save my life now. I don't know what the hell is going on. Even my scale tester (the guy with the hat) is showing changed render results though I did nothing at all to the object in or out of TG.
I just don't get it, everything just creates a new F-ING problem. No mater where I put the sun everything renders flat. Just compare the images in above posts to previous images.
No shadows at all?
I thought you did that deliberatley. Did you check 'cast shadows' in the object tab?
Cast shadows is checked.
Mmmm... strange then.
I just turned the image map displacement back to positive. The shadows came back. Bug.
:'(
I never win ;D :-\ :-[
Ah, well, I had the same problem with leaves and sails for instance, and already reported it to Matt, but it's kind of hard to find a real solution. If you have a ship's sail and want to add some bump, it will look good on one side, but not on the other. Same with leaves. I don't know if two-sided has any influence, though, never tested it extensively.
I thought af first that 2 sided was doing it. But that dose not appear to have an effect in this regard.
Here is the difference.
[attachimg=1]
Another problem that I forgot to mention.
My model is not one object. It is make of many objects, for example, all the columns are individuals with their own UV space. But in TG, I have one object, with no access to the individual parts, meaning, I can one image map in for the entire building, when I should be able to add a map for each part.
First time I have had any problems with this aspect. Not sure what the deal is.
Quote...My model is not one object. It is make of many objects, for example, all the columns are individuals with their own UV space. But in TG, I have one object, with no access to the individual parts, meaning, I can one image map in for the entire building, when I should be able to add a map for each part...
You need to apply a different shader/material (inMaya) to any part you want to have it's own
shader in TG.
It all goes dark with negative displacement because the shadows are cast from the non-displaced object. This is because the ray tracer doesn't support displacement on imported objects yet.
Matt
Quote from: j meyer on July 22, 2015, 12:10:14 PM
Quote...My model is not one object. It is make of many objects, for example, all the columns are individuals with their own UV space. But in TG, I have one object, with no access to the individual parts, meaning, I can one image map in for the entire building, when I should be able to add a map for each part...
You need to apply a different shader/material (inMaya) to any part you want to have it's own
shader in TG.
Ahh, ok, thats kinda what I thought. otherwise I was thinking it was because I have groups. But as it is now, I DO have one shader connected to each part. I though that would just be easier to deal with, that I could change it any time. But I guess not. Thanks for the conformation on the issue!
Quote from: Matt on July 22, 2015, 06:04:49 PM
It all goes dark with negative displacement because the shadows are cast from the non-displaced object. This is because the ray tracer doesn't support displacement on imported objects yet.
Matt
Ok, I see. Thanks for the answer in the context of this model. I read everything in these threads, but a lot of the time it does not really help until I run into the issue my self in my own project naturally.
How annoying would it be to ask if it is fixed in the next update, and how soon until the next update be out? ;) ;D Just busting your balls Matt. Keep on the way you are.
Ray-traced displacement on imported objects won't be possible until Terragen 4.x, because it's a big change. It might not be in 4.0, but it is on the roadmap for the future.
3.3 is probably just a few weeks away. We're addressing some remaining bugs but it shouldn't be very long now.
Matt
Congrats TheBadger for the achievement ;)
Sorry to hijack the thread, but will 3.3 have the new 3d erosion function ? 8)
Whew that was a voyage....
The erosion plugin is being developed by a 3rd party and will not be packaged with Terragen. So its release date isn't tied to Terragen release dates. Daniil, the developer, is working toward a public release but he would be the one to provide any more specific information than that. In the meantime we do intend to share more erosion images soon. Development can be unpredictable at times, as I'm sure you all know. :D
- Oshyan
Quote from: Oshyan on July 24, 2015, 08:27:50 PM
...Development can be unpredictable at times, as I'm sure you all know. :D...
Not sure why but the word "Schadenfreude" came directly to my mind :D
Quotepleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
Ha ha! like I said, being part of an online community is kinda like watching reality TV. Sometimes you want something bad to happen just because you are board. ;D :o
Quote from: TheBadger on July 25, 2015, 07:42:59 AM
Quotepleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.
Ha ha! like I said, being part of an online community is kinda like watching reality TV. Sometimes you want something bad to happen just because you are board. ;D :o
LOL! You should have seen what happened before version 1 (?) came out...or more exactly came out very late Michael.
I was lurking at that time.It was reality TV show as its maximum.
Planetside have learned much from those days.
But we should not dig up old wounds...opsss ;D
funny.
OK, I have started doing texturing in TG following fleetwood. But I want to ask a general question here about obj.
Quote from: j meyer on July 22, 2015, 12:10:14 PM
Quote...My model is not one object. It is make of many objects, for example, all the columns are individuals with their own UV space. But in TG, I have one object, with no access to the individual parts, meaning, I can one image map in for the entire building, when I should be able to add a map for each part...
You need to apply a different shader/material (inMaya) to any part you want to have it's own
shader in TG.
My question is, is this normal^^ Because as I am doing this texturing stuff in TG, I realize that it would indeed be easier to just have one general lambert or marble texture out of maya, and then go into each part in TG to texture. But it seems like I have to do it twice no mater what. I mean, assign shaders in maya then again in tg, as posed to ones for all in maya and then individually in TG.
And from that, does anyone know what the answer would be if we were talking about FBX objects?
Thanks
As far as I know this is indeed 'normal'/necessary.
It's just that you have to do something to tell TG how many shader nodes
and for which parts it has to create for your model.
But assigning in maya or elsewhere only means you have to simply assign
a shader to any group of polys you want to have separate shader.
Only assign it to that group,nothing else required.You can use copies of that
shader as long as they are named differenty (like Phong01,Phong02 etc) and you
don't use UVs.With UVs you need the corresponding shader (in maya) of course.
Couldn't try with fbx so far,as I don't a fbx2014 reading app to test with.
TG doesn't import geometry via fbx as of now.
I would prepare a bit more detailed explanations on the shader stuff for the
other thread,if there's interest.
Quote from: j meyer on July 26, 2015, 11:29:59 AM
I would prepare a bit more detailed explanations on the shader stuff for the
other thread,if there's interest.
Always.......
Quote from: j meyer on July 26, 2015, 11:29:59 AM
As far as I know this is indeed 'normal'/necessary.
It's just that you have to do something to tell TG how many shader nodes
and for which parts it has to create for your model.
But assigning in maya or elsewhere only means you have to simply assign
a shader to any group of polys you want to have separate shader..........
For what it's worth, similar work of breakout and shader assigning needs to be done in C4D.
Quote from: fleetwood on July 26, 2015, 04:11:02 PM
Quote from: j meyer on July 26, 2015, 11:29:59 AM
As far as I know this is indeed 'normal'/necessary.
It's just that you have to do something to tell TG how many shader nodes
and for which parts it has to create for your model.
But assigning in maya or elsewhere only means you have to simply assign
a shader to any group of polys you want to have separate shader..........
For what it's worth, similar work of breakout and shader assigning needs to be done in C4D.
Imagine3D as well...seems universal
OK guys thank you. But I am having a big problem with this part now.
I fixed all my issues in Maya; faces and uvs. I then made a texture assignment to each part of the model that I wanted to add and edit a TG texture to.
SO everything looks good in maya. But now when I render the model in TG, it is all black, and no object parts in the internal node area node... Just the same as before (only one shader texture) but renders all black.
Have you tried to use the changed obj file directly by using the same old name in the old TGD?
If you do this it this can be problematic.
Import the changed obj ones again as a new obj import.
I mostly had this kind of problem. Curious if it is this or not.
That was it KAdri! Works as I thought it should now.
Funny though, I had been making changes throughout the threads, and there was no problems. I guess it depends on some unknown line in the sand where it just ends up being to many changes and you have to re load everything. This is one of the more frustrating bugs(?). It adds a lot of time to things when you can't add changes quickly and easily.
I hope that when the SDK is out, someone will make a live update plug-in for PS/TG, for one. Would make PS effectively a live image editor for TG.
PS is common, Probably too much to hope for for a live update button for all the modelers and big packages though.
Thank much. I would eventually tried re loading into a new scene, but I am very glad that I got the answer right off and did not have to spend time checking every possibility that came to mind.
:)
There was a thread were this was discussed. Don't remember but maybe Ulco or others talked for a way to use this.
But importing ones again was the easiest way for me. I don't remember even if there is a way that works without problem.
Guys?
I don't quite grasp the issue (possible because it's early morning), but I also have that sometimes an exported object has no vertices, and/or there's no parts inside. Exporting again mostly resolves that, and the parts are there again. Mysterious.
I do know that if I import an obj in LW, I have to assign UV's again to the obj texture map, or there won't be any parts either (or something, sometimes it's really complicated).
Quote(or something, sometimes it's really complicated).
When it is it not complicated? Finding easy ways to do stuff in 3D is like hunting tooth fairies. Sure their out there, but have you ever seen one stuffed and hanging on someones cabin wall? ;D
Quote from: TheBadger on July 28, 2015, 06:28:12 AM
Quote(or something, sometimes it's really complicated).
When it is it not complicated? Finding easy ways to do stuff in 3D is like hunting tooth fairies. Sure their out there, but have you ever seen one stuffed and hanging on someones cabin wall? ;D
LOL............
Changing the geometry of a model and re-using it in a existing file should be ok.
But any change to the shaders or UVs and you're in trouble.
Learning workarounds and solving complicated stuff is obviously the main part
of cg-work.
Quote from: j meyer on July 28, 2015, 12:26:39 PM
Changing the geometry of a model and re-using it in a existing file should be ok.
But any change to the shaders or UVs and you're in trouble.
I've found this as well....but not adding polys as I think I had a problem with changed number of faces in a smoothing effort once..
I can't confirm that Bobby.Never had that.
PoseRay involved?
Quote from: j meyer on July 28, 2015, 04:02:52 PM
I can't confirm that Bobby.Never had that.
PoseRay involved?
yup, I did a SubD in PoseRay