Terragen 3.0 queries.

[Anthony Appleyard]

When I am posing objects, how can I set Terragen to display the objects as solid objects, even though crudely and hastily, rather than as merely thin lines representing the edges of a cube for each object?

Are there instructions telling people how to make the water waves be parallel ripples rather than random humps and hollows?

In an animation, can the water waves  move?

I let the camera go underwater and rendered, and it did not display the water surface overhead, except at a distance where I could see waves side-on and thus see some of the surface from the "top" side.

If the camera is underwater, is the refractive index of water obeyed when ray-tracing?

And again, how can I save to a file a set of environment settings, like Terragen 1 or Terragen 2 "Terragen worlds"?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake if you want to make wakes behind moving objects.

If a Terragen 3 job loads an external .OBJ object, and I later mesh-edit the .OBJ file, how can I make Terragen 3 re-read the .OBJ file?

[bobbystahr]

When I am posing objects, how can I set Terragen to display the objects as solid objects, even though crudely and hastily, rather than as merely thin lines representing the edges of a cube for each object?

when you click on the .obj/tgo you get a dialogue  where you do transformations. In that there is a box that says Individual Object for single objects and under that is another box that would in your case say Bounding Box, with a drop down arrow for other selections in TG2 up to Textured but it only displays Image map textures not procedurals; and in the main screen of a population it just says Bounding Box in the first box with the same drop down selector.




In an animation, can the water waves  move?

yes



And again, how can I save to a file a set of environment settings, like Terragen 1 or Terragen 2 "Terragen worlds"?

Go to File>Save and navigate to where you Save your Projects. Give it a name and terragen will append the file with a .tgd and save absolutely everything in your scene. No need for he fussing we did in Classic Terragen.
Individual things like a particularilly good sky can be saved by going to the network view under the 3D preview and clicking on Atmosphere which centers that Node Group, Drag high light all the items there (everything BEFORE the Planet) then right click on any of the highlighted items and select Save Nodes as Clip File and navigate to where you'd save these, give it an name and save it.


If a Terragen 3 job loads an external .OBJ object, and I later mesh-edit the .OBJ file, how can I make Terragen 3 re-read the .OBJ file?

Sometimes it works for the mesh but rarely for material shaders I've found.

[TheBadger]

this is too many complex questions. All should be their own subject really. And all have been discussed at length. It would be better for you to search the forum and start a thread for each subject if you need help with a specific point or can't get something to work right.

It would be very very time consuming to try and answer all of this and post relevant links for all of this.

But I can help with the first one at least. To add to what bobby wrote about objects;

When I am posing objects, how can I set Terragen to display the objects as solid objects, even though crudely and hastily, rather than as merely thin lines representing the edges of a cube for each object?

In the 3D preview window there is an Icon of a box with a black arrow pointing down. (next to the sun icon). Here are all of your master preview modes for objects. you can also turn them on or off, or hide unhide (not the same) in the node.

[bobbystahr]

ooops, knew I missed something...good catch TheBadger

[jo]

Hi,

When I am posing objects, how can I set Terragen to display the objects as solid objects, even though crudely and hastily, rather than as merely thin lines representing the edges of a cube for each object?

Please see this page in TG Wiki:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Object_Display_in_the_3D_Preview

Are there instructions telling people how to make the water waves be parallel ripples rather than random humps and hollows?

I'm not aware of anything specific myself but it you search the forums and/or the web you may find something. TG is very open ended and it is possible to use many nodes to create the effects you're looking for. Unfortunately I don't have something to hand which describes how to do this.

In an animation, can the water waves  move?

Yes. Virtually everything in TG can be animated. To animate waves the idea the basic would be to use a Transform shader to move the water shader. For more sophisticated animation you may need to combine other nodes to give the effect you're after. I did post some relevant information here:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,17622.0.html

I let the camera go underwater and rendered, and it did not display the water surface overhead, except at a distance where I could see waves side-on and thus see some of the surface from the "top" side.

If the camera is underwater, is the refractive index of water obeyed when ray-tracing?

TG doesn't treat water as a volume, so there is not really any support for water in the sense of being "under the water". The closest thing is a Lake object or other object which has a Water shader applied to it. The Water shader gives a surface the appearance of water. This only represents the surface of the water though. To make things a bit worse it seems like the Lake shader is single side so it's only really visible from "above" the water.

People have been able to work around these shortcomings so I would suggest searching the forums.

And again, how can I save to a file a set of environment settings, like Terragen 1 or Terragen 2 "Terragen worlds"?

Bobby answered this. I would also like to point out some documentation for using clip files:

http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Working_with_Clip_Files

If a Terragen 3 job loads an external .OBJ object, and I later mesh-edit the .OBJ file, how can I make Terragen 3 re-read the .OBJ file?

There isn't a way to re-read the geometry from an object. You can choose the file again from the "Filename" parameter for the object. This will load the file again but may cause issues with materials if they have also changed. It may be best to import the object again if you've made a lot of changes, and copy any relevant settings and/or nodes over from the previous one.

Regards,

Jo

[Anthony Appleyard]

Hi,

If a Terragen 3 job loads an external .OBJ object, and I later mesh-edit the .OBJ file, how can I make Terragen 3 re-read the .OBJ file?

There isn't a way to re-read the geometry from an object. You can choose the file again from the "Filename" parameter for the object. This will load the file again but may cause issues with materials if they have also changed. It may be best to import the object again if you've made a lot of changes, and copy any relevant settings and/or nodes over from the previous one.

Regards, Jo

Thanks for the answers.

If Terragen reads an .OBJ file, does it store the .OBJ file somewhere in its workings in a coded form? If so, can I delete that coded form and make Terragen re-read the .OBJ file original?

That happened with Poser 3 and Poser 4 when I started with Poser. If it read an object or a posable character as a link to a file, say zxcvbnm.obj , it converted the .obj file into a coded form zxcvbnm.rsr , which it read from after that, even if I changed the .obj file, and I had to delete zxcvbnm.rsr to make Poser re-read from zxcvbnm.obj .

[Matt]

If Terragen reads an .OBJ file, does it store the .OBJ file somewhere in its workings in a coded form? If so, can I delete that coded form and make Terragen re-read the .OBJ file original?

That happened with Poser 3 and Poser 4 when I started with Poser. If it read an object or a posable character as a link to a file, say zxcvbnm.obj , it converted the .obj file into a coded form zxcvbnm.rsr , which it read from after that, even if I changed the .obj file, and I had to delete zxcvbnm.rsr to make Poser re-read from zxcvbnm.obj .

No, it doesn't do that. The Terragen project file (.TGD) simply stores a reference to the OBJ file, i.e. its path and filename. Every time you load the project it will try to read the OBJ from the filename. The project file also stores any Terragen-specific attributes such as the position, rotation and scale of the object in the scene, as well as Terragen shaders that have been assigned to it. Basically, the raw geometry and material groups are referenced from the original OBJ file, while shaders and rendering attributes that you see in the nodes are stored in the project file.

All of the above also applies to Terragen Clip Files (.TGC) that have OBJs in them, because Clip files are just small chunks of a Terragen project, basically.

Matt