UltraScenery [Commercial]

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Comments

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528

    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.

    But please, please give us a clear instructions about how to achieve clearings, when you fix this bug.

    I think this clearings become my number 1 feature of UltraScenery.

    All the best for you.

     

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Artini said:

    That was really not a tutorial, but an investigation into an intriguing mystery. wink
    I'm glad you found it educational, though! I do intend to post some more "tutorial" type stuff there.. I love to explore and see what I can discover. This is such a flexible and fabulous ecosystem for landscape building. And HowieFarkes keeps improving it.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    barbult said:
    Artini said:

    That was really not a tutorial, but an investigation into an intriguing mystery. wink
    I'm glad you found it educational, though! I do intend to post some more "tutorial" type stuff there.. I love to explore and see what I can discover. This is such a flexible and fabulous ecosystem for landscape building. And HowieFarkes keeps improving it.

    But it has really helped me, to understand what I was doing wrong with the height maps in UltraScenery.

    Watching your experiments is so inspirational and I value that a lot. Thank you for your curiosity and exploration.

     

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Artini said:
    barbult said:
    Artini said:

    That was really not a tutorial, but an investigation into an intriguing mystery. wink
    I'm glad you found it educational, though! I do intend to post some more "tutorial" type stuff there.. I love to explore and see what I can discover. This is such a flexible and fabulous ecosystem for landscape building. And HowieFarkes keeps improving it.

    But it has really helped me, to understand what I was doing wrong with the height maps in UltraScenery.

    Watching your experiments is so inspirational and I value that a lot. Thank you for your curiosity and exploration.

     

    Great! I started a new post over there, documenting how to modify an ecology. It is still a WIP.

  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 702
    edited May 2020
    Gogger said:

    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

    If I ever needed a reason to get ultraScenery it's right here!! Beautifully done, Gogger.

    Post edited by AnEye4Art on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

  • goggerfett@gmail.com[email protected] Posts: 2,291
    edited May 2020
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    I had a lot of fun creating this image. I sat down to just test out the new UltraScenery add-ons and after a couple of other scenes (desert, beach, etc), something about the light in this ("Upland 1" the raised ground with pictoglyph figure - randomly twiddled a few settings, because this is how I learn things) caused me to navigate the camera around to something I saw up ahead, down the path, and then I thought of adding a deer, but on the way to find the Hivewire deer ended up thinking of Tim82's Tree Stump Garden because I *almost* didn't buy it (what's up with leading with those clay Promo pics initially? Lead with a DAZZLE SHOT! erm, ahem). That got me to this location, but then I started playing with other HDRI light sources and Dimension Theory's iRadiance nailed it. Still not "all that" to my eye, so I went for rain - while interesting, I didn't want to mess with specularity to "wetten up everything in the scene" and so went with fog/mist and (after playing with various settings for a couple of hours) LOVED the misty background trees! Spent ALL DAY fiddling with the settings and then a fair amount of time with the lanterns on the stump home.  Couldn't get what I wanted from making the candle wick brighter so made the whole candle emissive and it got weird (NOT in a good way). Pulled that lantern behind the front door and then left a copy of the lantern out front, with minimal light. If I keep messing around with this scene, it will be to throw another candle source of light in the lantern. Otherwise, I am pleased with the image and happy that others liked it too.  This was my "process" and mostly I just run from thing to thing with a sense of wonder, exclaiming, "Shiny!  Shiiiiiinyyyyyy!" as I scroll through my library.  Creating stuff like this brings me great peace, and profound joy.

    Enjoy your journey!

    Attached, is a vertical format from an earlier render.  Has a different feel to it, but highlights the back mistyness pretty well too, but this is not the version I put in the gallery.

    VT_Fae_in_the_Forest_3D_Erik_Pedersen.jpg
    1200 x 1920 - 738K
    Post edited by [email protected] on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

    +1

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049

    @Gogger I wanted to give you a Like in the gallery, but your link didn't work for me.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    I had a lot of fun creating this image. I sat down to just test out the new UltraScenery add-ons and after a couple of other scenes (desert, beach, etc), something about the light in this ("Upland 1" the raised ground with pictoglyph figure - randomly twiddled a few settings, because this is how I learn things) caused me to navigate the camera around to something I saw up ahead, down the path, and then I thought of adding a deer, but on the way to find the Hivewire deer ended up thinking of Tim82's Tree Stump Garden because I *almost* didn't buy it (what's up with leading with those clay Promo pics initially? Lead with a DAZZLE SHOT! erm, ahem). That got me to this location, but then I started playing with other HDRI light sources and Dimension Theory's iRadiance nailed it. Still not "all that" to my eye, so I went for rain - while interesting, I didn't want to mess with specularity to "wetten up everything in the scene" and so went with fog/mist and (after playing with various settings for a couple of hours) LOVED the misty background trees! Spent ALL DAY fiddling with the settings and then a fair amount of time with the lanterns on the stump home.  Couldn't get what I wanted from making the candle wick brighter so made the whole candle emissive and it got weird (NOT in a good way). Pulled that lantern behind the front door and then left a copy of the lantern out front, with minimal light. If I keep messing around with this scene, it will be to throw another candle source of light in the lantern. Otherwise, I am pleased with the image and happy that others liked it too.  This was my "process" and mostly I just run from thing to thing with a sense of wonder, exclaiming, "Shiny!  Shiiiiiinyyyyyy!" as I scroll through my library.  Creating stuff like this brings me great peace, and profound joy.

    Enjoy your journey!

    Attached, is a vertical format from an earlier render.  Has a different feel to it, but highlights the back mistyness pretty well too, but this is not the version I put in the gallery.

    I just love it! Thanks for describing your process. I think this is one of the very best UltraScenery images I have seen. 

  • barbult said:
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
     

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    Enjoy your journey!

     

    I just love it! Thanks for describing your process. I think this is one of the very best UltraScenery images I have seen. 

    Aw, thanks, Barbult.  Not sure what the deal is with my gallery link - works fine for me - takes me to ohhhh.... I think I get it - standby.  I just logged out, copied the link and am posting it HERE - Mistwood Forest. (Opens a new window)   Does that work now?

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
     

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    Enjoy your journey!

     

    I just love it! Thanks for describing your process. I think this is one of the very best UltraScenery images I have seen. 

    Aw, thanks, Barbult.  Not sure what the deal is with my gallery link - works fine for me - takes me to ohhhh.... I think I get it - standby.  I just logged out, copied the link and am posting it HERE - Mistwood Forest. (Opens a new window)   Does that work now?

    That works. I gave you a thumbs up. yes

  • James_HJames_H Posts: 996
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    I had a lot of fun creating this image. I sat down to just test out the new UltraScenery add-ons and after a couple of other scenes (desert, beach, etc), something about the light in this ("Upland 1" the raised ground with pictoglyph figure - randomly twiddled a few settings, because this is how I learn things) caused me to navigate the camera around to something I saw up ahead, down the path, and then I thought of adding a deer, but on the way to find the Hivewire deer ended up thinking of Tim82's Tree Stump Garden because I *almost* didn't buy it (what's up with leading with those clay Promo pics initially? Lead with a DAZZLE SHOT! erm, ahem). That got me to this location, but then I started playing with other HDRI light sources and Dimension Theory's iRadiance nailed it. Still not "all that" to my eye, so I went for rain - while interesting, I didn't want to mess with specularity to "wetten up everything in the scene" and so went with fog/mist and (after playing with various settings for a couple of hours) LOVED the misty background trees! Spent ALL DAY fiddling with the settings and then a fair amount of time with the lanterns on the stump home.  Couldn't get what I wanted from making the candle wick brighter so made the whole candle emissive and it got weird (NOT in a good way). Pulled that lantern behind the front door and then left a copy of the lantern out front, with minimal light. If I keep messing around with this scene, it will be to throw another candle source of light in the lantern. Otherwise, I am pleased with the image and happy that others liked it too.  This was my "process" and mostly I just run from thing to thing with a sense of wonder, exclaiming, "Shiny!  Shiiiiiinyyyyyy!" as I scroll through my library.  Creating stuff like this brings me great peace, and profound joy.

    Enjoy your journey!

    Attached, is a vertical format from an earlier render.  Has a different feel to it, but highlights the back mistyness pretty well too, but this is not the version I put in the gallery.

    These are inspirational. Thanks for sharing

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528

    Beautiful, Gogger, you really made it look pretty.

     

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,092
    Gogger said:
    barbult said:
    Gogger said:

    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

    This is just fabulous! the atmosphere adds a lot. If this isn't already in your gallery, it should be.

    Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. I was waiting for a final, full render to put it in the DAZ Gallery - it is there now.  Mistwood, Heart of the Forest.

    I had a lot of fun creating this image. I sat down to just test out the new UltraScenery add-ons and after a couple of other scenes (desert, beach, etc), something about the light in this ("Upland 1" the raised ground with pictoglyph figure - randomly twiddled a few settings, because this is how I learn things) caused me to navigate the camera around to something I saw up ahead, down the path, and then I thought of adding a deer, but on the way to find the Hivewire deer ended up thinking of Tim82's Tree Stump Garden because I *almost* didn't buy it (what's up with leading with those clay Promo pics initially? Lead with a DAZZLE SHOT! erm, ahem). That got me to this location, but then I started playing with other HDRI light sources and Dimension Theory's iRadiance nailed it. Still not "all that" to my eye, so I went for rain - while interesting, I didn't want to mess with specularity to "wetten up everything in the scene" and so went with fog/mist and (after playing with various settings for a couple of hours) LOVED the misty background trees! Spent ALL DAY fiddling with the settings and then a fair amount of time with the lanterns on the stump home.  Couldn't get what I wanted from making the candle wick brighter so made the whole candle emissive and it got weird (NOT in a good way). Pulled that lantern behind the front door and then left a copy of the lantern out front, with minimal light. If I keep messing around with this scene, it will be to throw another candle source of light in the lantern. Otherwise, I am pleased with the image and happy that others liked it too.  This was my "process" and mostly I just run from thing to thing with a sense of wonder, exclaiming, "Shiny!  Shiiiiiinyyyyyy!" as I scroll through my library.  Creating stuff like this brings me great peace, and profound joy.

    Enjoy your journey!

    Attached, is a vertical format from an earlier render.  Has a different feel to it, but highlights the back mistyness pretty well too, but this is not the version I put in the gallery.

    I love both of these (the first and especially this one). Great work!

  • mavantemavante Posts: 734

    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.

    Exquisite capturing of the light of a gathering cloudy crepuscule. Glad you came back to DS and hope you'll do lots more!

  • gitika1gitika1 Posts: 948

    First of all, that was an instabuy. I love this as I love all of your works!!!! I was so happy for the Harpwood one too, I already had the Harpwood. And can't wait for an Evergreen version maybe with some mountains around and the cherry on the top if we could get a more customizable feature with our own plants. Still we would love to get another exciting features and variations :)

    I'm creating some ecologies using Andrey Pestryakov's awesome pine trees from Nature Trees Pack 4 so there will be an option for evergreen forests soon.

    Have you considered his Stones HR 2 product?  (https://www.daz3d.com/stones-hr-2)  Another amazing product; and the snow material... I wish I could apply it to other objects.  I still haven't figured out how he made the snow.

  • gitika1gitika1 Posts: 948
    barbult said:

    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. 

    If you own https://www.daz3d.com/tropical-lagoon, there are some palm trees included.  The vegetation in not packaged as individual props though.

  • AllenArtAllenArt Posts: 7,140
    barbult said:
    barbult said:

    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.

    Excellent, I look forward to the next script update. Thank you for great customer service.

    If Daz doesn't have you on their testing team, they should. LOL

    Laurie

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 23,049
    AllenArt said:
    barbult said:
    barbult said:

    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.

    Excellent, I look forward to the next script update. Thank you for great customer service.

    If Daz doesn't have you on their testing team, they should. LOL

    Laurie

    I beta test for several PAs, but I don't test for Daz. I do write a huge number of help requests, though, which indicates that they could use more pre-release testing.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    I have a lot of fun creating height maps in Bryce - https://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro

    and rendering them in Daz Studio with UltraScenery.

    Below is one of the renders, made with Llama - https://www.daz3d.com/loveable-llamas

    Spiral02sc04pic01Llama.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 792K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    ... and that is, how the terrain made with such height map, looks a like.

    Spiral02sc01pic01.jpg
    1200 x 1200 - 464K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    Another height map created quickly in Bryce and used in UltraScenery.

    mix02sc01pic01.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 831K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • DoctorJellybeanDoctorJellybean Posts: 7,845

    How does one create a height map in Bryce?

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    You create a terrain in Bryce and then click on the "E" button, while terrain is selected.

    Then in Terrain Canvas click on the upper most on the right triangle and choose "Export image"

    Bryce01scr2.jpg
    1184 x 1043 - 157K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    Bryce was my first purchase in Daz 3D shop and I have liked it all the time, but missed the possibility to easily done iray terrain renders with Daz Studio.

    Now with the appearance of UltraScenery, the missing link is finally here to explore and I like all of this a lot.

    Below is another example.

    CloseEncounters04sc01pic01.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 726K
    Post edited by Artini on
  • DoctorJellybeanDoctorJellybean Posts: 7,845

    Thanks @Artini

  • davesodaveso Posts: 6,365

    I had a program called Vista Pro where you could import USGS dem files ... of actual places. I think those can be used in Bryce as well, if I remember right ... and then saved out to be used with Ultrascenery. 
    That could have some cool possibilities. 

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,712
    edited May 2020

    well since Digital Carvers Guild has made their Carrara dem plugin opensource maybe Howie could port it over to Ultra scenery

    http://digitalcarversguild.com/plugin.php?ProductId=7

    I see it actually has DAZ studio options too

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited May 2020

    I've just wonder, how well DEM files scale down to 64 x 64 square meters, that UltraScenery area has.

    Post edited by Artini on
This discussion has been closed.