Sharing objects and cameras between TG and maya

[ethan]

Hello TG people.

We are working on some scnes where we want to be able to animate in maya as well as bring in custom objects and have everything line up. An added twist is that the origonal landform was created in TG from DEMs and then sent out via the LWO exporter to Maya. We want to be able to create a city in Maya and then ship that back to TG with camera movements.

What workflows do people use for synching Maya objects and Cameras with TG terrains and Cameras?

We have gotten as far as being able to send out the TG landforms through lightwave into Maya - however when we import back to TG the position data is lost ;(

Huge thanks to eerybody in advance.

Ethan Summers

[goldfarb]

have you looked at these :
http://www.planetside.co.uk/content/view/58/27/

also - why are you re-importing the terrain back into maya?
are you changing it in maya?
you might want to mark out an area that you want to change in maya and then use a painted shader in terragen to flatten that area so your city can come in on a flat ground...


HTH

[ethan]

Thanks for these links!

The terrains start off in TG as GeoTiffs for specific areas on the planet. We want to bring those into Maya in order to model buildings / city etc, and also to create camera moves. Once done the next task is to send the buildings and camera moves back to TG for rendering.

The problem seems to be that once we send a LWO out of TG it no longer holds onto its position on the surface of the planet. It just shows up the center of world space in Lightwave and then Maya. Thus all the camera moves and objects we make are useless as they import back to TG relative to an arbitrary world center point - not a specific spot on the planet we wish to depict.

We tried to alter the LAT LONG coordinates for the world axis in TG and actually got close to aligning our GEO imported from Maya to the GeoTiff landforms that we want to use in TG but its kind of a kluge....

Is there a better way to do this?? Something that is really exact?

Thanks

-Ethan

[gregsandor]

Is there a better way to do this?? Something that is really exact?

When in TG, use the original TG terrain, not the exported LWO.  You'll have to figure out how to make the LW version duplicate the location of the one in TG.  I do it all the time with a different modeling/animation program so it is possible, though not easy.  I don't use LW so I can't help with program-specific steps to take.  Establish a common scale, point of reference for the terrain, and match.

[cyphyr]

Which LWO exporter are you using?
I've been doing almost exactly this (except the Maya bit !) using the "Lwo micro exporter 01" in the sequance output tab of Render Settings.
I place my camera above the area I want to export and change its properties to Orthographic, set the ortho width and render. The output comes into Lightwave with popper world coordinates and the rendered texture fits over it perfectly.
Hope this helps
Richard

[rcallicotte]

Good reminders of how easy this process actually is and the results can be quite accurate.

[ethan]

"Which LWO exporter are you using?
I've been doing almost exactly this (except the Maya bit !) using the "Lwo micro exporter 01" in the sequance output tab of Render Settings.
I place my camera above the area I want to export and change its properties to Orthographic, set the ortho width and render. The output comes into Lightwave with popper world coordinates and the rendered texture fits over it perfectly.
Hope this helps
Richard"

This is not what I am getting here with either option for outputting LWO.

With the hieght feild modifier all objects center to zero loosing the correct world coordinates.

With render option the resulting LWO is some multiple smaller than it should be ( not 100 x smaller ) and also the vertical scale of the terrain file is off be some proportion as is its y coordinate?

Again this workflow is not so we can reimport TG terrains - its so we can get buildings and other set objects to sit exactly where they need to in the TG world

Thanks
Ethan

[cyphyr]

Hmm, very odd indeed. The only thing I can think of is that maybe your using real world co-ordinates. The process I described above works perfectly at terragens zero point, effectively the north pole. If your trying to model something anywhere away from the zero point you will run into increasing difficulties the further away you get. Try moving your terrain so that your point of interest is at the north pole. Then follow the steps above, ortho cam etc and it should work just fine. Otherwise I cant see any reason why the terrain should re-size its self/
cheers
Richard

ps: I know it would be nice to have say, London, in its correct geographic position but you will run into multiple problems by doing so. By moving the entire GeoTiff (of say the Thames estuary) to the North Pole you will avoid population problems, surfacing mismatches, and get propper input/output of your camera data. The client will never know the city is in entirely the wrong place!

[ethan]

Personally I always have had troubles the further I get away from the North Pole as well