Is anyone else getting extra long creation times when using the Willows?
Not significantly. But there are a few more layers in the Willows ecologies compared to (say) the Aspen ones, and each layer adds some time. The most significant factor in generation time will be the Feature, and particularly the size of the grassy/field and riparian areas, since grasses, flowers etc have the most instances, followed by the riparian zones (rushes & reeds), pebbles. Leaf litter will add some time too. The actual props (type of tree etc) make no practical difference to the generation times.
Affinity calculations around the bigger willows may also add a bit of time to the grasses/flowers. generation time
You can switch any unwanted layers out in the Build tab.
So I immediately bought the new bundle then had to wait to use it. Work. Always work. But yesterday I first downloaded some Tangram Heightmaps (found Cherry Creek from across the street from me!) and then did one scene. While it was rendering I saw a post from @barbult, mentioning how she is able to do two. So, when the first render was done, I tried another, with a path, on top of the creek. Confusion reigned until I realized the second one loaded way above the first one. Lowering it and then finagling it to mesh with the first, and lost of test renders, then moving the hawk around I was happy. But by 6:30pm, it was two hours in, and 1% converged. Stopped, saved and opened this morning. So it took a little over 2.5 hours to render fully as I also have AM Squirrel in there, as well as a Red-tail Hawk. This is also my render as part of the HiveWire Stay Home-Spread Hope freebies. I had to resize it down 2 times.
I am still winging it by accident, not by design on my results but I hope to get better.
I really would love an option for a park-like path along a creek that could be placed in a urban environment. Not sure if it is possible for green lawn on each sides of the path, then tree/brush line to creek, with foot bridges and places to sit, fish, wade, boating, ride tires...
I jumped on the bundle, and looking forward to loads of fun with it! I tried out Lake 1 and Oaks 9, and default settings for the rest. When you get a chance, can you also please fix the reeds growing through solid docks? Thanks!
Edited to add the dock on the opposite side has 3 trees and grass growing through it.
Just a thought with the flat terrain. It may well be useful to create a (flat?) un-instanced section for a house. If you could allocate a tone in the height map that could be useful. Eg r=0-255 to indicate height of un-instanced ground while green & blue components =0 to show it's special.
If you want some nice palm trees, look at Tropical Palm Trees for Daz Studio. They are resource intensive, though. I often delete all the displacement (because of the subD added for it), unless I am doing a very closeup render.
Hi, fastbike1.
She has already mentioned these palms earlier in this thread.
If you want some nice palm trees, look at Tropical Palm Trees for Daz Studio. They are resource intensive, though. I often delete all the displacement (because of the subD added for it), unless I am doing a very closeup render.
Hi, fastbike1.
She has already mentioned these palms earlier in this thread.
If you want some nice palm trees, look at Tropical Palm Trees for Daz Studio. They are resource intensive, though. I often delete all the displacement (because of the subD added for it), unless I am doing a very closeup render.
Hi, fastbike1.
She has already mentioned these palms earlier in this thread.
I believe it is a reply to her comment.
Yes, I think the quoting in the forum just got messed up. He is just concurring that MartinJFrost plants are very realistic looking.
Ok, below is a test with Island 1 and Willows 1. Generation time for the script was around 6 minutes.
I have checked the log, but there is no time save in it, like it is for the rendering time.
That is fast, given all the grass, water lillies, etc. I notice that reeds are growing through the dock in the foreground. TangoAlpha said earlier he is looking into it.
I like, that this island is so empty, so I think I could build some small house there...
If you hide the UltraScenery water, would the island blend into your background better? You must be very rich, it that is a "small house". It does go very well with the background, though!. Nice.
I'm enjoying exploring different lighting (HDRI) and atmospheric effects. This one uses Kindred Arts FOG. Work in Progress - adding some elements to it now.
Here is an interesting discovery related to height maps. The way the height map is created in Photoshop (RGB, Grayscale, Indexed Color) makes a difference in how it performs in UltraScenery. These are only rendered for a few iterations to get a feel for where the instances are placed. Grayscale and Indexed Color look about identical, but RGB shapes the whole terrain differently and places no instances on the flat mid-gray squiggle in the middle and places a few in the black (low) area.
For this experiment I used No Feature and Grassland 1. Noise contrast was set to the minimum. Max Height was set to 20.
Thank you for your excellent detective work as always Barb - the script seems to have a bug where completely level/flat surfaces cause an error when trying to find the height of the polygons so it just gives up and won't place an instance there. I know what I'm doing today (hint: it's fixing this). Different image formats can use different compression schemes that can introduce noise into the image - although I see you used PNG for all of them so that shouldn't be part of it - but I think the effects you are getting are all symptoms of the same bug just being expressed slightly differently due to color conversion in your image editor.
Doh! And I was loving the idea of being able to create the flat foliage-free shapes at will! Can't you just document it and call it a feature, not a bug?
Here is an interesting discovery related to height maps. The way the height map is created in Photoshop (RGB, Grayscale, Indexed Color) makes a difference in how it performs in UltraScenery. These are only rendered for a few iterations to get a feel for where the instances are placed. Grayscale and Indexed Color look about identical, but RGB shapes the whole terrain differently and places no instances on the flat mid-gray squiggle in the middle and places a few in the black (low) area.
For this experiment I used No Feature and Grassland 1. Noise contrast was set to the minimum. Max Height was set to 20.
Thank you for your excellent detective work as always Barb - the script seems to have a bug where completely level/flat surfaces cause an error when trying to find the height of the polygons so it just gives up and won't place an instance there. I know what I'm doing today (hint: it's fixing this). Different image formats can use different compression schemes that can introduce noise into the image - although I see you used PNG for all of them so that shouldn't be part of it - but I think the effects you are getting are all symptoms of the same bug just being expressed slightly differently due to color conversion in your image editor.
Doh! And I was loving the idea of being able to create the flat foliage-free shapes at will! Can't you just document it and call it a feature, not a bug?
Oh, that is really a nice feature. I also agree, that this flat foliage-free shape are great for placing buildings and the other things on them.
Been a while since I've been inspired to use Daz Studio. Too many other hobbies. But UltraScenery has me interested.Thanks for making outdoor environments easier for the rest of us.
Just a heads up to not get too attached to using flat areas to defoliate the scene - that's a bug that is going to be squished. But rest assured there will be a way to achieve clearings etc in a more controlled way soon.
Comments
Not significantly. But there are a few more layers in the Willows ecologies compared to (say) the Aspen ones, and each layer adds some time. The most significant factor in generation time will be the Feature, and particularly the size of the grassy/field and riparian areas, since grasses, flowers etc have the most instances, followed by the riparian zones (rushes & reeds), pebbles. Leaf litter will add some time too. The actual props (type of tree etc) make no practical difference to the generation times.
Affinity calculations around the bigger willows may also add a bit of time to the grasses/flowers. generation time
You can switch any unwanted layers out in the Build tab.
Concerning the trees through the docks, could you change the random seed so they would spawn in a different location?
Example: Lake 1 Oaks 9 Ecology Seed 666 Just a quick render, but the trees are in a different spot.
I do not remember actual times - will make another run.
So I immediately bought the new bundle then had to wait to use it. Work. Always work. But yesterday I first downloaded some Tangram Heightmaps (found Cherry Creek from across the street from me!) and then did one scene. While it was rendering I saw a post from @barbult, mentioning how she is able to do two. So, when the first render was done, I tried another, with a path, on top of the creek. Confusion reigned until I realized the second one loaded way above the first one. Lowering it and then finagling it to mesh with the first, and lost of test renders, then moving the hawk around I was happy. But by 6:30pm, it was two hours in, and 1% converged. Stopped, saved and opened this morning. So it took a little over 2.5 hours to render fully as I also have AM Squirrel in there, as well as a Red-tail Hawk. This is also my render as part of the HiveWire Stay Home-Spread Hope freebies. I had to resize it down 2 times.
I am still winging it by accident, not by design on my results but I hope to get better.
I really would love an option for a park-like path along a creek that could be placed in a urban environment. Not sure if it is possible for green lawn on each sides of the path, then tree/brush line to creek, with foot bridges and places to sit, fish, wade, boating, ride tires...
Mary
Thank you @TangoAlpha!
Howie,
Just a thought with the flat terrain. It may well be useful to create a (flat?) un-instanced section for a house. If you could allocate a tone in the height map that could be useful. Eg r=0-255 to indicate height of un-instanced ground while green & blue components =0 to show it's special.
Regards,
Richard.
@barbult "If you want some nice palm trees, look at Tropical Palm Trees for Daz Studio.
Martin's stuff is hard to beat for realism.
Hi, fastbike1.
She has already mentioned these palms earlier in this thread.
I believe it is a reply to her comment.
Yes, I think the quoting in the forum just got messed up. He is just concurring that MartinJFrost plants are very realistic looking.
Ok, below is a test with Island 1 and Willows 1. Generation time for the script was around 6 minutes.
I have checked the log, but there is no time save in it, like it is for the rendering time.
That is fast, given all the grass, water lillies, etc. I notice that reeds are growing through the dock in the foreground. TangoAlpha said earlier he is looking into it.
Good catch. I have not seen that, until now.
I like, that this island is so empty, so I think I could build some small house there...
If you hide the UltraScenery water, would the island blend into your background better? You must be very rich, it that is a "small house". It does go very well with the background, though!. Nice.
Thanks. That is the beauty of Daz Studio - one can build a big buildings without involved big funds.
Good idea about hiding UltraScenery water - have to try that.
Of course, there are still some costs involved:
https://www.daz3d.com/v3digitimes-buildings-and-skyscrapers-generator-vol-1
https://www.daz3d.com/cityscapes-backdrops-volume-2
Have tried to use Matte Fog and Cloudscape Creator - https://www.daz3d.com/cloudscape-creator-bundle
With UltraScenery water disabled.
With Tasha 8 - https://www.daz3d.com/tasha-8
Island 2, Willows 4, the rest at defaults - script generation time about 3 minutes.
One more render of this small island with Zsazsa - https://www.daz3d.com/zsazsa-hd-for-genesis-8-female
I'm enjoying exploring different lighting (HDRI) and atmospheric effects. This one uses Kindred Arts FOG. Work in Progress - adding some elements to it now.
Doh! And I was loving the idea of being able to create the flat foliage-free shapes at will! Can't you just document it and call it a feature, not a bug?
Oh, that is really a nice feature. I also agree, that this flat foliage-free shape are great for placing buildings and the other things on them.
Thanks to the excellent Barbult's tutorial - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/408551/ultrascenery-experiments-and-experiences
I have created terrain from the heightmap painted in Howler - https://www.daz3d.com/pd-howler-13
I have put Amira - https://www.daz3d.com/amira-hd--expressions-hd-for-genesis-8-female
in the scene and created a small habitat.
Been a while since I've been inspired to use Daz Studio. Too many other hobbies. But UltraScenery has me interested.Thanks for making outdoor environments easier for the rest of us.
Try to find nice skies/lights for the environment.
Below are renders made with Skies of iRadiance - https://www.daz3d.com/skies-of-iradiance-high-sky-hdri-bundle-for-iray
And here is UltraScenery with Tree Stump Garden - I think they blend AMAZINGLY well together! Also featuring Iray Distance Fog by Kindred Arts.
Mistwood Dwelling
That looks awesome, @Gogger!
Just a heads up to not get too attached to using flat areas to defoliate the scene - that's a bug that is going to be squished. But rest assured there will be a way to achieve clearings etc in a more controlled way soon.