Populator Guide - Revision history

Redmaw: Added Population Masking Techniques tutorial

2021-02-11T18:58:30Z

Added Population Masking Techniques tutorial

Matt at 20:26, 22 January 2020

2020-01-22T20:26:14Z

Matt: Tutorials header

2020-01-22T20:25:16Z

Tutorials header

Matt: Added "Tutorial: Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals" and called the Colour Tinting article a Tutorial.

2020-01-22T02:31:14Z

Added "Tutorial: Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals" and called the Colour Tinting article a Tutorial.

Matt: Added link to Population Colour Tinting Techniques

2020-01-21T23:31:13Z

Added link to Population Colour Tinting Techniques

Jo at 23:49, 21 July 2013

2013-07-21T23:49:41Z

Jo at 23:49, 21 July 2013

2013-07-21T23:49:17Z

Jo at 23:48, 21 July 2013

2013-07-21T23:48:59Z

Show changes

Jo at 01:08, 14 January 2013

2013-01-14T01:08:58Z

Jo at 01:08, 14 January 2013

2013-01-14T01:08:02Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:58, 11 February 2021
Line 17:		Line 17:
	[[Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals]]<br />		[[Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals]]<br />
	This tutorial shows you some methods to create distinct bands of objects in overlapping populations.		This tutorial shows you some methods to create distinct bands of objects in overlapping populations.
		+
		+	[[Population Masking Techniques\|Tutorial: Population Masking Techniques]]<br />
		+	This tutorial shows you how to create masks for populations using various techniques like Simple shape shaders and the Painted shader.

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This page tells you how to make use of population instance caching to speed up population loading.
-==== Tutorials ====
+===== Tutorials =====
 [[Population Colour Tinting Techniques]]<br />

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This page tells you how to make use of population instance caching to speed up population loading.
-[[Population Colour Tinting Techniques|Tutorial: Population Colour Tinting Techniques]]<br />
+==== Tutorials ====
 This tutorial shows you how to use the tinting tools to change the colours of instances in lots of interesting ways.
-[[Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals|Tutorial: Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals]]<br />
+[[Masking Populations with Inverted Fractals]]<br />
 This tutorial shows you some methods to create distinct bands of objects in overlapping populations.

@@ Line 10: / Line 10: @@
 This page tells you how to make use of population instance caching to speed up population loading.
-[[Population Colour Tinting Techniques]]<br />
+[[Population Colour Tinting Techniques|Tutorial: Population Colour Tinting Techniques]]<br />
-This is a gentle guide to using the tinting tools to change the colours of instances in lots of interesting ways.
+This tutorial shows you how to use the tinting tools to change the colours of instances in lots of interesting ways.

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 [[Working with Populations]]<br />
-This is a guide which introduces you to populations and how to work with them.
+This page introduces you to populations and how to work with them.
 [[Population Instance Editing]]<br />
-This guide describes how you can edit individual instances in a population using new capabilities in Terragen 3.
+This guide describes how you can edit individual instances in a population to precisely control your scene.
 [[Population Instance Caching]]<br />
 This page tells you how to make use of population instance caching to speed up population loading.

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 * Open the population parameter view. Click on the Action button beside the name field and choose "Edit internal network" from the menu which pops up. This will show the object node in the network view.
 * Open the population parameter view. Click the Assign button next to the '''Object maker''' parameter and choose "Go to" menu item. This will open the parameter view for the object node in a floating window.
-* Go to the population node in the network view. Double click on internal network icon (grey cross).
+* Go to the population node in the network view. Double click on the internal network icon (grey cross).
 There are several different ways you can create a populator:

@@ Line 39: / Line 39: @@
 * You can populate each population individually. The Populator node has a '''Populate Now''' button in its parameter view. Click the button to start populating.
-* You can populate all populations using either the "Populate All" button in the Objects project view (below the node list) or from the "Populate All" submenu in the Project menu. In both cases you have two options - "Needing update" and "Force update". The "Needing update" option will only do population for populators that aren't up-to-date. "Force update" will populate all populations.
+* You can populate all populations using either the "Populate All" button below the Objects Node List or from the "Populate All" submenu in the Project menu. In both cases you have two options - "Needing update" and "Force update". The "Needing update" option will only do population for populators that aren't up-to-date. "Force update" will populate all populations.
 Populations which are quick to populate don't show any feedback during the population process. Populations which take longer show a progress dialog. You can cancel the progress dialog and only instances created up to that point are added to the population. Something to look out for is that if you cancel the population process the rest of the instances aren't created when you start rendering. You need to repopulate manually.
@@ Line 49: / Line 49: @@
 * You can use a [[Distribution Shader_v4|Distribution Shader]] to control the range of altitudes and slopes that instances can appear on, just like you would with a surface layer. You might use this to prevent instances being created below sea level for example.
-* You can use an [[Image Map Shader]] to load an image that controls where instances appear.
+* You can use an [[Image Map Shader]] to load an image that controls where instances appear. If you use a colour image the luminance of pixels is used to convert to greyscale values.
 * You can paint where the instances should appear directly into the scene using a [[Painted Shader]].
 * You could use a [[Distance Shader]] to only create instances with a certain distance of the camera.
@@ Line 69: / Line 69: @@
 Checking the '''Clip to camera''' checkbox in the Populator node tells the populator to only create instances that are inside the current render camera view. This can help to speed up the population process. One drawback is that if you have reflective objects in your scene the absence of instances might be visible in reflections.
-If you're animating the camera and want to use '''Clip to camera''' it's also a good idea to check the '''Repopulate every frame''' parameter. This will make sure the populated area matches the changing view of the camera. However it's not generally recommended to use '''Repopulate every frame''' if you are animating motion of the camera since it can cause pop-in of instances at the edge of the camera view, and will also increase population time (since it now occurs on every frame instead of just once), potentially negating some or all of the benefit of having to populate fewer instances.
+If you're animating the camera and want to use '''Clip to camera''' it's also a good idea to check the '''Repopulate every frame''' parameter. This will make sure the populated area matches the changing view of the camera. However it's not generally recommended to use the combination of '''Clip to camera''' and '''Repopulate every frame''' if you are animating motion of the camera since it can cause pop-in of instances at the edge of the camera view. It will also increase population time (since it now occurs on every frame instead of just once), potentially negating some or all of the benefit of having to populate fewer instances.
 The [[Distance Shader]] can be useful for limiting the area populated. Attach the render camera to the Distance shader and connect the Distance shader to the '''Density shader''' parameter of the populator. This will prevent instances being created further away than the Distance shader allows. You will probably also want to check the '''Invert density shader''' parameter of the populator as by default the Distance shader uses colours in the opposite way to what the populator expects.
@@ Line 75: / Line 75: @@
 As an example of how this could be useful imagine you have a scene with heavy fog. Nothing is really visible more than a few hundred metres away so you could use a distance shader to limit the area populated to 600m from the camera, for example. An advantage of this method is that it avoids problems with missing instances in reflections that you might get if you use '''Clip to camera'''.
-The '''Render quality''' parameter of the Populator node lets you control the detail the population is rendered with. This parameter only has an effect if '''Ray trace objects''' is turned off in the [[Render]] node. TG can reduce the level of detail in the model the further away it is from the camera. This parameter controls how much the amount detail is reduced. Using a lower quality can make the population render more quickly. However if you notice that the quality seems a bit low you might want to choose a higher quality setting. '''Ray trace objects''' is recommended and enabled by default in newer versions of Terragen, so this setting is less often needed now.
+The '''Render quality''' parameter of the Populator node lets you control the detail the population is rendered with. This parameter only has an effect if '''Ray trace objects''' is turned off in the [[Render]] node. TG can reduce the level of detail in the model the further away it is from the camera. This parameter controls how much the amount detail is reduced. Using a lower quality can make the population render more quickly. However if you notice that the quality seems a bit low you might want to choose a higher quality setting. '''Ray trace objects''' is recommended and enabled by default in newer versions of TG, so this setting is less often needed now.
 There is currently an issue when objects with very dense geometry (many very small polygons) are used in populations. If you have '''Ray trace objects''' turned off you might find that polygons appear to be missing from objects close to the camera. In this case you will want to choose a higher quality '''Render quality''' setting in the populator. It's probably best to use Ultra quality or simply enable '''Ray trace objects'''.