UltraScenery - new territory [Commercial]

harold_withers

Incredible looking environments, very nice!

SnowSultan

Apologies if this question has been asked before, I just don't have the time right now to go through this whole discussion. Could someone tell me if it's possible to perfectly tile multiple Ultrasceneries using height maps made in Photoshop? I can get it very close, but not quite, and I don't know what or if I'm doing anything wrong.

- I made a texture in Photoshop, 2000 wide by 1000 tall and painted some black and white areas over a base background of 50% gray.

- Next, I split the image into two 1000x1000 halves, saved each of those as JPGs, and created base landscapes with the same height maximum, no noise.

- Placed side by side in Studio, they mostly match up, but the peaks do not connect at the dividing line. 

Any information is appreciated. Thank you very much.

barbult

@SnowSultan, I haven't tried what you described, so I don't know if it works. Some thoughts:

Are you using the No_Feature feature, so the feature doesn't modify the terrain you defined?
Saving as PNG might be better than JPG, to avoid compression artifacts. If you are close, but not exact, maybe JPG compression is the issue.

dawnblade

barbult said:

The last few days I've been playing with creating a road feature so I can have cars drive through UltraScenery.

 

 

 

Very nice, @barbult! @HowieFarkes @TangoAlpha give us roads and railroad tracks please! 

SnowSultan

Yes, the only thing being created is the landscape itself, no features. I'll try PNG too, although the differences are a bit more than what I think JPG artifacts would create. I can also just try and avoid elevation across the edges or try and cover it up with rocks, etc, was just wondering if it might require a specific ration/resolution to tile or something to that effect. Thanks.

barbult

SnowSultan said:

Yes, the only thing being created is the landscape itself, no features. I'll try PNG too, although the differences are a bit more than what I think JPG artifacts would create. I can also just try and avoid elevation across the edges or try and cover it up with rocks, etc, was just wondering if it might require a specific ration/resolution to tile or something to that effect. Thanks.

The terrain is not very high resolution. If you view it in wire shaded mode, maybe you can see where the vertices are and take that into consideration. Maybe your height map is trying to move places where there is no vertex to move. (I really don't know exactly how it all works.)

skinklizzard

Jpeg compression could be an issue but probably the larger issue is once you cut the image into two you can't gaurantee that they both have exactly the same lightness/grey range without rather major effort.

if the one half goes from 0 - 255, and the other half happens to go from 1 - 255, they won't line up as you're averaging out those ranges and clipping them to something in the range of 0 - 5 (or whatever max elevation you use)

This is based on the assumption that the generator uses the lowest value in the heightmap as 0 and the heighest in the map as whatever you set as max, rather than an absolute range.

An option to set US to use an absolute range mapping of 0 - 255 could be usefull

 

Edit:

so another thing you'll want to do when using a premade height map, if you want the two halves to match up, is to edit the height map section in the builder and set brightness and contrast to -100, as it seems this generated height map is applied on top of the premade one.

I haven't really followed the thread so sorry if this is something that has already been mentioned.

ecks201

When you split the 2000 pixel wide image in two, remember that the first half ends at pixel 1000 and the second half starts at pixel 1001.

I tried splitting a 2000x1000 image and then joining the generated landscapes myself and got the following. (The join is running diagonally up the screen from right to left, near the middle)

 

One odd anomaly that happened on the first attempt was that the second landscape was not at Y=0 translation, even though it said it was, the two landscapes just wouldn't line up. It was probably something i did, but worth looking out for incase it's a weird anomaly that can happen in Daz.

 

 

 

sandmanmax

HowieFarkes said:

Loving all the renders!

Here's another peek at the continuing development of UltraSceneryXT. Just using a plain UltraScenery stream and grasslands ecology in the foreground

As much as I have loved Terradome (all 3 versions), this is VASTLY SUPERIOR to anything I could create with that.  It's so incredibly realistic!!  I can't wait, Howie.  I just hope my system will handle DS 5.

tsroemi

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

barbult

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

tsroemi

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

barbult

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

Yes, PNW is Pacific Northwest. The PNW ecologies require the plants from the other two packages listed in the required products list:

• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Trees and Shrubs
• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Understorey

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

If you just want tall yellow grass in a different ecology, other than PNW, you can accomplish that without purchasing any of the PNW products.

Some of the other ecologies already use the long grass and tint it yellow. It may or may not be as prevalent in the scene as the PNW grass. One of the reasons the PNW promo grass looks so bright yellow is the angle of the light, I think.

You can also modify the color of the grass (or any UltraScenery object) in the Surfaces pane. So if you have green grass and want it yellow instead, change the Surfaces settings.

Some other ecologies that use the long grass are Grassland ecologies from the base UltraScenery product, some of the Harpwood ecologies and some of the Oaks ecologies.

If you are adventuresome, you can create your own ecology with plants of your choosing. I have detailed instructions in my experiments thread. When I first did it, I made a very poor choice of props to use and learned some lessons from that. If you choose props carefully, it is not a hard task.

tsroemi

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

Yes, PNW is Pacific Northwest. The PNW ecologies require the plants from the other two packages listed in the required products list:

• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Trees and Shrubs
• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Understorey

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

If you just want tall yellow grass in a different ecology, other than PNW, you can accomplish that without purchasing any of the PNW products.

Some of the other ecologies already use the long grass and tint it yellow. It may or may not be as prevalent in the scene as the PNW grass. One of the reasons the PNW promo grass looks so bright yellow is the angle of the light, I think.

You can also modify the color of the grass (or any UltraScenery object) in the Surfaces pane. So if you have green grass and want it yellow instead, change the Surfaces settings.

Some other ecologies that use the long grass are Grassland ecologies from the base UltraScenery product, some of the Harpwood ecologies and some of the Oaks ecologies.

If you are adventuresome, you can create your own ecology with plants of your choosing. I have detailed instructions in my experiments thread. When I first did it, I made a very poor choice of props to use and learned some lessons from that. If you choose props carefully, it is not a hard task.

Again, thank you lots, that was really helpful! 
Edit: Found the yellow grass in the Oaks ecology which I also own, great! Will use it from there and wait for the PNW bundle to go on sale.

barbult

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

Yes, PNW is Pacific Northwest. The PNW ecologies require the plants from the other two packages listed in the required products list:

• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Trees and Shrubs
• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Understorey

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

If you just want tall yellow grass in a different ecology, other than PNW, you can accomplish that without purchasing any of the PNW products.

Some of the other ecologies already use the long grass and tint it yellow. It may or may not be as prevalent in the scene as the PNW grass. One of the reasons the PNW promo grass looks so bright yellow is the angle of the light, I think.

You can also modify the color of the grass (or any UltraScenery object) in the Surfaces pane. So if you have green grass and want it yellow instead, change the Surfaces settings.

Some other ecologies that use the long grass are Grassland ecologies from the base UltraScenery product, some of the Harpwood ecologies and some of the Oaks ecologies.

If you are adventuresome, you can create your own ecology with plants of your choosing. I have detailed instructions in my experiments thread. When I first did it, I made a very poor choice of props to use and learned some lessons from that. If you choose props carefully, it is not a hard task.

Again, thank you lots, that was really helpful! 
Edit: Found the yellow grass in the Oaks ecology which I also own, great! Will use it from there and wait for the PNW bundle to go on sale.

Good plan! The PNW bundle is very nice. Watch for a good sale.

ecks201

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra?

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

It just carries on and does what it can with what it has available.
e.g. The river below is snaking though a dense pine forest; or at least it will the next time the trees pack gets a decent discount.

sandmanmax

barbult said:

DoctorJellybean said:

Great renders as usual!

Do you have any more Camera Presets for the newer add-ons?

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the latest renders!

I haven't made any new camera sets. Maybe I should. They can be very handy. I actually wasn't aware that anyone else really cared much about them or used them. Your question kind of surprised me.

Fixed location cameras are easy over a water feature, because water is always at height 0. Land height varies tremendously some times, based on the terrain settings (max altitude, noise, and height map), so the cameras could easily get buried below ground. Some Features control the ground so much (as Doc Acme discovered with some of the Stones Features), that even the land is at a constant height.

Barbult, I use your camera presets all the time.  I'd love to have some more.

sandmanmax

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

Yes, PNW is Pacific Northwest. The PNW ecologies require the plants from the other two packages listed in the required products list:

• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Trees and Shrubs
• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Understorey

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

If you just want tall yellow grass in a different ecology, other than PNW, you can accomplish that without purchasing any of the PNW products.

Some of the other ecologies already use the long grass and tint it yellow. It may or may not be as prevalent in the scene as the PNW grass. One of the reasons the PNW promo grass looks so bright yellow is the angle of the light, I think.

You can also modify the color of the grass (or any UltraScenery object) in the Surfaces pane. So if you have green grass and want it yellow instead, change the Surfaces settings.

Some other ecologies that use the long grass are Grassland ecologies from the base UltraScenery product, some of the Harpwood ecologies and some of the Oaks ecologies.

If you are adventuresome, you can create your own ecology with plants of your choosing. I have detailed instructions in my experiments thread. When I first did it, I made a very poor choice of props to use and learned some lessons from that. If you choose props carefully, it is not a hard task.

It's pretty easy to change the colors of objects on the fly.  You need to find the actual objects though, not the proxies or instances.  Then select the matching surfaces and change the Diffuse Color and Transluscency color.  See screenshots.

SnowSultan

Skinklizzard: Thanks, I am using two images made from a larger single one that I painted myself, so I don't think there should be any discrepencies with the min and max values. Will do more testing soon.

Ecks: I can't even see the split in your example, nice work. Mine is really obvious, although it's where a peak is divided over the two halves by design for testing. 

skinklizzard

SnowSultan if your image has both pure white and pure black (or 50% if thats the lowest you use) on both sides then yea it won't matter,
but if one side of your image has a valley and the mountain, and the other side only has plains and the mountain or even a slightly shallower valley it'll make a difference

Make sure you set the internal noise map to a flat colour too if you haven't already, as that seems to apply on top of the height map you load in.

Doc Acme

Quite a bit related to this topic, I'm hoping someone can point me to more info on the surfacing proceedure used specifically for the Terrain textures.  I don't even know what it's called to search.

For example in DAZ, the USC Terrain object has a default named surface, & under that are 6 other layers in this case.  They have a texture and normal usually and occasionally a detail mask, but I can't see how the layers are isolated.   I see no overall masks to separate things, but the layers are numbered and named.

But when a USC scene is exported, for the actual Terrain mesh, only the default surface (and maps) get converted & exported no matter whether as an OBJ or via FBX. My goal is to somehow translate this to a Nodes based system.

Thanks.

barbult

Doc Acme said:

Quite a bit related to this topic, I'm hoping someone can point me to more info on the surfacing proceedure used specifically for the Terrain textures.  I don't even know what it's called to search.

For example in DAZ, the USC Terrain object has a default named surface, & under that are 6 other layers in this case.  They have a texture and normal usually and occasionally a detail mask, but I can't see how the layers are isolated.   I see no overall masks to separate things, but the layers are numbered and named.

But when a USC scene is exported, for the actual Terrain mesh, only the default surface (and maps) get converted & exported no matter whether as an OBJ or via FBX. My goal is to somehow translate this to a Nodes based system.

Thanks.

It is a custom shader. If it was built with Shader Mixer, I suppose you could open it in that and study how the nodes are combined. I can't help with that; I've never done it.

Doc Acme

Well, that's a lead anyway.  I appreciate it.

Extremely O.T., but wanted to show you something:

barbult, meet Barlow:

 

barbult

She looks like a blue and yellow. We have those at our local zoo.

tsroemi

ecks201 said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra?

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

It just carries on and does what it can with what it has available.
e.g. The river below is snaking though a dense pine forest; or at least it will the next time the trees pack gets a decent discount.

That's good to know, thanks! So I don't have to be too scare of crashing the whole thing ... 

tsroemi

sandmanmax said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

barbult said:

tsroemi said:

Hi US gurus, could someone perhaps tell me which expansion the yellowish dry grass in this promo is from - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest? I'm always getting so confused by what's included where. Is it part of the basic Northwest ecology? Or from another set entirely? Because it doesn't seem to be listed in either the Northwest trees nor the understorey.

Thanks!

Tina

The yellow long grass is USC Grass Patch 06 and USC Grass Patch 07 from the original UltraScenery - Realistic Landscape System product. PNW ecology 4 applies yellow material settings to that grass.

Right, thanks! I have the base product, and PNW is Pacific Northwest I suppose, right? So to get the yellow grass, I could buy just the PNW ecology - https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--pacific-northwest - if I understand you correctly. But would it work at all without the proper trees and undergrowth to go along with it? Generally, what happens if you have just the ecology of a certain expansion but not the plants that are extra? 

Your US renders are lovely, by the way! I often come here just to look at them for a few minutes.

Yes, PNW is Pacific Northwest. The PNW ecologies require the plants from the other two packages listed in the required products list:

• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Trees and Shrubs
• Pacific Northwest Botanica - Understorey

I don't know what happens if you don't have the required products installed. It might give an error and continue, or it might crash, or it might not do anything at all. At best, you would get a pretty bare scene.

If you just want tall yellow grass in a different ecology, other than PNW, you can accomplish that without purchasing any of the PNW products.

Some of the other ecologies already use the long grass and tint it yellow. It may or may not be as prevalent in the scene as the PNW grass. One of the reasons the PNW promo grass looks so bright yellow is the angle of the light, I think.

You can also modify the color of the grass (or any UltraScenery object) in the Surfaces pane. So if you have green grass and want it yellow instead, change the Surfaces settings.

Some other ecologies that use the long grass are Grassland ecologies from the base UltraScenery product, some of the Harpwood ecologies and some of the Oaks ecologies.

If you are adventuresome, you can create your own ecology with plants of your choosing. I have detailed instructions in my experiments thread. When I first did it, I made a very poor choice of props to use and learned some lessons from that. If you choose props carefully, it is not a hard task.

It's pretty easy to change the colors of objects on the fly.  You need to find the actual objects though, not the proxies or instances.  Then select the matching surfaces and change the Diffuse Color and Transluscency color.  See screenshots.

Thanks, I kinda thought things would look weird if I just changed the color, but they're just using shaders not texture maps, right? So that makes a lot of sense. I will definitely give this a try. - The pink grass looked suprisingly real, like a flowery grass or something. Neat!

Doc Acme

barbult said:

She looks like a blue and yellow. We have those at our local zoo.

Ya, a friend's.  Raised from a chick, early 20's now.  Only found out gender a few years back.

 

DoctorJellybean

It has been a while since I played with US. I wanted to do a night time scene, which is a bit tricky as one can't see much in the dark.

Doc Acme

I think you muddled along quite nicely.  Night scenes are largely about using edges, silohettes & color temp differences for separation.  Working in a nice bg helps a lot too.

mcorr

Doc Acme said:

markusmatern said:

Doc Acme said:

Well,... Armed with that info & a lot of I-really-don't-know-what-the-????-I'm-doing, I decided to try a bit of testing.  I exported the terrain (and some of the noninstanced stones came along) out as OBJ.  I did some simple massaging of a spot I'd already marked earlier to level it out some for the structure.  I had to remember to NOT just save but to Export back out as an OBJ.

Anyway, after a few surface copy & pastings, & name and parent swapping, I managed to fool USC it seems & it cheerfully reran the script & used my new terraformed geometry.

As Mr Sulu might say: "Ooooo!" Opens some new posibilties.

 

Really like the Bates house in your scernery.

It was a very pleasant find from another thread.  Free model that frankly rivals much that's being sold. It's in a DUF format so only need to drop into your My DAZ 3D Library folder. Very nicely laid out under Props.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao1mDuQEVoFBgqNogOE66-qCFBpAtg?e=3HDzn1

It would be great to know the exact procedure you used to fool USC into accepting your new obj terrainand remapping the vegetation props unto it. Could you please share that with us?