UltraSceneryXT - large terrain/landscape generator

jag11

Peter Wade said:

Created my first non-test scene, I'm enjoying this. I added a small amout of 4.20's Matte Fog to add a sense of distance. I had to switch off the limits on Matte Fog visibility and turn it up to 100,000 metres.

On the technical side, it's behaving differently today. The only changes I've made are to disable the Octane plugin (it kept telling me it was finishing doing stuff even though I wasn't using it) and not running Chrome at the same time to try and save memory. It isn't crashing on render which is great. Also, it isn't creating a group of instances for the biome parented to the terrain. In fact I can't find the biome instances anywhere in the scene tab which is really confusing me. Anyway, technical matters are not important, I made a picture that I'm happy with.

 

Instances are created at render time and disposed when render finishes, very clever and efficient I must say. That's the reason preview render is empty.

Peter Wade

jag11 said:

Peter Wade said:

Created my first non-test scene, I'm enjoying this. I added a small amout of 4.20's Matte Fog to add a sense of distance. I had to switch off the limits on Matte Fog visibility and turn it up to 100,000 metres.

On the technical side, it's behaving differently today. The only changes I've made are to disable the Octane plugin (it kept telling me it was finishing doing stuff even though I wasn't using it) and not running Chrome at the same time to try and save memory. It isn't crashing on render which is great. Also, it isn't creating a group of instances for the biome parented to the terrain. In fact I can't find the biome instances anywhere in the scene tab which is really confusing me. Anyway, technical matters are not important, I made a picture that I'm happy with.

 

Instances are created at render time and disposed when render finishes, very clever and efficient I must say. That's the reason preview render is empty.

That explains it. When the render engine was crashing it must have stopped the plugin from removing the instances so I had the group of them still there.

jag11

memcneil70 said:

HowieFarkes said:

I don't have an M1 Mac so can't test that. It was developed on an iMac OSX Catalina using DS versions 4.8, 4.15, 4.16 and 4.20 - the Windows version was also developed and tested on Windows 10 with DS versions 4.12, 4.14, 4.16 and 4.20 - I think that was a pretty nice spread of versions to see if anything came up - they all worked the same.

If anyone else using an M1 Mac has anything to say I'd be interested to hear their experience.

 

Howie, 

I have an M1 MacBookPro and I need to point out that just before the release of your product, macOS Monterey updated to v.12.3 which on the internet is reporting a number of problems with 3rd party software. 

I downloaded USXT through DIM and when I tried to open it, Daz Studio 4.20.0.2 crashed.  I tried the Beta, 4.20.0.8 and it just didn't open. I closed down my computer, reopened it, tried again, this time saving the crash report. Today, I found someone's note that they had a similar problem on page 7 of this thread and I uninstalled both USXT files, closed DIM and rebooted the computer. I was successful in opening Daz Studio. I made a copy of my Help Log from the last time I was on the program to this opening. I also have opened a Help Ticket Request #405385 and asked if they would send you this information, but I will also attach it here for you. Also, all files for UltraScenery are downloaded by DIM and I never mess with the file structure.

I have two other computers Win 10 with it on, so I am able to wait while you figure this out.

Mary

I did a quick hover through the log file and noticed two things

1. Iray GeoLocator plugin is not working, it complains that can't find a property that belongs to an Environment options node property "SSLongitude".
2. "Basic Portrait Default" throws an error, might be a Daz Connect auth problem, try reinstall through DAZ Install Manager.
3. To discard Daz Connect problems, do the same for UltrasceneryXT, uninstall an reinstall through DAZ Install Manager.

 

memcneil70

I will try, but Daz Connect is offline. I hate it. It has caused both of my Win 10 computers major problems and years of extra work and no fun for me. I had seen that Iray GeoLocator line before, but since Iray doesn't work on Mac's, not sure what affect it can have.

Getting rid of the scene file is easy.

Granville

I am just now thinking of all the uses for this product. Here I used it to create a lush Irish Landscape.

 

alexhcowley

memcneil70 said:

I will try, but Daz Connect is offline. I hate it. It has caused both of my Win 10 computers major problems and years of extra work and no fun for me. I had seen that Iray GeoLocator line before, but since Iray doesn't work on Mac's, not sure what affect it can have.

Getting rid of the scene file is easy.

Iray doesn't work on Macs?  As far as I am aware it will run on the Intel Macs but, since Apple fell out with Nvidia, it will take hours to render.

Cheers,

Alex.  

memcneil70

alexhcowley said:

memcneil70 said:

I will try, but Daz Connect is offline. I hate it. It has caused both of my Win 10 computers major problems and years of extra work and no fun for me. I had seen that Iray GeoLocator line before, but since Iray doesn't work on Mac's, not sure what affect it can have.

Getting rid of the scene file is easy.

Iray doesn't work on Macs?  As far as I am aware it will run on the Intel Macs but, since Apple fell out with Nvidia, it will take hours to render.

Cheers,

Alex.  

Well it does, on CPU, right?

I checked my Geolocator plug-in and it showed green on the chart. But I deleted it in DIM and deleted the file, then redownloaded it and reinstalled it and updated the metadata. I then reopened D|S 4.20.0.2 and looked at the log file. And the error remains. I just opened up one of my Win 10 computers and that line appears with that error on line 227 as well. And to my knowledge, it has not given me grief on previous renders. 

I will freely admit I am hopeless at reading the error log, not only for its small size but also for its language. But, I also notices a series of errors on something given as '.../pluginsource/DzIrayRender... and not seeing a path ... due to error -2' (I really need to open the forum on the computer I have the issue on!)

I want to note that the installment of USXT does not cause D|S to not load on the Win 10 computers, and they have these same errors.

To be honest, the log so often shows so many errors due to morphs/character/eyelashes... that I tend to ignore the whole thing as a waste of my time, since it will refer to something I don't have installed and is not a required product. And I have tried to track down duplicate IDs and stuff.

I really appreciate any help I can get. This is so far above my pay grade I am at a dead loss.

Mary

Harald Schuster

OK, I'm stupid. How do you get this to work?
There seems to be no script in the package and every preset throws an error message:
2022-03-22 20:36:05.609 [INFO] :: Determining missing assets...
2022-03-22 20:36:05.617 [WARNING] :: Invalid node selection for "preset_properties" type.
2022-03-22 20:36:05.617 [INFO] :: Error loading asset: D:/PoserContent/Daz 3D/Studio/My Library/Applications/Data/DAZ 3D/My DAZ 3D Library/environments/landscapes/ultrasceneryxt/presets/usx preset 01 vernon.duf

When I put the USX Camera View object in the scene, I can select it and choose a preset but nothing happens. So ... unlike USC : No script, no documentation ... what am I missing?

Totte

Harald Schuster said:

OK, I'm stupid. How do you get this to work?
There seems to be no script in the package and every preset throws an error message:
2022-03-22 20:36:05.609 [INFO] :: Determining missing assets...
2022-03-22 20:36:05.617 [WARNING] :: Invalid node selection for "preset_properties" type.
2022-03-22 20:36:05.617 [INFO] :: Error loading asset: D:/PoserContent/Daz 3D/Studio/My Library/Applications/Data/DAZ 3D/My DAZ 3D Library/environments/landscapes/ultrasceneryxt/presets/usx preset 01 vernon.duf

When I put the USX Camera View object in the scene, I can select it and choose a preset but nothing happens. So ... unlike USC : No script, no documentation ... what am I missing?

It's a panel, rightclick between tab panels and add USXT panel 

Harald Schuster

Totte said:

It's a panel, rightclick between tab panels and add USXT panel 

Ah, thanks - I also noticed that after restart 2 or 3 there is a "Create ->  New UltraSceneryXT" option at the very bottom now

alexhcowley

Harald Schuster said:

Totte said:

It's a panel, rightclick between tab panels and add USXT panel 

Ah, thanks - I also noticed that after restart 2 or 3 there is a "Create ->  New UltraSceneryXT" option at the very bottom now

 

There's also a + symbol in the top left hand corner of the main Ultrascenery XTpanel which does the same thing.

Cheers,

Alex. 

barbult

Peter Wade said:

Created my first non-test scene, I'm enjoying this. I added a small amout of 4.20's Matte Fog to add a sense of distance. I had to switch off the limits on Matte Fog visibility and turn it up to 100,000 metres.

On the technical side, it's behaving differently today. The only changes I've made are to disable the Octane plugin (it kept telling me it was finishing doing stuff even though I wasn't using it) and not running Chrome at the same time to try and save memory. It isn't crashing on render which is great. Also, it isn't creating a group of instances for the biome parented to the terrain. In fact I can't find the biome instances anywhere in the scene tab which is really confusing me. Anyway, technical matters are not important, I made a picture that I'm happy with.

 

The  biome and water node are hidden by default. If you need to access them in the Scene pane for some reason, you can Show Hidden Nodes.

 

HowieFarkes

GreyFaun said:

I'm starting to play with UltraSceneryXT, and it's everything I hoped for, and much more ! It worked fine from the start for me (thanks for the user manual). For everyone experincing difficulties, keep trying, it's worth it.

Of course, now I want more, and since it's spring today, especially blooming trees ! But for now, maybe just a tip : is there a way to have a terrain with grass everywhere and no rocks showing ? The rocks are fine, mind you, but I'm trying to capture the feel of a more luxuriant mountain grass.

You can adjust the slope constraint on the grass in the Surfaces tab. It will be called "Grass Slope" and is a value between 0 and 1. 1 will mean full coverage, 0 will mean none, 0.5 will mean grass can grow on slopes up to 45deg etc. There's also another property called "Grass Bedrock Poke-through" which similarly adjusts how much the rocky ridges show up through the grass.

AnEye4Art

Another texture map export to Daz from Worldcreator.

Connatic

It can work on it's own to generate vast vistas or alongside UltraScenery for the extra depth of high detail foreground and extensive background.

What is the procedure for using a scene made with USC with a scene made with USXT ? 

GreyFaun

Thank you very much Howie !

And kudos for your work : once again, you have indeed opened new horizons !

HowieFarkes said:

GreyFaun said:

I'm starting to play with UltraSceneryXT, and it's everything I hoped for, and much more ! It worked fine from the start for me (thanks for the user manual). For everyone experincing difficulties, keep trying, it's worth it.

Of course, now I want more, and since it's spring today, especially blooming trees ! But for now, maybe just a tip : is there a way to have a terrain with grass everywhere and no rocks showing ? The rocks are fine, mind you, but I'm trying to capture the feel of a more luxuriant mountain grass.

You can adjust the slope constraint on the grass in the Surfaces tab. It will be called "Grass Slope" and is a value between 0 and 1. 1 will mean full coverage, 0 will mean none, 0.5 will mean grass can grow on slopes up to 45deg etc. There's also another property called "Grass Bedrock Poke-through" which similarly adjusts how much the rocky ridges show up through the grass.

paulawp (marahzen)

Connatic said:

It can work on it's own to generate vast vistas or alongside UltraScenery for the extra depth of high detail foreground and extensive background.

What is the procedure for using a scene made with USC with a scene made with USXT ? 

I defer to the real pros on this thread, but in my modest example back on page 10, I simply created the XT object, then slapped a new USC object on top of it and proceeded from there. To show the incredible scale of XT, this screen shot shows the USC object - the small greenish square, circled with red - at center on an XT object.

richardandtracy

Same here. At default scale, the USXT terrain is 1000m square, the US terrain is 64m square.

Regards,

Richard

Mattymanx

AnEye4Art said:

Another texture map export to Daz from Worldcreator.

 

Thats really cool!

bohemian3

Here is what I'm doing working with the product.... I'm no expert by any means, either.  

• Create the Ultra Scene first 
• The coast features work nicely if your combining near - far elements
• Position the camera 
• Rebuild if you trim to camera.  Also - depending on how close you want the camera, I hide large assets and manually place "hero" trees
• Hide the water if you plan on using USXT water
• Scale the camera in the viewport to 5000 (It only affects the viewport) as you start working with lare objects it helps to see where the camera is as you start working with the USXT object
• Move , rotate the USXT object in the top auxiliary window set to top view to find the vista you want
• Make sure the US object is on a patch of water
• Also, if I have a model, I render the model with no background at 200% the size with studio lighting to manipulate color / brightness in post - then reduce it back to 50% and integrate it into the image.  Sounds strange, but you get more detail that way, I've personally found.
• Render

I'm having a lot of fun with it !

shadem980

Enjoying this.

paulawp (marahzen)

Trying one without water to stitch XT + USC together ... 

AnEye4Art

Using world creator with USXT has been great so far but here are a few things that I've noticed:

1. Using a normal map really helps with extra detail in the terrain v.s just using a heightmap alone.

2. I used 16 bit PNGs for height, normal and color maps for best quality.

3. Some banding and noticible artifaxing occured on the mesh but a smoothing of about 2 helped without washing out the details.

4. World creator can export terrain data at 1/8 precision while USXT mesh is maxed out at 1024 resolution so detail is limited but not too bad.

5. Finally, I hope to see USXT with a higher resolution option to choose from.

HowieFarkes

AnEye4Art said:

Using world creator with USXT has been great so far but here are a few things that I've noticed:

1. Using a normal map really helps with extra detail in the terrain v.s just using a heightmap alone.

2. I used 16 bit PNGs for height, normal and color maps for best quality.

3. Some banding and noticible artifaxing occured on the mesh but a smoothing of about 2 helped without washing out the details.

4. World creator can export terrain data at 1/8 precision while USXT mesh is maxed out at 1024 resolution so detail is limited but not too bad.

5. Finally, I hope to see USXT with a higher resolution option to choose from.

Yeah the lack of 16bit images is a limitation of the version of QT framework that Studio currently uses - when DS5 is eventually released I should be able to do something about that.

There might be a case for just developing a WorldCreator importer plugin or something - I tried higher poly count terrains in UltraScenryXT but the actual quality improvement did not warrant the extra time processing the terrains. To go to 2048 resolution meant everything took 4 times longer but didn't really look any better. However for importing WC terrains it may be reasonable as all the calculations are already done. So something I'll think about (plus I'd actually need to purchase WC etc first).

KomodoVR

HowieFarkes said:

AnEye4Art said:

Using world creator with USXT has been great so far but here are a few things that I've noticed:

1. Using a normal map really helps with extra detail in the terrain v.s just using a heightmap alone.

2. I used 16 bit PNGs for height, normal and color maps for best quality.

3. Some banding and noticible artifaxing occured on the mesh but a smoothing of about 2 helped without washing out the details.

4. World creator can export terrain data at 1/8 precision while USXT mesh is maxed out at 1024 resolution so detail is limited but not too bad.

5. Finally, I hope to see USXT with a higher resolution option to choose from.

Yeah the lack of 16bit images is a limitation of the version of QT framework that Studio currently uses - when DS5 is eventually released I should be able to do something about that.

There might be a case for just developing a WorldCreator importer plugin or something - I tried higher poly count terrains in UltraScenryXT but the actual quality improvement did not warrant the extra time processing the terrains. To go to 2048 resolution meant everything took 4 times longer but didn't really look any better. However for importing WC terrains it may be reasonable as all the calculations are already done. So something I'll think about (plus I'd actually need to purchase WC etc first).

I also have World Creator 2022 (WC) and it would be tremendous if you could somehow leverage what WC can do with UltraSceneryXT. Whatever plugin, converter, importer, extension, etc. that you developed (whether for terrains, textures, biomes etc.) that brought the power of WC into Daz Studio via UltraSceneryXT would be instabuys.

To be able to design and texture terrains in WC, and then share the result of that with people who only have UltraSceneryXT would be a dream come true! Please make this happen!

AnEye4Art

pm3d said:

HowieFarkes said:

AnEye4Art said:

Using world creator with USXT has been great so far but here are a few things that I've noticed:

1. Using a normal map really helps with extra detail in the terrain v.s just using a heightmap alone.

2. I used 16 bit PNGs for height, normal and color maps for best quality.

3. Some banding and noticible artifaxing occured on the mesh but a smoothing of about 2 helped without washing out the details.

4. World creator can export terrain data at 1/8 precision while USXT mesh is maxed out at 1024 resolution so detail is limited but not too bad.

5. Finally, I hope to see USXT with a higher resolution option to choose from.

Yeah the lack of 16bit images is a limitation of the version of QT framework that Studio currently uses - when DS5 is eventually released I should be able to do something about that.

There might be a case for just developing a WorldCreator importer plugin or something - I tried higher poly count terrains in UltraScenryXT but the actual quality improvement did not warrant the extra time processing the terrains. To go to 2048 resolution meant everything took 4 times longer but didn't really look any better. However for importing WC terrains it may be reasonable as all the calculations are already done. So something I'll think about (plus I'd actually need to purchase WC etc first).

I also have World Creator 2022 (WC) and it would be tremendous if you could somehow leverage what WC can do with UltraSceneryXT. Whatever plugin, converter, importer, extension, etc. that you developed (whether for terrains, textures, biomes etc.) that brought the power of WC into Daz Studio via UltraSceneryXT would be instabuys.

To be able to design and texture terrains in WC, and then share the result of that with people who only have UltraSceneryXT would be a dream come true! Please make this happen!

I agree very much with PM3D and I will be happy to share with everyone as well. Just a side note: USXT handled everything I threw at it like a boss without any problems at all. So I give USXT a 99.99% rating. The 1024 resolution limit in USXT is NOT a big deal since I will not be doing much, if any, terrain closeups. I am a VERY HAPPY purchaser of USXT. Also, I am an active member on discord for world creator and I will share how well USXT and WC works together. Keep up the good work, Howie.

Connatic

Thanks for all the great replies to my question!

sandmanmax

richardandtracy said:

Same here. At default scale, the USXT terrain is 1000m square, the US terrain is 64m square.

Regards,

Richardhhhnh

Ooooh! I see castles in my future.  And dragons!!  Both of which dwarfed US....

Praxis

Thank you HowieFarkes for yet another amazingly powerful and versatile product!

 

I tried to get a Tropical Island look:

This started with USX Preset 03 Tassili with Material USX Terrain 05, Biome 05 Mixed Forest 02, and USX Water 00.

I changed the Terrain's Min Altitude (m) to -10 to get a shallower slope into the water, to simulate a beach.

Played with the Bedrock colors in the Terrain's Surface settings.

Then I edited a copy of the Biome's .json file to replace the Fir and Oak trees with 4 different Palms/Plants from The Resort Pool.

Added the yacht, and on the beach a G8F and a G8M both with hair and beachwear, and an Inflatable Boat.

That didn't stress my PC at all:  It used 530MB of Geometry memory and 1.2GB of Texture memory, and rendered in 15 minutes on a RTX 2070 8GB card - i.e. there appears to be plenty of headroom for more complicated scenes.  This opens up huge possibilities, and I'm going to have a lot of fun with it.  Looking forward to all the Add-Ons to come...

 

Praxis

...and it holds up well when you zoom in a bit: