TP4 rendering problems...

[Tangled-Universe]

I'm looking forward to see your findings Matt.
I'll dive again and deeper into more translation settings to get the models to sit on the terrain correctly.
It seems that changing the seed of the clouds etc. resulted in better handling of the fog.
I see your point about the rotation, it indeed bends the other way, but if you compare branches and shapes they all look (pretty much) the same.

okay, I may be speaking out my backside here, but is the levitating tree problem just effecting one population,  of the type of pine tree pointed out, or does it effect all the tree populations. The reason I am asking as it is hard to see the bottom of the other trees of the same population due to a slight rise in the terrain between them and the camera, but a while back I used a model of a tree which had the origin set at the end of a root, causing the population for that tree to set above the terrain, with just the tip of the root touching the ground, the other populations of different tree models sat on the surface. Perhaps when the additional PF based terrain just lowered the intervening terrain enough to see the levitation.
Just a thought, slap me if I am way off.
SeerBlue

I see what you mean and it makes sense. However, the origin of these models are above the trunk/roots.

[SeerBlue]

Okay, I just thought I would throw that out, as far as random rotation, I am using 3 free, and it works fro me, do a test with an object that has a shape that is easily noticed when it is rotated, for example I made just a post with four arms at the top and placed a different shape at each end of the arms, loaded it  in terragen and set random rotation 0 360 and it does it, I think the problem is most trees models are relatively balanced, so they don't appear to be rotating, I'll try to attach an image, but my connection is flaky today and keeps dropping,SeerBlue

[Matt]

I'm looking forward to see your findings Matt.
I'll dive again and deeper into more translation settings to get the models to sit on the terrain correctly.
It seems that changing the seed of the clouds etc. resulted in better handling of the fog.

I was looking at the fog again and it could simply be that the fog density varies more than you think, slinking between the trees and hiding some trees more than others.

I see your point about the rotation, it indeed bends the other way, but if you compare branches and shapes they all look (pretty much) the same.

If it bends the other way, that can only be explained by rotation or flipping of the model, but for Terragen to flip the model there would have to be a weird bug. The branches and shapes do have a lot of rotational symmetry, but that's just the way a lot of these Xfrog models are That symmetry is not entirely unnatural, either.

Matt

[Matt]

I've run some tests with your T-U_Finally_Spring_v3.tgd and I haven't found any problems, but I had to take some shortcuts. I didn't have your .tgos to work with, so I substituted one from the Xfrog Plants for Terragen 2 sampler. Changing the Y coordinate in the TGO Reader shifted the vertical position of the objects without any problems. Even if there is a problem with your .tgo, I don't see why the vertical position change doesn't work.

I couldn't get my plants to appear in the same places as yours, so I don't know if the seed has changed, or the object positioning problem is affecting that. But they were in the same approximate region of the image and they all sat on the terrain as they should.

Can you find out exactly which population is wrong, and then try 1) using a different object instead, and 2) using the problematic object in a population in a different scene?

Matt

[Tangled-Universe]

I've run some tests with your T-U_Finally_Spring_v3.tgd and I haven't found any problems, but I had to take some shortcuts. I didn't have your .tgos to work with, so I substituted one from the Xfrog Plants for Terragen 2 sampler. Changing the Y coordinate in the TGO Reader shifted the vertical position of the objects without any problems. Even if there is a problem with your .tgo, I don't see why the vertical position change doesn't work.

I couldn't get my plants to appear in the same places as yours, so I don't know if the seed has changed, or the object positioning problem is affecting that. But they were in the same approximate region of the image and they all sat on the terrain as they should.

Can you find out exactly which population is wrong, and then try 1) using a different object instead, and 2) using the problematic object in a population in a different scene?

Matt

Hi Matt,

I'm glad to report that the majority of the problems are solved

First I thought that lowering the object maker's altitude didn't work because the populator created more and also differently placed instances after lowering the altitude.
Somehow after a restart, then first populate and then adjust the 'offset' it seemed to work

It was the EU35m population of the foreground trees which gave the problems and I remember "fooling" TG2 to duplicate an other populator and set it to load the EU35m model.
It then worked for one session of TG2 and then the problems rose again.
This must sound pretty strange and unbelievable, I know.

I've also more or less solved the cloudproblem and I think it was just an incident. All the renders of different seeds gave better results.

The last two days I've spent on rendering the left part of the final image, so the last part should be finished by tomorrow or so... Can't wait to share the final

Martin

[Matt]

That's good news   It may be that there are some bugs causing things not to update when they should. The populator used to update whenever anything even remotely connected to the population changed, to avoid that sort of problem. It's possible that some recent changes to make it more 'intelligent' are complicating matters. I suppose the most important thing to verify is that things render correctly after reloading your project (after you've made things right, of course). Does that seem to be OK?

I definitely look forward to seeing the final. This should have been Image of the Week already!

Matt

[Tangled-Universe]

That's good news   It may be that there are some bugs causing things not to update when they should. The populator used to update whenever anything even remotely connected to the population changed, to avoid that sort of problem. It's possible that some recent changes to make it more 'intelligent' are complicating matters. I suppose the most important thing to verify is that things render correctly after reloading your project (after you've made things right, of course). Does that seem to be OK?

I definitely look forward to seeing the final. This should have been Image of the Week already!

Matt

I understand, that could be possible indeed. If I run into it again I'll report it as well.
Is it still correct that the objects reload after copy and pasting a node? It is half as annoying as before because TP4 loads and updates models much faster than the previous TP's

The final is nearly finished with rendering and I consider to make some extra slight improvements, but I have to consider it finished at some time. You're right about that
Thanks!

Martin

[Tangled-Universe]

Finished!

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=4231.msg46225#msg46225