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Carrara trees and ocean primitive redistributable?

WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,819
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

ok, long way off yet

I can barely get a figure animated in Unreal Game engine UDK
(oddly something I rigged myself albeit badly made actually works better than a Daz figure so that area no issue!)
so this is really a hypothetical question.


but


say I created a terrain using a combination of my own textures ie photographs, paint/gimp/whatever and proceedurals that exported as a mesh created using the terrain editor, that probably would fairly safely be redistibutable as a game asset.
However, add a few Carrara trees?
getting rather questionable as I did not create the mesh even if I made my own vertex leaves, esp if I used the wind and rustle animation on it!
Likewise the ocean primitive.
I can actually export both trees and ocean with morph animation into various apps including Daz studio and recently iClone, no doubt Unreal and maybe Unity too, but if I ever did get the skills to create a game, could one populate it with Carrara trees?
at least one generated by using the editor and your own modelled/textured trunks and leaves , not a browser object?
it is not possible to turn a mesh into a Carrara tree so the generator needed to use the wind and rustle though I have had some luck applying bend modifiers to replicated selfmade meshes with limits created as real instances which would prob be the legally safest alernative.

Comments

  • araneldonaraneldon Posts: 712
    edited December 1969

    DAZ didn't make the tree mesh, they made a procedure that created the tree mesh. I don't think there's anything stopping you from sharing Carrara trees unless it's specifically prohibited by the Carrara EULA.

    But IANAL.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    araneldon said:
    DAZ didn't make the tree mesh, they made a procedure that created the tree mesh. I don't think there's anything stopping you from sharing Carrara trees unless it's specifically prohibited by the Carrara EULA.

    But IANAL.

    NO. YOU HELPFUL. NOT ANAL. ;-) Acronyms are getting out of hand IMHO. :lol:

    Seriously though, I would think (and this is just my opinion) if you made your own mesh for the leaves, then it would be okay to distribute outside of Carrara as the mesh for the trunk is basically a formula you tweak by adjusting parameters.


    The same with the terrain. You're building it with either height maps or mixing and matching different functions to create a customized terrain. You couldn't redistribute the tools to make it, such as Carrara, but the final product is yours.


    If you were keeping the tree in Carrara and you used Carrara leaf presets on customized trees and distributed them, then I would also think that would be okay, because you would need Carrara to use them, and if Carrara didn't have the leaf then Carrara would ask to substitute it with another.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,819
    edited December 1969

    as I said, just a hypothetical for me so far
    but others using Carrara already to create game maps might wish to know.
    I myself WOULD approach Daz for permission if it ever got to the point I could create a game
    and that is indeed a VERY long way off.
    thx for imput
    was just putting it out there so I know whether I should be looking for ways to create trees without the tree editor
    I am still at the learning to build and animate models stage not the game coding stage!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    And I was hypothetically answering your hypothetical question- hypothetically speaking. ;-)

  • wetcircuitwetcircuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Trees? Yes definitely. There was a technique that exports the full geometry, as I recall it is not very polygon effecient but maybe able to retopo in 3Dcoat...? Hmmm

    Terrain and Ocean... I'm not sure how you would export these, since they are really just displacement... Unity does not have internal terrain? Maybe better to export the image map that displaces the terrain? Is that possible?

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    HI Wendy :)

    just some thoughts....

    in the game world,, most things are low polygon, ..especially when compared to Daz / Poser figures.

    That may be the reason that your own carrara model animates better in that engine.

    You could try using the LOD V4 and M4 figures which carrara can also use for reduced "Level of Detail" which depends on the camera distance from the figure, to either use a Low detail mesh for distance stuff, or the full detail mesh for close up stuff.

    As for the tree's,. I don't see a real issue there,. apart from the one above (polycount) as the tree (and it's leaves) will be a big file when you export it as an OBJ.

    as it's an OBJ,. you could take that model (which you created) into a modeller and edit it.

    the same applies to terrains and oceans , but you obviously loose the real ability to have a low-res item which renders at higher quality, and can be animated,.

    you may be better to create a vertex grid,. and then shape it to make a terrain or ocean,. and keep it low polygon, then use Normal maps in the game engine to give you the high-res details.

    Also,.. If you create a (billboard) ..a set of planes,. in a (plus) + or X shape,. then render out an image of a Tree (from the front),. (with alpha background)
    Then you can map that tree image to both planes,. ..and when you render it,. it looks like a full 3D tree. from almost any angle

    you can export that as an OBJ,. and those should be easier to load and arrange in your game engine.

    Andy :)

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,819
    edited December 1969

    yes transmapped planes for trees on a plane are prob the way to go
    I thinking more if one wanted a few close trees to star in the game, as the terrain,
    ie crappy birds!
    (the birds try to crap on passerbys below!)
    not a game plan btw, just being silly, I have no plans
    not that far
    just at moment working out how to build models etc for animation but it might evolve further one day.
    it just occurred to me Carrara trees ARE Daz mesh in a manner of speaking, not really primitives.
    a terrain on the other hand is really just a displacement map on a plane converted to polygons using the heightmap editor to generate it.

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    ]it just occurred to me Carrara trees ARE Daz mesh in a manner of speaking, not really primitives.
    a terrain on the other hand is really just a displacement map on a plane converted to polygons using the heightmap editor to generate it.

    The tree's aren't meshes until you make them a mesh by exporting,. and you could export a very basic "branches only" tree, to get the base model,. then use very low poly leaves and place them on the branches,. a bit laborious, but it would be Your tree.

    Tree's are complex replicators,. with a method of generating the replicated parts, based on the values the user sets, (apart from the Default example tree) which is already there for you, as a starting point.

    but you can scrap that and start with a Trunk and no branches,.

    I still think that using a vertex grid would be a better "starting point" than a terrain, converted to vertex, but I suppose it depends on the resolution,. and it's much easier to add a few generators and filters to a terrain, than making something customised, but customised gives you control over what features are where.

    Crappy birds sounds like a fun game for all the family

    :)

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    [quote author="3DAGE" date="1368687661"
    Crappy birds sounds like a fun game for all the family

    :)


    I hear it's the sequel to Angry Birds. They all have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but that was too long for the splash screen, so they changed it to Crappy Birds. ;-P

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