Planetside Software Forums

Support => Terragen Support => Topic started by: neon22 on September 02, 2007, 12:19:48 AM

Title: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: neon22 on September 02, 2007, 12:19:48 AM
In the latest build: 1.9.03.1
Attached is image showing a TGO file with UV mapping as a single object. (Good)
And as a population. (Bad)

Looks like the UV's are not being indexed for first(?) vertex in a face if population is used. Instead using black.

But fine when on its own. Only a problem for populations.

I would really appreciate fix for this...
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 02, 2007, 05:55:05 AM
Ooof. That hurts.

:(
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 02, 2007, 09:03:35 AM
Oh No! Hope this is not a new constant problem.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Lucio on September 02, 2007, 04:53:32 PM
Same problem for me. I tested multiple TGO and OBJ objects, even disabling smoothed normals.. seems to be a populator issue. Big deal  :(
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 02, 2007, 06:02:44 PM
I'll do some tests after this render finishes probably tomorrow.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 02, 2007, 06:38:01 PM
If this is confirmed (and it seems Lucio has confirmed it), this is a killer. The program is unusable for what I need while this is true.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Lucio on September 02, 2007, 07:03:46 PM
Quote from: Harvey Birdman on September 02, 2007, 06:38:01 PM
If this is confirmed (and it seems Lucio has confirmed it), this is a killer. The program is unusable for what I need while this is true.

Harvey, I've already uninstalled the new release. It's the second time that this happens. I've had to do it with the first upgrade (version 1.8.76.0) because it increased painfully rendertimes and now, for a never-seen-before problem... The new release is pretty good, but this issue makes it almost unusable. I hope in a quick fix from Planetside. A lot of time has passed, and I'm still using the first public release, version 1.8.64.0. It's a little frustrating.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: jo on September 02, 2007, 10:41:35 PM
Hi Lucio,

Quote from: Lucio on September 02, 2007, 07:03:46 PMA lot of time has passed, and I'm still using the first public release, version 1.8.64.0. It's a little frustrating.

Why are you still using that version exactly? Things have moved on a lot since then, a lot of problems have been fixed, particularly regarding object support.

Regards,

Jo
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 03, 2007, 06:30:44 AM
Seems to be working for me with the latest release. I'll try with a more complex obj later but actually this is the first release I've been able to get the uv mapping to work. Your image seems to have a smoothing problem with the obj rather that an indexing one. Also I notice you've got the populator set the 12 unique variations, at the moment this function dose nothing  ??? Are you saving the imported obj out as a tgo and using that in your population?
Richard
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 03, 2007, 10:34:55 AM
Thanks for posting this, Richard. This one has me concerned. I'd appreciate it if you'd post any additional findings on this. I haven't had a chance to experiment with this myself yet.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Lucio on September 03, 2007, 11:29:04 AM
Quote from: jo on September 02, 2007, 10:41:35 PM
Hi Lucio,

Quote from: Lucio on September 02, 2007, 07:03:46 PMA lot of time has passed, and I'm still using the first public release, version 1.8.64.0. It's a little frustrating.

Why are you still using that version exactly? Things have moved on a lot since then, a lot of problems have been fixed, particularly regarding object support.

Regards,

Jo

Hi Jo,

The reason why I still utilize the first public release is simple: the two updates are useless to me.

Please don't misunderstand, I don't want to seem aggressive or what, I decided to prepurchase TG2 immediately because I wanted to use it not only for entertainment, but also for some (little) commercial purpose and yeah, it's clear that software development is underway, rendertimes are still too long, a large amount of things are still not optimized etc. and I deal with that with no problem. I'm very happy with this package anyway.

However I've had to uninstall immediately the second release, because it increased rendertimes a lot, especially when rendering skies (that are already so long to realize). I don't know how my PC specs contributed in fact, but in many cases rendertimes even doubled. I just can't spend up so much time in rendering, so I returned to the first release.

Now I've uninstalled this third release for what seems to me a populator issue, that I just can't resolve. Single objects are rendered with no problem, and populations are always rendered with black vertices, so I don't think the problem can be related to the objects geometry. I've tested many TGDs with object populations that works fine in the precedent releases, and always give the same problem in this build. I'll post some high detail example in this thread to give a clear idea of the results that I get.

In conclusion... I'm still using the first public release because among the three version released today it's the 'less problematic' and the only that I can really use for my purposes, even if it can crash sometime and lacks of many of the things that have been implemented in the successive updates.

Regards,

Lucio
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 03, 2007, 11:41:39 AM
Hi Lucio
Would you mind posting the object so I could have a go at rendering it. I have a number of object conversion utilities, one of them might help the problem.
Richard
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Lucio on September 03, 2007, 03:06:14 PM
Ok, here's an example

Simple .obj sphere, with no textures

1 - as a single object



2 - as a population (terrible)



Why?

I've alleged a zip file with TGDs and object, so everyone can do the same test and see what happens

Thank you very much,

Lucio
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 03, 2007, 04:30:27 PM
Well I can confirm that there is a problem. Sorry I missed it at first (a deficiency of coffee :) ).

The two images below illustrate very well whats happening. I used the obj supplied by Lucio and recreated one myself (the one you see used below) in Lightwave. I tried both tripled and quad versions, same result. One thing I did notice in your file Lucio was that there was a very small displacement applied via the Default shader. Removing it stopped the break up but not the lighting artifacts. I think in your image above a similar small displacement is present (not sure about this). Finally I loaded in the box obj I made this morning and noticed that although there was no breakup there was same weird lighting. It is noticeable on the first image I posted but I had thought nothing of it. In each of the images below there is one single object in the middle of a population. Its obvious which the single object is.

Hope this can be fixed soon

Richard

ps I dont think this is limited to uv issues, the balls have no uv coordinates on them.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 03, 2007, 04:51:03 PM
Nice work illustrating the problem, guys.

Please, please Matt, Jo et al - don't wait till the next scheduled update to fix this one! Hopefully it will turn out to be something isolated and quickly fixed...
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 03, 2007, 05:50:08 PM
Quote from: jo on September 02, 2007, 10:41:35 PM
Hi Lucio,

Quote from: Lucio on September 02, 2007, 07:03:46 PMA lot of time has passed, and I'm still using the first public release, version 1.8.64.0. It's a little frustrating.

Why are you still using that version exactly? Things have moved on a lot since then, a lot of problems have been fixed, particularly regarding object support.

Regards,

Jo

In the Wrong direction maybe?

Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 03, 2007, 06:45:52 PM
I'd like to hear from the Testers on this one.  So why did we have to wait so long for this let down?
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: bigben on September 03, 2007, 06:49:01 PM
This was a bit worrying so I tried it out. My first render was OK so I tried various things to try and reproduce the problem... another productive train journey  ;)

Load population, smooth normals on by default, renders OK.
Turn off smooth normals, renders OK
Turn on smooth normals, render is black
Turn off smooth normals, render remains black.
Exit and load with smooth normals off, renders OK.
Turn smooth normals on, render is black
Save with smooth normals on, restart TG2 and reload, renders OK
Repeated with the same results.

I was only using a small population (100x100m, 30m spacing). Test objectwas the XFrog sequoia.  This doesn't really provide a definintive answer on how to get it to work but it may provide some clues.

While on objects. One thing that I've found with most imported models is that many textures need to be tiled to be scaled correctly (tree bark textures and bump maps in particular). Rather than use a colour image in the default shader I add the texture as an image map specifying the size and repetition and plug this into the colour function of the default shader.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: bigben on September 03, 2007, 07:00:48 PM
Ohhh. one other thing, I fogot to mention.  The reason I turned smooth normals off in the first place was that I had previously set a displacement of  0.05 in the bark using a bump map. The displacement on the outer branches was pretty wild considering the small values, but turning smooth normals off made no difference. As I hadn't actually seen the top of the tree with that displacement prior to the update I couldn't state for certain that it was related to the update.

Hang on.... In my previous test you can just see the leaves, which look OK. Rendering the bottom of the trunks now and they're displaying similar problems (displacement off, smooth normals). Partial renders with smooth normals on and off below.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Lucio on September 03, 2007, 07:30:30 PM
Well, it seems something serious, a real killer. I just want to emphasize that this is a new problem, an issue never seen before in previous releases. This puzzles me a little. As Harvey said, I hope in a quick fix from Planetside Team.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: JohnnyBoy on September 03, 2007, 07:33:24 PM
Ok, I tried objects exported from XSI and have the same problem. I tried checking quality level, smoothing, double sided, but I still get this rendering issue.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 03, 2007, 08:05:24 PM
@ Big Ben, I appreciate your effort to create a workaround if that's what you are doing? I would suggest using spheres in your tests as trees tend to hide errors. I don't think every time we get an update that we should have to create a work around to fix what doesn't work.  Especially this close to the final release.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: bigben on September 03, 2007, 09:18:00 PM
No, I was more trying to find a trigger for it as my first renders looked OK, but it turns out that that was only because I couldn't see the trunks.  The fact that toggling the smooth normal settings (which also reloads the object) can lead to surfaces rendering completely black may be an extra clue for seeing where the problem is.  We can't do anything to fix the problem by programming, but the more info we can provide the developers on a problem the easier it may be to track down.. and the quicker a fix is released.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Buzzzzz on September 03, 2007, 09:22:01 PM
Quote from: bigben on September 03, 2007, 09:18:00 PM
No, I was more trying to find a trigger for it as my first renders looked OK, but it turns out that that was only because I couldn't see the trunks.  The fact that toggling the smooth normal settings (which also reloads the object) can lead to surfaces rendering completely black may be an extra clue for seeing where the problem is.  We can't do anything to fix the problem by programming, but the more info we can provide the developers on a problem the easier it may be to track down.. and the quicker a fix is released.

Very True.  :)
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on September 03, 2007, 09:45:11 PM
I have experienced exactly the same problem.  I even made a couple of tests with a single object and population both with and without smoothing.  I used a mushroom object that I had made a while ago using Wings 3D, it is fairly simple and illustrates the problem well.  I know it is a little redundant but here are the results any how:

Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: bigben on September 03, 2007, 10:06:14 PM
There is a significant difference between the CLI and the GUI versions, although there are still significant differences between the single object and population.

This render is using the CLI. Single object on left, other two are in the population, (same as my previous sample). Both have smooth normals on.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on September 03, 2007, 10:15:46 PM
There was already a problem with populations rendering incorrectly:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1813.0 (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1813.0)

This was far less noticeable than the new problem with normals.

I had seen this a few times, it appears that an odd vertex was being displaced along its normal by a large amount; related problem?

The lines did respond to an increase in render quality and choosing highest quality for population objects but no such luck with this new manifestation. 

Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 03, 2007, 10:40:14 PM
I made a test using the Sweet Birch from the Xfrog free samples and also found it satisfactory. I could tell a very slight difference between the single and populated objects when rendered together but so little to be irrelevant. I did wonder if there was a correlation between the package used to create the obj in the first place. It might be useful to try the ball test with a variety of different modelers and compare the results. My results came from Lightwave exported as obj and re-exported via polytrans.

Richard
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: bigben on September 03, 2007, 11:58:12 PM
Richard: Leaves are fine, you want to check a close up of the trunk.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 04, 2007, 12:10:03 AM
I don't know, Ben and Richard, I think the difference IS obvious in the birch leaves in Richard's pic. It might not jump right out and bite you like it does on the larger, more obvious surfaces, but the lighting is still incorrect.

I think Buzzzzz is right - the thing to do is concentrate on simpler objects like spheres and cubes that show the problem unequivocally. A fix will be equally obvious on these objects, as opposed to complex objects that have complex lighting/shadow patterns that obscure the trouble.
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: neon22 on September 04, 2007, 12:29:47 AM
Quote from: cyphyr on September 03, 2007, 10:40:14 PM
It might be useful to try the ball test with a variety of different modelers and compare the results.

I tried several conversion routines and model types - getting the same results with objs, lw, tgo, (old and new).
Used Deep Exploration and modelling systems.
I think the existing test models show the problem adequately.

I am just hoping its a simple fix :-)
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 04, 2007, 05:20:50 AM
Another comparison test: The exact same scene rendered first in Terragen 1.8.76.0 and then in the current release, Terragen 1.9.03.1. The scene was saved from Terragen 1.8.76.0 and re opened in Terragen 1.9.03.1 so although the smoothing option was there it had no effect. Also note that the "white blur" grass clump added to show the position of the single object in the first render has moved back to its origin in the second render.

To Harvey and BigBen: I made the tree tests as they are our "Life Blood" so to speak. If the testers had been only using Xfrog trees or models of that sort of complexity its easy to see how this was missed. With several populations in a large scale environment any lighting issues very quickly become hidden.
Its a sunny day here in Somerset so have a Happy Tuesday Y'all
Richard
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Matt on September 04, 2007, 11:21:14 AM
Hi all,

I can confirm this problem. I am working on a fix right now and we will try to release an update in the next couple of days.

Matt
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 04, 2007, 11:24:15 AM
Excellent; excellent.

:)
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: cyphyr on September 04, 2007, 11:31:42 AM
 ;D ;D ;D ;) :) :) ;D    :-*

Thanks :)
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Matt on September 04, 2007, 03:26:29 PM
Quote from: bigben on September 03, 2007, 06:49:01 PM
Load population, smooth normals on by default, renders OK.
Turn off smooth normals, renders OK
Turn on smooth normals, render is black
Turn off smooth normals, render remains black.

This is a separate bug which I am fixing right now. I will also include that fix in this week's update.

Matt
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Harvey Birdman on September 04, 2007, 03:59:51 PM
You're making a lot of users very happy.

;D
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Matt on September 07, 2007, 11:33:03 AM
Fix now available:

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=2226.0

Matt
Title: Re: One TGO = good. Population = Bad
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on September 07, 2007, 05:43:40 PM
That fixed it ;D


THANKS for speedy resolution of this problem.