UltraScenery [Commercial]

barbult

Uthgard said:

barbult said:

Uthgard said:

barbult said:

I'm going for a Van Gogh type color scheme here. The HDRI is aptly named Sunflowers, from HDRI Haven. This image  combines UltraScenery, UltraTree, and UltraScatterPro. They all work well together.

That's a gorgeous image, Barbuit! Any tips on how to reproduce the gravel and stone circle around the tree or on how to get a patch of ground without grass? It would be very useful for campsites.

To create a patch of ground without the grass, you would need a distribution map, I think. UltraScatterPro offers that capability, but UltraScenery does not directly offer that, as far as I know. I did not eliminate the grass in my scene; if you look closely, you can see some grass sticking up between/through the rocks. I thought that made it even better, because in a scene like this, the rocks would not be perfectly "clean". I did raise the rocks a little bit to pull them out of the grass a little.

To create the circle of small rocks around the tree, I used the Geometry Editor lasso tool to select a group of polygons on the UltraScene object surface. I created a Selection Set from the selected polygons. Then I used UltraScatterPro to scatter the River Pebbles props from UltraScenery on the UltraScene object, limited to the Selection Set I created with the Geometry Editor. I did a similar process with the large rocks, creating another selection set and scattering the River Stone prop. Finally I created and even larger Selection Set area and scattered the Fallen Leaves props. You may not have even noticed them, but look again and they are there. I raised the fallen leaves to look like they were resting on the top of the grass.

Thank you very much for the detailed instructions. It's a shame that there's no easy workaround to have clearings in the grass, but it still is very worthwhile to know the rest of the process. And I thought the fallen leaves were a very nice touch, I'll have to try something similar (maybe with sakura blossoms in a volume scatter under a tree).

Maybe HowieFarkes will have a clever solution for the clearing in the grass. I'm sure there's still plenty I haven't discovered.

barbult

MelanieL said:

A question for @HowieFarkes:

I noticed with some of my Bryce-generated terrain maps that the landscape generated seemed "lumpy" in slightly different places to where I was expecting. I discovered that the heightmap seems to get modified by the Noise settings, rather than being applied exactly.

Is this expected behaviour or an oversight?

I've attached an example using a manually created geometric heightmap map (I removed the grass, etc for clarity) to generated a landscape which acquires wavy edges in the process.  My solution is to set Brightness to -100 in the Noise tab (which then applies what seems to be a plain black square), although there is still a tiny bit of wave-iness along one side.

ETA: I set Max Altitude to 10 to make the difference more obvious.

That is an interesting discovery. I haven't tried much with height maps. Did you add any feature to your terrain (it doesn't look like it)? I know the features change the terrain.

SBibb

dawnblade said:

Since setting "Instancing Optimization" to Memory is really important, would you consider just changing it to Memory when the Build button is clicked? That way we don't have to remember to do it. I know I've hit render way too quickly and regretted it.

Wait... so that's why my render (and computer) kept crashing... (Optimation set to speed instead of memory).

Changed that and the scene started rendering again without forcing me to restart the computer. Good to know.

I know you were mentioning this to suggest the automatic changing, but thank you for mentioning that in general. For some reason I didn't think to check the instructions until after you said that (granted, I tend to render large scenes my computer doesn't like, anyway, so it wasn't entirely out of the usual).

Not sure how feasible it is in case someone needs the other way around, but it might be something worth considering if it tends to cause crashes otherwise.

But the results, once rendered, are very pretty. :-D

Daventaki

HaaHaa the reason why people like me should not play with a JSON file.   Introducing the overgrown riverbed.....

 

 

barbult

Daventaki said:

HaaHaa the reason why people like me should not play with a JSON file.   Introducing the overgrown riverbed.....

River of grass - why not?

MelanieL

barbult said:

MelanieL said:

A question for @HowieFarkes:

I noticed with some of my Bryce-generated terrain maps that the landscape generated seemed "lumpy" in slightly different places to where I was expecting. I discovered that the heightmap seems to get modified by the Noise settings, rather than being applied exactly.

Is this expected behaviour or an oversight?

I've attached an example using a manually created geometric heightmap map (I removed the grass, etc for clarity) to generated a landscape which acquires wavy edges in the process.  My solution is to set Brightness to -100 in the Noise tab (which then applies what seems to be a plain black square), although there is still a tiny bit of wave-iness along one side.

ETA: I set Max Altitude to 10 to make the difference more obvious.

That is an interesting discovery. I haven't tried much with height maps. Did you add any feature to your terrain (it doesn't look like it)? I know the features change the terrain.

No, that's "No Feature" as you surmised. I actually noticed the "unexpected lumpiness" using one of the River features, so I think my discovery may apply to all of them.

MelanieL

And this evening I borrowed a few trees and flag iris from the World Gardens - Japan set (my first serious json-hack).

barbult

MelanieL said:

And this evening I borrowed a few trees and flag iris from the World Gardens - Japan set (my first serious json-hack).

It is fun to see what you can modify, isn't it?

Daventaki

MelanieL said:

And this evening I borrowed a few trees and flag iris from the World Gardens - Japan set (my first serious json-hack).

Beautiful!  Ive been trying to do something like this with the reeds from Mallord Pond and not having any luck.

Oso3D

Another wacky alien planet.

This time I did basically grassland, and again made the foliage 'alien' by tweaking colors. The daisies still look pretty much like daisies, but whatever. Heh.

Retro spacesuit, orestes oblivion HDRI, and HH drone complete the look.

The haze effect is just me tweaking a fog cube.

ACue

I've been mixing in props and vegetations from other Howie Farkes products and they integrate quite seamlessly within the UltraScenery landscape scenes. Amazing. I find it also breathes new life in older products, like Noggin's Mallard Duck and Ducklings, for example. Thanks Howie.

MelissaGT

Gogger said:

fastbike1 said:

@melissastjames "I suppose the only thing I can do is render out a small ~1,000px test run to check my lighting, etc and use that in place of the Iray preview. It's just a pain in the patoo"

That's the interesting thing about personal perspectives. I have a GTX 980 TI and render small "previews" all the time to check lighting etc because I think the Iray Preview mode is a pain in the patoo.

I've recently upgraded to a new computer so am living pretty LARGE right now, and do NOT have any issues using Iray Preview in the smaller preview pane and then rendering 3440x1440 images one after another (without rebooting or restarting DAZ Studio). At times in this thread it sounded like it was a program error, or plugin fault, but I think it is just a resources thing. FWIW: I'm running a RTX2060 and RTX2080Ti on a new high-spec Alienware Desktop.  I'd point fingers at GPU/video RAM, updated drivers (all), then system memory, and then CPU, in that order if anyone is having issues.  Just my two cents worth. 

I should have specified that I run a 4k monitor, so my main window Iray preview is pretty large. I didn't even think to try the smaller window in the corner. 

Daventaki

ACue said:

I've been mixing in props and vegetations from other Howie Farkes products and they integrate quite seamlessly within the UltraScenery landscape scenes. Amazing. I find it also breathes new life in older products, like Noggin's Mallard Duck and Ducklings, for example. Thanks Howie.

Awww thats cute!

MelanieL

Daventaki said:

MelanieL said:

And this evening I borrowed a few trees and flag iris from the World Gardens - Japan set (my first serious json-hack).

Beautiful!  Ive been trying to do something like this with the reeds from Mallord Pond and not having any luck.

Thank you. I basically over-wrote the "River Grass" section of the file to replace the grass .duf with the iris one from WG-Japan.

alexhcowley

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

Here’s my third test scene, using the Ultrascenery product. This one uses one of the buildings out of Faveral's Modular Medieval Village set to provide a little more interest. 

As before, lighting is bog-standard sun sky with a camera in the SS sun node to point the sun.

This took just over ten minutes to generate and about an hour and a quarter to render. 

Cheers,

Alex.

The building definitely adds to the scene. Have you tried the render settings preset included in the UltraScenery product yet? I find that to be very good and easier than manually trying to position a sun node. I also like to try out various HDRI files instead, to provide some background. You don't need any additional background in your image. The forest fills the scene very nicely.

Thanks for your support although I'm a little puzzled over your antipathy for using cameras in the SS Sun Node to point the sunlight.  I find this by far easiest way of controlling sunlight.  Once the camera is positioned above the scene, select the camera and you can point the direction of the sunlight every easily and precisely by simply manipulating the standard camera controls.

With comlex scenes, I like to render from several different angles.  This is easy with a sun camera.  Using lattitude and longitude settings or HDRIs is something I find a lot more fiddly and typically involves a lot more trial and error. 

As for using background jpegs, this wasn't really neccessary in this specific image but paid dividends with the other two images I have posted on this thread. 

Cheers,

Alex.

barbult

alexhcowley said:

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

Here’s my third test scene, using the Ultrascenery product. This one uses one of the buildings out of Faveral's Modular Medieval Village set to provide a little more interest. 

As before, lighting is bog-standard sun sky with a camera in the SS sun node to point the sun.

This took just over ten minutes to generate and about an hour and a quarter to render. 

Cheers,

Alex.

The building definitely adds to the scene. Have you tried the render settings preset included in the UltraScenery product yet? I find that to be very good and easier than manually trying to position a sun node. I also like to try out various HDRI files instead, to provide some background. You don't need any additional background in your image. The forest fills the scene very nicely.

Thanks for your support although I'm a little puzzled over your antipathy for using cameras in the SS Sun Node to point the sunlight.  I find this by far easiest way of controlling sunlight.  Once the camera is positioned above the scene, select the camera and you can point the direction of the sunlight every easily and precisely by simply manipulating the standard camera controls.

With comlex scenes, I like to render from several different angles.  This is easy with a sun camera.  Using lattitude and longitude settings or HDRIs is something I find a lot more fiddly and typically involves a lot more trial and error. 

As for using background jpegs, this wasn't really neccessary in this specific image but paid dividends with the other two images I have posted on this thread. 

Cheers,

Alex.

I just mentioned the included Render Settings preset, because the Smart Content categorization is incorrect, and some people are not even aware that UltraScenery came with a Render Settings preset. It sets up more than just the sun angle. It configures some tone mapping, etc. I found that I got good results with it, so I mentioned it. 

L'Adair

alexhcowley said:

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

Here’s my third test scene, using the Ultrascenery product. This one uses one of the buildings out of Faveral's Modular Medieval Village set to provide a little more interest. 

As before, lighting is bog-standard sun sky with a camera in the SS sun node to point the sun.

This took just over ten minutes to generate and about an hour and a quarter to render. 

Cheers,

Alex.

The building definitely adds to the scene. Have you tried the render settings preset included in the UltraScenery product yet? I find that to be very good and easier than manually trying to position a sun node. I also like to try out various HDRI files instead, to provide some background. You don't need any additional background in your image. The forest fills the scene very nicely.

Thanks for your support although I'm a little puzzled over your antipathy for using cameras in the SS Sun Node to point the sunlight.  I find this by far easiest way of controlling sunlight.  Once the camera is positioned above the scene, select the camera and you can point the direction of the sunlight every easily and precisely by simply manipulating the standard camera controls.

With comlex scenes, I like to render from several different angles.  This is easy with a sun camera.  Using lattitude and longitude settings or HDRIs is something I find a lot more fiddly and typically involves a lot more trial and error. 

As for using background jpegs, this wasn't really neccessary in this specific image but paid dividends with the other two images I have posted on this thread. 

Cheers,

Alex.

I frequently use the camera view of spotlights and distant lights to control their position; I've have also used the Sun Dial Set to position the sun. I've not heard of using a camera in the SS Sun Node parameter, yet that makes so much sense! I'll be trying that in the near future.

dawnblade

SBibb said:

dawnblade said:

Since setting "Instancing Optimization" to Memory is really important, would you consider just changing it to Memory when the Build button is clicked? That way we don't have to remember to do it. I know I've hit render way too quickly and regretted it.

Wait... so that's why my render (and computer) kept crashing... (Optimation set to speed instead of memory).

Changed that and the scene started rendering again without forcing me to restart the computer. Good to know.

I know you were mentioning this to suggest the automatic changing, but thank you for mentioning that in general. For some reason I didn't think to check the instructions until after you said that (granted, I tend to render large scenes my computer doesn't like, anyway, so it wasn't entirely out of the usual).

Not sure how feasible it is in case someone needs the other way around, but it might be something worth considering if it tends to cause crashes otherwise.

But the results, once rendered, are very pretty. :-D

You're welcome. Glad your renders are working!

Doc Acme

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

 

I just mentioned the included Render Settings preset, because the Smart Content categorization is incorrect, and some people are not even aware that UltraScenery came with a Render Settings preset. It sets up more than just the sun angle. It configures some tone mapping, etc. I found that I got good results with it, so I mentioned it. 

I liked the look & feel of it as well so saved that out as a preset but with my current locale.  Once I got the correct UTC Offset & negative Longitude entered, I was good to go.

As I mentioned somewhere, the Sun-Sky preset is much faster than using an HDRi.  I'll need to study it a bit more certainly for getting different quality other than just sunlight.

 

HowieFarkes

MelanieL said:

A question for @HowieFarkes:

I noticed with some of my Bryce-generated terrain maps that the landscape generated seemed "lumpy" in slightly different places to where I was expecting. I discovered that the heightmap seems to get modified by the Noise settings, rather than being applied exactly.

Is this expected behaviour or an oversight?

I've attached an example using a manually created geometric heightmap map (I removed the grass, etc for clarity) to generated a landscape which acquires wavy edges in the process.  My solution is to set Brightness to -100 in the Noise tab (which then applies what seems to be a plain black square), although there is still a tiny bit of wave-iness along one side.

ETA: I set Max Altitude to 10 to make the difference more obvious.

Yes right now the way to remove the noise influence on the terrain is to turn the brightness down to -100.

Greybro

Just curious if the update has gotten through the process yet for those of us still getting a partial install and or the script not entirely working?

HowieFarkes

Greybro said:

Just curious if the update has gotten through the process yet for those of us still getting a partial install and or the script not entirely working?

I have submitted it but can give no ETA on it's arrival unfortunately :(

gitika1

alexhcowley said:

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

Here’s my third test scene, using the Ultrascenery product. This one uses one of the buildings out of Faveral's Modular Medieval Village set to provide a little more interest. 

As before, lighting is bog-standard sun sky with a camera in the SS sun node to point the sun.

This took just over ten minutes to generate and about an hour and a quarter to render. 

Cheers,

Alex.

The building definitely adds to the scene. Have you tried the render settings preset included in the UltraScenery product yet? I find that to be very good and easier than manually trying to position a sun node. I also like to try out various HDRI files instead, to provide some background. You don't need any additional background in your image. The forest fills the scene very nicely.

Thanks for your support although I'm a little puzzled over your antipathy for using cameras in the SS Sun Node to point the sunlight.  I find this by far easiest way of controlling sunlight.  Once the camera is positioned above the scene, select the camera and you can point the direction of the sunlight every easily and precisely by simply manipulating the standard camera controls.

With comlex scenes, I like to render from several different angles.  This is easy with a sun camera.  Using lattitude and longitude settings or HDRIs is something I find a lot more fiddly and typically involves a lot more trial and error. 

As for using background jpegs, this wasn't really neccessary in this specific image but paid dividends with the other two images I have posted on this thread. 

Cheers,

Alex.

Alex,  

I don't know how to do what you speaking about.  Would mind sharing a little more info?

Thanks!

SnowPheonix

HowieFarkes said:

Hi all,

I'm pretty excited to show off my (hopefully) next product - UltraScenery. Think of it like UltraTrees but for entire landscapes. Use procedural noise and/or heightmaps to generate the terrain, select features such as rivers, ponds, roads and tracks then choose an "Ecology" to cover the terrain in vegetaion and rocks etc.

A sample of generated landscapes are below :)

 

How is it on memory.. Are you able to combine the landscape with a Genesis 8HD character and do a render?

richardandtracy

With the image below I had zero optimisation of trees for the camera, due to forgetfulness I had the sub-d level of the G8F figure set to 2 with an HD morph too (a stock figure I have saved as a 'Scene Subset' and I forgot to change her in any way). Total RAM was under 6Gb according to 'Task Manager', and according to the GPU data reporting software I have, the GPU RAM was 5.2Gb with render instance otimisation set to 'memory'. HTH.

Regards,

Richard.

 

fastbike1

@richardandtracy "sub-d level of the G8F figure set to 2 with an HD morph too"

Nice render. This seems to be a great example of a scene that deosn't need a HD character and perhaps not even subD 2.

richardandtracy

I know. I was simply thinking about UltraScenery & didn't think about the other bits of the scene properly. As the figure is a 'stock' setup I have, I really didn't think beyond dropping her in.

alexhcowley

gitika1 said:

alexhcowley said:

barbult said:

alexhcowley said:

Here’s my third test scene, using the Ultrascenery product. This one uses one of the buildings out of Faveral's Modular Medieval Village set to provide a little more interest. 

As before, lighting is bog-standard sun sky with a camera in the SS sun node to point the sun.

This took just over ten minutes to generate and about an hour and a quarter to render. 

Cheers,

Alex.

The building definitely adds to the scene. Have you tried the render settings preset included in the UltraScenery product yet? I find that to be very good and easier than manually trying to position a sun node. I also like to try out various HDRI files instead, to provide some background. You don't need any additional background in your image. The forest fills the scene very nicely.

Thanks for your support although I'm a little puzzled over your antipathy for using cameras in the SS Sun Node to point the sunlight.  I find this by far easiest way of controlling sunlight.  Once the camera is positioned above the scene, select the camera and you can point the direction of the sunlight every easily and precisely by simply manipulating the standard camera controls.

With complex scenes, I like to render from several different angles.  This is easy with a sun camera.  Using latitude and longitude settings or HDRIs is something I find a lot more fiddly and typically involves a lot more trial and error. 

As for using background jpegs, this wasn't really necessary in this specific image but paid dividends with the other two images I have posted on this thread. 

Cheers,

Alex.

Alex,  

I don't know how to do what you speaking about.  Would mind sharing a little more info?

Thanks!

You need to read the previous posts in this series.  This is basically a discussion on the relative merits of Sun Sky lighting and the various methods of controlling the direction of the sunlight.  I find that putting a camera in the SS Sun Node within the environment section on the render settings tab is the one that works best for me.  

I will post a jpeg later on if you're still confused. 

Cheers,

Alex.

Greybro

HowieFarkes said:

Greybro said:

Just curious if the update has gotten through the process yet for those of us still getting a partial install and or the script not entirely working?

I have submitted it but can give no ETA on it's arrival unfortunately :(

You've made a lot of great looking stuff, but THIS one is right up there at the top. Cannot wait to get it working.

mavante

alexhcowley said:

This is basically a discussion on the relative merits of Sun Sky lighting and the various methods of controlling the direction of the sunlight.  I find that putting a camera in the SS Sun Node within the environment section on the render settings tab is the one that works best for me.  

I will post a jpeg later on if you're still confused. 

I'm certainly interested in anything you can show or tell about how to put a camera in the SS Sun Node.