Micro Exporter - Settings

Started by WAS, February 15, 2020, 09:38:39 PM

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WAS

Is there any scale to MPD settings and the results of a micr exported terrain? And is TG baking vertices and geometry?

In Poseray, Size Limits are exceeded, and than it says there is no geometry or vertices.

Blender loads absolutely nothing, like it did nothing.

But terragen loads its.

luvsmuzik

To import your export into Blender....

create a save as path from exporter....
export file....I got six or seven lwo
Open Blender
Import lwo...find the TG lwo export
In Blender....make sure your import is in the list in your scene....ie: export_00x00y

It comes in huge so....press n on keyboard and from that popup sidebar, scale lwo....I had to go...0.005 x y & z
Also under object.....transform geometry to origin to sit your terrain on the grid...it should be centered already

It is kind of janky to view, but hit the period on keypad to zoom in ....shift and mouse lmb does wonders sometimes too

Hope that helps.... :)

I did this from a generate terrain plugged into export heightfield lwo

WAS

Thanks Luvs. Yeah I think heightmaps may be better route for what I was hoping for.

I think the issue is the micro exporter is running out of RAM and the file is not complete. Somehow TG is reading what is there, but other programs are failing too.

A progress or error manager would be beneficial to what's going on behind the scenes.

Tangled-Universe

I'm a bit surprised to hear this, as I have succesfully exported sections of canyons for a commerical project using the microexporter.

The few tips I can give from the top of my head are:
1) render orthographic
2) render single thread, since you do get bucket boundary intersections
3) disable fully adaptive rendering of surfaces in subdiv settings
4) disable micro-vertex jittering in subdiv settings
5) enable that setting in subdiv setting about fixing/merging holes...can't get to the name right now here at work
6) adjust distance for micro-exporter as close as possible to the section you want to export to avoid geometry being sampled in the far distance
in my case for a canyon I wanted to export top-down views, so my distance was only about 100 meter or so
7) render 1k with MPD 0.4 and check -> increase/decrease MPD if necessary

KyL

Also think about using a spherical camera as well. I find it very useful as you get lots of details where you camera is, and lower resolution as it gets farther away.
Thinks about turning off normals and UVs as well, it makes the file much lighter.

Oh and you can export as .fbx too, makes an even lighter file (less time to write on disk!).

WAS

Wow thanks KyL, and Martin! Lots of good sounding suggestion here. I was wondering if subdiv played a role in the export. Fbx would probably really help too.

WAS

Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 18, 2020, 03:44:02 AMI'm a bit surprised to hear this, as I have succesfully exported sections of canyons for a commerical project using the microexporter.

The few tips I can give from the top of my head are:
1) render orthographic
2) render single thread, since you do get bucket boundary intersections
3) disable fully adaptive rendering of surfaces in subdiv settings
4) disable micro-vertex jittering in subdiv settings
5) enable that setting in subdiv setting about fixing/merging holes...can't get to the name right now here at work
6) adjust distance for micro-exporter as close as possible to the section you want to export to avoid geometry being sampled in the far distance
in my case for a canyon I wanted to export top-down views, so my distance was only about 100 meter or so
7) render 1k with MPD 0.4 and check -> increase/decrease MPD if necessary

Yeah I think my MPD was unnecessary high. Could be why. My first export of the terrain at 0.2 and aa2 works in blender. The one I did as a share test. I'd think with write buffer and what's in RAM it was just too much.

Tangled-Universe

OK it seems I did not remember everything correctly, since it's over 5 years ago I guess...

MPD was higher....of course...since I disabled fully adaptive.
But also no atmosphere of course and AA isn't necessary either.

Here's an example of a render node I used to generate geometry with:
Quote<terragen_clip>
 <render
name = "Export Render"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "920 2160 0"
gui_group = "Renderers"
master = "1"
image_width = "1024"
lock_aspect_ratio = "1"
image_height = "1024"
image_aspect_ratio = "1"
pixel_aspect_ratio = "1"
camera = "Export Cam 1"
render_layer = ""
surfaces_visible = "1"
atmosphere_visible = "0"
do_shadows = "0"
detail = "3"
anti-aliasing = "0"
ray_trace_atmosphere = "0"
defer_all_shading = "0"
path_tracing_on_surfaces = "0"
pt_root_master_quality = "5"
depth_of_field = "0"
dof_method = "2"
motion_blur = "0"
motion_blur_method = "1"
GI_relative_detail = "0"
GI_sample_quality = "0"
GI_blur_radius = "8"
supersample_prepass = "0"
GI_surface_details = "0"
do_crop_region = "1"
crop_left = "0.1245834976"
crop_right = "0.6879272461"
crop_bottom = "0.001642036135"
crop_top = "1"
crop_to_object = "0"
crop_object_name = ""
pixel_filter = "2"
anti-aliasing_bloom = "0"
experimental_atmo_bloom = "0"
atmo_bloom_amount = "0.25"
atmo_bloom_size = "0.25"
bloom = "0"
bloom_amount = "0.1"
starburst = "0"
starburst_amount = "0.1"
starburst_softness = "0.05"
detail_blending = "0"
displacement_filter = "1"
microvertex_jittering = "0"
detail_jittering = "0"
soft_clip_effect = "1"
soft_clip_softness = "0.5"
compensate_soft_clip = "1"
contrast = "1"
contrast_adjust = "0.275"
gamma_correction = "1.5"
maximum_threads = "1"
do_ray_traced_shadows = "0"
ray_trace_everything = "0"
ray_detail_region = "1"
ray_detail_region_padding = "0"
lock_subdiv_to_frame = "0"
lock_to_frame_number = "1"
ray_trace_objects = "0"
pt_max_ray_depth = "5"
GI_prepass_padding = "0"
do_reverse_primary_rays = "0"
reverse_primary_rays_multiplier = "1"
output_image_filename = "C:/temp.%04d.bmp"
extra_output_images = "1"
extra_output_image_filename = "C:/temp.IMAGETYPE.%04d.bmp"
create_subfolders = "1"
exr_pixel_type = "1"
tiff_bits = "8"
tiff_compression = "1"
micro_exporter = "1"
micro_exporter_name = "Micro exporter 01"
sequence_first = "1"
sequence_last = "100"
sequence_step = "1"
>
<render_bucket_controls
name = "Render bucket controls 01"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "720 2220 0"
gui_group = ""
max_bucket_size = "1280 1280"
allow_auto_reduction = "0"
>
</render_bucket_controls>
<micro_exporter
name = "Micro exporter 01"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "980 2180 0"
gui_group = ""
normals = "1"
texture_coords = "1"
texture_space = "0"
nearest_distance = "0"
farthest_distance = "750"
filename = "Canyon_2b.obj"
>
</micro_exporter>
<render_GI_settings
name = "Render GI settings 01"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "1120 2380 0"
gui_group = ""
GI_relative_detail = "0"
GI_cache_detail = "0"
GI_sample_quality = "0"
GI_blur_radius = "8"
supersample_prepass = "0"
no_GI_cache_file = "1"
write_to_GI_cache_file = "0"
GI_cache_filename_to_write = "C:\Users\Martin\Documents\gicache_%04d.gic"
read_from_GI_cache_file = "0"
GI_cache_filename_to_read = ""
GI_cache_blend_mode = "3"
GI_cache_blend_range = "5"
GI_prepass_padding = "0"
GI_surface_details = "0"
GI_surface_details_method = "1"
GISD_occlusion_weight = "1"
GISD_bounce_weight = "1"
GISD_radius = "24"
GISD_falloff = "1"
PT_GI_surface_details = "0"
PT_GI_surface_details_method = "1"
PT_GISD_occlusion_weight = "1"
PT_GISD_bounce_weight = "1"
PT_GISD_radius = "24"
PT_GISD_falloff = "1"
cloud_GI_quality_preset = "1"
cloud_GI_max_ray_depth = "2"
optimise_voxel_scattering = "1"
voxel_scatter_quality = "100"
>
</render_GI_settings>
<render_pixel_sampler
name = "Render pixel sampler 01"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "1120 2320 0"
gui_group = ""
anti-aliasing = "0"
samples_per_pixel_label = ""
new_curve = "0"
robust = "0"
customise_sampling = "0"
first_sampling_level = "2"
pixel_noise_threshold = "0.3"
>
</render_pixel_sampler>
<render_subdiv_settings
name = "Render subdiv settings 01"
gui_use_node_pos = "1"
gui_node_pos = "1020 2260 0"
gui_group = ""
fully_adaptive = "0"
microvertex_jittering = "0"
force_all_edges = "1"
detail_jittering = "0"
detail_blending = "0"
displacement_filter = "1"
jitter_shading_points = "0"
ray_detail_multiplier = "0.25"
stabilise_ray_detail_in_motion = "0"
ray_detail_stabilisation = "3"
override_size_of_subdiv_cache = "0"
size_of_subdiv_cache_in_Mb = "11200"
preallocate_subdiv_cache = "0"
>
</render_subdiv_settings>
</render>
</terragen_clip>

The micro-exporter settings should also be inside this clipfile.
Hope this sheds some more light.

WAS

Thank you. I'm going to try that clipfile with new object path and see what sorta file I can get back.

WAS

I'm curious. let's say you wanted to edit your micro exported terrain in blender, or poseray or whatever.

When I smooth or subdivide the object, the faces seem to shrink and I get a checkered board effect where the seems are transparent. How would I go about welding all these faces together? I'm not very model savvy. Shouldn't weld vertices/faces or w/e be an option for export?

Additionally, force edges, disabling micro vertex etc helped a LOT, however there are still random tears in the geometry I'm not sure how to overcome, even at MPD 0.7 and a fairly smooth and excessively large terrain.

I finally setup virtual memory on my HDD so I can handle these large files since I only have 8GB RAM. Though mainly so I can record without Windows melting down...

Dune

In poseray you can weld (before subdividing!), but not fill holes. Latter can be done in say Lightwave.