UltraScenery [Commercial]

mcorr

AllenArt said:

Love :)

Thanks Howie :)

Did you have to do something to lushly and densely populate the scene, or did US do it just like that in the default terrain generating mode?

AllenArt

Gogger said:

AllenArt said:

DMax said:

ps. how does one post an image within the post instead of attaching it?

Set up the post as normal with the image as an attachment. Submit the post. Click on the image thumbnail and copy the url of the full image. Come back to submitted post, edit the post and insert the image with the image gizmo, using the URL that you copied. Set the size and how you want the image to open when clicked or not and resave/resubmit the post. Hope that made sense. LOL.

FYI: Bear in mind gigantic images inserted into your post will distort and look goofy when viewed. If you set the width to around 600 or 700 they should display without distortion. 

[Edit] OOPS - was typing while dawnblade and I were posting the same info.  I think 800, as dawnblade stated is the widest possible before distortion occurs.

I usually keep the width at 700.

AllenArt

Doc Acme said:

Wow.  This is the SECOND product I've picked up recently where the Product Page requirements & the Package don't match.

I don't care who, but someone certainly needs to get their feces accumulated on the marketing end of things! 

Shameful!

It is definitely not the only thing screwed up in the store. I have no idea how things got so discombobulated. o.O

AllenArt

mcorr said:

AllenArt said:

Love :)

Thanks Howie :)

Did you have to do something to lushly and densely populate the scene, or did US do it just like that in the default terrain generating mode?

Ultra Scenery created it just like that. I can't remember which of the presets I used tho. Sorry. And yeah, that was an auto generated terrain as well.

AllenArt

DMax said:

AllenArt said:

Set up the post as normal with the image as an attachment. Submit the post. Click on the image thumbnail and copy the url of the full image. Come back to submitted post, edit the post and insert the image with the image gizmo, using the URL that you copied. Set the size and how you want the image to open when clicked or not and resave/resubmit the post. Hope that made sense. LOL.

You're a genius and if all my teachers at school explained as well as you did, I would have had been an all-star student!! <3 <3 <3

LOL...thanks. And good...I'm not always so good at explaining things. I know what I mean, but it gets lost a lot of the time between my head and my fingers. LOLOL

mcorr

Does the height map have to be a jpeg? I’m trying to use a .tiff, but it’s not grabing the height map. When I hit build scene nothing happens.

figured it out

mcorr

Am I the only one, or do the scenes take a looooooong time to be generated ( not rendered, but generated)? I’ve got a great rig, but it just doesn’t seem to be able to grind thru the computations in a decent amount of time. What kinds of times are people getting for certain scenes? 

Addition:

is there a way to thin out (distribution map or something) how many teees are placed? 

I guess its the zoom and seed settings that do that

DMax

mcorr said:

Am I the only one, or do the scenes take a looooooong time to be generated ( not rendered, but generated)? I’ve got a great rig, but it just doesn’t seem to be able to grind thru the computations in a decent amount of time. What kinds of times are people getting for certain scenes? 

Addition:

is there a way to thin out (distribution map or something) how many teees are placed? 

I guess its the zoom and seed settings that do that

I initially had the same problem too just generating the scene. These workarounds helped in my experience: (1) load the minimum features (eg. terrain only) then slowly add them back one by one as you rebuild the scene (2) Make sure under Optimization you select "Memory" (3) the most helpful one for me was to choose "Camera Only" as it vastly reduces the strain on the system

mcorr

DMax said:

mcorr said:

Am I the only one, or do the scenes take a looooooong time to be generated ( not rendered, but generated)? I’ve got a great rig, but it just doesn’t seem to be able to grind thru the computations in a decent amount of time. What kinds of times are people getting for certain scenes? 

Addition:

is there a way to thin out (distribution map or something) how many teees are placed? 

I guess its the zoom and seed settings that do that

I initially had the same problem too just generating the scene. These workarounds helped in my experience: (1) load the minimum features (eg. terrain only) then slowly add them back one by one as you rebuild the scene (2) Make sure under Optimization you select "Memory" (3) the most helpful one for me was to choose "Camera Only" as it vastly reduces the strain on the system

Uhmmmm ... you are talking about rendering, I think. I’m talking about the time necessary to generate the scene before it’s rendered.

DMax

mcorr said:

Uhmmmm ... you are talking about rendering, I think. I’m talking about generating the time necessary to generate the scene before it’s rendered.

No, I was indeed referring to scene generation (way before rendering even). Just barely 2 days ago I was in your exact situation but this thread taught me a lot of workarounds (I only have a Macbook with no NVidia).
To quicken generation, try those 3 tips I mentioned above. You will be surprised.
 

mcorr

Updating to the most recent version did the speed trick ..... big difference

mcorr

DMax said:

mcorr said:

Uhmmmm ... you are talking about rendering, I think. I’m talking about generating the time necessary to generate the scene before it’s rendered.

No, I was indeed referring to scene generation (way before rendering even). Just barely 2 days ago I was in your exact situation but this thread taught me a lot of workarounds (I only have a Macbook with no NVidia).
To quicken generation, try those 3 tips I mentioned above. You will be surprised.
 

Ok, will do.

mcorr

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

Artini

Thanks.

Custom height map created in Bryce, Harpwood 4.

DMax

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

Have you tried selecting "Memory" (instead of "Speed") and loaded only the terrain with no other features? (deselect the grassses, flowers, etc)
And then choose "Camera Viewpoint Only". Your scene should subsequently be generated very quickly. "Camera Viewpoint" has the effect of cutting down system resources as only the big trees within your selected camera viewpoint are loaded; everything else will not load but will of course appear in your final render.

mcorr

So,, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

 

The short answer to my question is yes. It’s the masks that need to be changed. And a cute trick is that even after the original mask has been restored to the textures folder, the altered layout remains on the saved scene file.

 

HowieFarkes

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

There is currently no way via the script's user interface to alter the density of the vegetation.

mcorr

DMax said:

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

Have you tried selecting "Memory" (instead of "Speed") and loaded only the terrain with no other features? (deselect the grassses, flowers, etc)
And then choose "Camera Viewpoint Only". Your scene should subsequently be generated very quickly. "Camera Viewpoint" has the effect of cutting down system resources as only the big trees within your selected camera viewpoint are loaded; everything else will not load but will of course appear in your final render.

I am talking about the density of the vegetation ... this time you’ve misunderstood. The issue you are addressing is no longer an issue. Thanks.

daveso

HowieFarkes said:

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

There is currently no way via the script's user interface to alter the density of the vegetation.

thay would be a great thing to add at some point.

mcorr

daveso said:

HowieFarkes said:

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

There is currently no way via the script's user interface to alter the density of the vegetation.

thay would be a great thing to add at some point.

Noise filters usually accomlish this task.

barbult

 

 

mcorr said:

daveso said:

HowieFarkes said:

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

There is currently no way via the script's user interface to alter the density of the vegetation.

thay would be a great thing to add at some point.

Noise filters usually accomlish this task.

???
The noise control on the Terrain only controls the height of the terrain. Which noise filters are you referring to that can affect vegetation density?  Or are you saying that you would like to see noise filters added to control vegetation density?

Jason Galterio

Did a bit of experimenting with custom height maps this evening, as well as US in general. Thought I would share the results.

Jason Galterio

One more...

One of the tricks that I found, and I may be mistaken here, is to pick a setting that somewhat matches the height map lay out. This seems to avoid having any really odd / unnatural looking features.

Artini

Jason Galterio said:

Did a bit of experimenting with custom height maps this evening, as well as US in general. Thought I would share the results.

Looks great.

How did you get water with custom height map?

barbult

You can get water with a custom height map if you select a feature with water, like the Pond. BUT those features alter the height map to pull the terrain gently down to water height, so the end result may not be what you were expecting. As far as I know, you can't get water with No Feature.

mcorr

barbult said:

 

 

mcorr said:

daveso said:

HowieFarkes said:

mcorr said:

So, I have to ask again because my work around didn’t work. Is there a way to limit the distribution (density) of vegetation aside from the ecology one chooses? Does it require altering Howie’s texture maps?

There is currently no way via the script's user interface to alter the density of the vegetation.

thay would be a great thing to add at some point.

Noise filters usually accomlish this task.

???
The noise control on the Terrain only controls the height of the terrain. Which noise filters are you referring to that can affect vegetation density?  Or are you saying that you would like to see noise filters added to control vegetation density?

Yes, if I am not mistaken, the way Vue implements it seems easy enough.

Artini

barbult said:

You can get water with a custom height map if you select a feature with water, like the Pond. BUT those features alter the height map to pull the terrain gently down to water height, so the end result may not be what you were expecting. As far as I know, you can't get water with No Feature.

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

Would be great to have a featured base settings with the water, that allows adjust the level of the water, as well.

Jason Galterio

Artini said:

barbult said:

You can get water with a custom height map if you select a feature with water, like the Pond. BUT those features alter the height map to pull the terrain gently down to water height, so the end result may not be what you were expecting. As far as I know, you can't get water with No Feature.

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

Would be great to have a featured base settings with the water, that allows adjust the level of the water, as well.

This is correct. That was what I was alluding to with pick a setting that works with your height map.

In this case I believe I picked either the river or the lake, possibly the shore.

If you pick a setting that doesn't somewhat line up with your heigh map, you will end up with crazy results. Small jagged out croppings, things like that as it tries to correlate the unrelated features.

Because of this I tend to avoid the settings that have roads on them. The roads will take bizzare paths across the height map and just look unnatural.

There may be a template for where the road will land, which you could use to smooth out the height map. I didn't dig that deeply yet.

L'Adair

Jason Galterio said:

Artini said:

barbult said:

You can get water with a custom height map if you select a feature with water, like the Pond. BUT those features alter the height map to pull the terrain gently down to water height, so the end result may not be what you were expecting. As far as I know, you can't get water with No Feature.

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

Would be great to have a featured base settings with the water, that allows adjust the level of the water, as well.

This is correct. That was what I was alluding to with pick a setting that works with your height map.

In this case I believe I picked either the river or the lake, possibly the shore.

If you pick a setting that doesn't somewhat line up with your heigh map, you will end up with crazy results. Small jagged out croppings, things like that as it tries to correlate the unrelated features.

Because of this I tend to avoid the settings that have roads on them. The roads will take bizzare paths across the height map and just look unnatural.

There may be a template for where the road will land, which you could use to smooth out the height map. I didn't dig that deeply yet.

The script uses masks, which you'll find in the Textures folder for HowieFarkes or TangoAlpha, currently, depending on which product the feature is from. Those masks are 512 x 512 pixels. You could create your own road masks at a much higher resolution, then edit the JSON file to use your mask instead of the default. That might minimize/eliminate the "Small jagged out croppings," and such.

Jason Galterio

L'Adair said:

Jason Galterio said:

Artini said:

barbult said:

You can get water with a custom height map if you select a feature with water, like the Pond. BUT those features alter the height map to pull the terrain gently down to water height, so the end result may not be what you were expecting. As far as I know, you can't get water with No Feature.

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

Would be great to have a featured base settings with the water, that allows adjust the level of the water, as well.

This is correct. That was what I was alluding to with pick a setting that works with your height map.

In this case I believe I picked either the river or the lake, possibly the shore.

If you pick a setting that doesn't somewhat line up with your heigh map, you will end up with crazy results. Small jagged out croppings, things like that as it tries to correlate the unrelated features.

Because of this I tend to avoid the settings that have roads on them. The roads will take bizzare paths across the height map and just look unnatural.

There may be a template for where the road will land, which you could use to smooth out the height map. I didn't dig that deeply yet.

The script uses masks, which you'll find in the Textures folder for HowieFarkes or TangoAlpha, currently, depending on which product the feature is from. Those masks are 512 x 512 pixels. You could create your own road masks at a much higher resolution, then edit the JSON file to use your mask instead of the default. That might minimize/eliminate the "Small jagged out croppings," and such.

Nice. Thanks. I am going to need to try that.

What I was thinking is to make the height map, then overlay the road mask. Then it is easy to use image layers to alter the height map to fit where the road will end up.

I'm going to go try now. :)