UltraScenery [Commercial]
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I was finally able to play with UltraScenery. I think I made a mistake by having something specific in mind, and then trying to make the terrain fit that idea. I was trying the "one stone, two birds" approach, creating an entry for the HW3D contest while learning how to use and modify UltraScenery. When I "purchased" the gazebo, I also picked up the landing and stairs addon, and I needed a terrain that would accommodate the different heights.
My first attempt was a long shot, with unicorns playing in the foreground and the gazebo on a hill in the background, and a river running through in between. I didn't really like that scene, though, so I zoomed in to just the gazebo and added a bunch of flowers and things. The problem at that point was too much sky behind the hill. The "ground" of the HDRI was annoyingly present. I made a number of adjustments to the HDRI, including making it finite and smaller.
In the end, I made an instance of the US terrain and moved that around behind the main hill. It hid the HDRI ground nicely, and tied in perfectly with the foreground. Finally, I added an UltraTree to the instanced terrain.
Here's the resulting image, my first entry to the HW3D contest:
Summer Afternoon
My next UltraScenery render is going to start with creating an environment I like, and let the scene evolve from the there. I expect I'll be much happier with the process and the results.
An update to UltraScenery 1.0.2 is available now. Mostly bug fixes plus the water now looks like intended in Studio 4.12 and generating the instances should take considerably less time.
Thanks! I've installed it.
I had just gotten something and installed via DIM then saw your message. Went back & there was the update.
I was going to try to get a timing on loading in a default everything except for name & seed using a River 2 and Landscape 2. Two minutes in I got a phone call I was waiting for & when that ended 20 mins later, the scene was already loaded. I don't know exactly but under a 1/2 hour. V01 would have been closer to 50 mins. So yes, a very noticeable speed increase.
@howiefarkes, any intent to make a snow environment system?
Ther are no snow environments on Daz even approaching good quality.
I downloaded the update last night and just WOW! I generated a new stream landscape with trees and everything in just 9 minutes! It used to take about three times that long and it seemed to render much faster too. NICE UPDATE.
Thank you
Before I installed it, I test-loaded a fairly full scene in the old version (default terrain map, River 2 feature, Woodland 4 ecosystem) - took 16 min 44 sec on my system.
I installed the new version, loaded the same combination - took 9 min 10 sec. That's a pretty good improvement.
I really appreciate the faster scene building. Thank you!
I'm disappointed, though, that is still doesn't remember that I unchecked all items in the Build tab when I select the UltraScene and rebuild it. It still rechecks all of the items even though I had previously unchecked all of them.
Before I installed the update, I created a simple scene without a feature using Woodland 2. All settings were default except the seeds for the terrain and the ecology. It took a little over 13 minutes from the time I hit the build button until the finished scene was complete and visible in the viewport. After the update, the same UltraScene took a little over 6 minutes. Less than half the time! (This was using the 4.12.1.76 beta.)
Thank you.
That certainly will be addressed but was beyond the scope of this little update.
Thanks, for remembering about it. I'll look forward to a later update, then.
I have another tip:
In the Terrain tab, turn Contrast all the way up to 100%. The thumbnail will now be totally black and white, giving you a a very clear idea of where the highs and lows will go. Now tweak settings for the Seed, Octave, Zoom, etc. Once you're happy with the distribution of black vs white in the thumbnail, move the Contrast back down to a setting you like.
I do a fair amount of photography with a drone, so this shot seems perfectly familiar to me. The emphasis here is the amazing levels and layers of detail in the stream bed from sunken logs to variable depth and not to belabor the feature, but the AMAZING dark edged water line on logs, rocks and shoreline.
BRAVO, HOWIE, BRAVO!
WOOHOO! KERPLOP! Right into my cart.
https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery--harpwood-trail
LOL, @Gogger… Me, too!
Still creates the new terrain quickly and a surprisingly quick render - Thanks AGAIN, Howie!
Is there any way to make a for in the stream? Or where the small stream meets the bigger?
Another browser-scorchingly fast entry into the shopping cart.
Cheers,
Alex.
A couple of Harpwood with some of the upcoming Features pack landscapes...
OOOooooohhh....@TangoAlpha Nice POV and cool little gravel 'popout'. SWEET.
heh, I snuck another pic into the above post while you were typing ;)
HA HA! And here I was beating myself up for INCLUDING the actual image again via "Quote, thinking that my comment would have been taken in context and just fine without it. Glad I left it in. Pretty much ANY THING that gets produced with/by/for UltraScenery will be an instabuy for me and I'm sure a big hit with The Render Crowd. YAYY!!
Meanwhile on a desert island somewhere, social distancing is still in effect ....
I'm loosing my river when using the Harpwood trail add on, is it not meant to used with the river terrains
Hmm... I used the river scene with the new Harpwood add-on and it came out as expected (see image posted up above in this thread). I don't think I changed ANY settings though, as a test. (I'll fiddle with individual settings later). Did you change any settings? It looks like you are getting very tall grass that is burying the river. I must say, I sort of like that second one as is. :)
I quite like having the reeds in the water like that - it needs a few ducks swimming around though.
I bought the expansion, but won’t be back at my computer for at least a couple more hours to play with it. Do the new ecologies just show up in the regular UltraScenery menu? Or is there something else I have to do in order to access them?
Also, how would I go about making other ecologies available to UltraScenery? Say I wanted to use one (or more) of Polish’s nature plants sets, for example.
The Harpwood add-ons show up in the UltraScenery panel that pops up right along with the original choices. (Provided you already own the required Harpwood item).
As for adding other items into the mix, people like @TangoAlpha have been breaking ground in that area with excellent results, but as I understand it, it requires editing a JSON file. There were conversations about this earlier in this thread.