UltraScenery [Commercial]

sandmanmax · July 2020

barbult said:

L'Adair said:

sandmanmax said:

So you can use the UltraScenery base terrain directly with UltraScatter? It seemed like the first time I tried that, DS crashed. I've been duplicating the terrain to scatter on and that's been working. I can raise or lower the duplicate so the ultrascatter plants look better. But it's one more object to fill memory.

If you need to use a duplicate for UltraScatter/Pro, you can hide the duplicate. If you need to see it while working, you can also set Visible in Render to Off in the parameters. Either way will prevent it from using memory when rendering, if that's the memory you're talking about.

That is another important tip. You never want two geometries visible in exactky the same place. Iray renders them strangely when that happens. I ususally just hide one with the eye in the Scene pane.

Yep, I've been hiding it. Here's the results of my latest excursion - the background includes a Terradome3 B-zone, ocean, and atmosphere. Blur is a combination of the TD3 Atmosphere and depth-of-field. The foreground is UltraScenery River 2 flooded by setting the landscape height to -2, Grassland. I duplicated the terrain to use for UltraScatter to load the reeds (MartinJFrost). I inverted the river 2 mask and painted out most of the soft edge in photoshop, trying to get the reeds closer to the water. Also set the height and slope in UltraScatter. After it was all done, I decided to test out InstaEdit because the reeds were too thick. It worked ok - it allowed me to selectively turn on and off groups of reeds (I think I should be able to move them but I didn't try that). Oh - yeah - I tested the KindredArt's new HDRI Reshade in order to get dawn lighting. And hacked the color of the B-Zone to make it look more distant. Lots of experimentation.

Oso3D · July 2020

Ken: very nice!

sandmanmax · July 2020

Has anybody tried using the old-style low-res flat-panel plants in UltraScenery? I know they'd have to be kept in the background. I noticed that all of Howie's plants (except the tree markers) are fully modeled.

Artini · July 2020

sandmanmax said:

Has anybody tried using the old-style low-res flat-panel plants in UltraScenery? I know they'd have to be kept in the background. I noticed that all of Howie's plants (except the tree markers) are fully modeled.

I think you need to edit JSON files for switching the plants - right now I am not into it.

However, you can use UltraScatter to put any objects, plants included, on the generated UltraScenery.

That is what the recent posts were about.

daveso · July 2020

kennrowe_f558b276d6 said:

Finally picked up the Pines and wanted to try the "Let it Snow" geoshells on them. It took a while to add the shells and adjust the transparancy on each of the original pines but it hardly seems right to complain, given how much UltraScenery is doing for me .

wow. i tried that Let it Snow the other day and everything turned into blocks. could not get it to work. This is spectacular.

Doc Acme · July 2020

barbult said:

Doc Acme said:

Hey folk, quick question:

Is the Extended Forest option something that came be toggled after scene creation, or once chose, it's part of the scene?

It is part of the scene, but it can easily be hidden by toggling the eye in the Scene pane. The instances that make up the extended forest will have BG in their name, so they are easy to identify in the Scene pane. I usually go ahead and generate them when I generate the scene and turn them off later if I don't want them. If on the other hand, I don't generate the extended forest and later wish I had it, I have to completely regenerate the whole scene again. So, it might take a few seconds longer to generate them the first time, but it is a lot better than waiting several minutes to recreate the whole scene again later to get them if I didn't generate them the first time.

Excellent. Thanks.

My first look at that was from a Bird's Eye view & was quite suprised at how much it extends.

DustRider · July 2020

Just thought I'd add a these images as a big thank you to HowieFarkes for such a great addition to DS. I only have UltraScene so far, but hopefully can pick up some add ons in the future. So many outdoor environments look good until you try a close up, then the illusion completely falls apart. Not so with Ultrascene. You can create images that look fantastic close up or far away. Thanks for the awesome product!!

There are so many amazing inspirational renders here! Thanks to everyone for sharing your amazing renders and your knowledge. Without everything posted here, I might not have bought Ultra Scene (though anything done by HowiesFarkes is always top quality and sort of a must have).

Image Title: Oh, we WILL pass (Gallery Link)

Image Title: Vallisa (Gallery Link)

mCasual · July 2020

in the freepository i posted a script to remove some trees around the camera

it's called mcjSceneClearing

kennrowe_f558b276d6 · July 2020

Excellent images DustRider! Welcome to the fun. Thank you mCasual for another helpful script.

kennrowe_f558b276d6 · July 2020

daveso said:

kennrowe_f558b276d6 said:

wow. i tried that Let it Snow the other day and everything turned into blocks. could not get it to work. This is spectacular.

I think I know what is causing your blocks. I ran into the same problem myself.What I ended up doing was applying the opacity mask from the twigs (pine needles) to the shell. That seemed to solve it for me.

barbult · July 2020

Doc Acme said:

barbult said:

Doc Acme said:

Hey folk, quick question:

Is the Extended Forest option something that came be toggled after scene creation, or once chose, it's part of the scene?

It is part of the scene, but it can easily be hidden by toggling the eye in the Scene pane. The instances that make up the extended forest will have BG in their name, so they are easy to identify in the Scene pane. I usually go ahead and generate them when I generate the scene and turn them off later if I don't want them. If on the other hand, I don't generate the extended forest and later wish I had it, I have to completely regenerate the whole scene again. So, it might take a few seconds longer to generate them the first time, but it is a lot better than waiting several minutes to recreate the whole scene again later to get them if I didn't generate them the first time.

Excellent. Thanks.

My first look at that was from a Bird's Eye view & was quite suprised at how much it extends.

I just had an inspiration. If you don't generate the extended forest the first time you build, you don't have to rebuild the whole thing. You can select your UltraScene in the Scene pane and Edit/Duplicate/Duplicate Node(s). Then on the duplicate UltraScene, run UltraScenery again and select only the trees layer(s) and Extend Forest checkbox on the Build tab. After it builds, hide the duplicate UltraScene and the duplicate Trees Layer, leaving only the BG objects. I tried it; it works and is much faster than rebuilding the whole thing. You could even change Ecology on the duplicate and build an extended forest of different trees than what you used in the original scene. There are so many possibilities with this product!

I used Oaks with leaves in the main scene and in the duplicate, I changed the ecology to Oaks without leaves. I like it!

Doc Acme · July 2020

Tree Instance Editing

I came across this this morning & thought "Oh, a perfect case to use InstaEdit".

I noticed two things: First, not just the single tree was moving but rather a group. Secondly though is that even though I can see the mesh moving & appears placed so the roots aren't exposed, when I render it's as if nothing has actually moved. As a test I even Deleted the InstaEdit node and items under it. Those trees all disappeared in the Wireframe viewport, but upon render, they're still exactly as the were.

Do Proxy trees respond differently? How to I remedy this?

dawnblade · July 2020

Doc Acme said:

Tree Instance Editing

I came across this this morning & thought "Oh, a perfect case to use InstaEdit".

I noticed two things: First, not just the single tree was moving but rather a group. Secondly though is that even though I can see the mesh moving & appears placed so the roots aren't exposed, when I render it's as if nothing has actually moved. As a test I even Deleted the InstaEdit node and items under it. Those trees all disappeared in the Wireframe viewport, but upon render, they're still exactly as the were.

Do Proxy trees respond differently? How to I remedy this?

What this looks like is missing grass. Any chance you selected a specific camera to "restrict instances to camera" and then repositioned your camera? If you do that and don't build again, you'll wind up with missing plants, grass, etc. that would normally be covering the tree roots. Happened to me when I first used UltraScenery, so just passing this along.

sandmanmax · July 2020

Artini said:

sandmanmax said:

Has anybody tried using the old-style low-res flat-panel plants in UltraScenery? I know they'd have to be kept in the background. I noticed that all of Howie's plants (except the tree markers) are fully modeled.

I think you need to edit JSON files for switching the plants - right now I am not into it.

However, you can use UltraScatter to put any objects, plants included, on the generated UltraScenery.

That is what the recent posts were about.

Oh, I understand that part. I'm just wondering about the old billboard style plants. It seems to me that if I'm going to create my own Ecology set, I should make sure the plants I use are somewhat three-dimensional (meaning they can be rotated without losing their integrity).

Doc Acme · July 2020

dawnblade said:

Doc Acme said:

Tree Instance Editing

I came across this this morning & thought "Oh, a perfect case to use InstaEdit".

I noticed two things: First, not just the single tree was moving but rather a group. Secondly though is that even though I can see the mesh moving & appears placed so the roots aren't exposed, when I render it's as if nothing has actually moved. As a test I even Deleted the InstaEdit node and items under it. Those trees all disappeared in the Wireframe viewport, but upon render, they're still exactly as the were.

Do Proxy trees respond differently? How to I remedy this?

What this looks like is missing grass. Any chance you selected a specific camera to "restrict instances to camera" and then repositioned your camera? If you do that and don't build again, you'll wind up with missing plants, grass, etc. that would normally be covering the tree roots. Happened to me when I first used UltraScenery, so just passing this along.

No, a new camera after scene creation w/ default settings. I did use a 15M Max range initally & that's a pretty steep incline. But I was wondering that too if normally the tree base might get some grass around it as seen in other areas.

I did find a section in the InstaEdit PDF specifically regarding UltraScatter Instances, but I'm still confused. I'll play around with it some more but hoping to find some Editing tips specific to UltraScene.

barbult · July 2020

Doc Acme said:

dawnblade said:

Doc Acme said:

Tree Instance Editing

I came across this this morning & thought "Oh, a perfect case to use InstaEdit".

I noticed two things: First, not just the single tree was moving but rather a group. Secondly though is that even though I can see the mesh moving & appears placed so the roots aren't exposed, when I render it's as if nothing has actually moved. As a test I even Deleted the InstaEdit node and items under it. Those trees all disappeared in the Wireframe viewport, but upon render, they're still exactly as the were.

Do Proxy trees respond differently? How to I remedy this?

What this looks like is missing grass. Any chance you selected a specific camera to "restrict instances to camera" and then repositioned your camera? If you do that and don't build again, you'll wind up with missing plants, grass, etc. that would normally be covering the tree roots. Happened to me when I first used UltraScenery, so just passing this along.

No, a new camera after scene creation w/ default settings. I did use a 15M Max range initally & that's a pretty steep incline. But I was wondering that too if normally the tree base might get some grass around it as seen in other areas.

I did find a section in the InstaEdit PDF specifically regarding UltraScatter Instances, but I'm still confused. I'll play around with it some more but hoping to find some Editing tips specific to UltraScene.

Just select the instances group for the pine trees and translate the whole group in the negative Y direction in the Parameters pane.

jardine · July 2020

Jason Galterio said:

Technical question: is there a way to have items not appear around a camera? Similar to the "only create in view," but in this case to avoid creating instances that would be in the immediate vicnity of the camera?

mCasual just posted a script in the freebies forum that's designed to do this. mcjSceneClearing.

EDIT: whoops! i see he's already announced that here.

Jason Galterio · July 2020

I've been experimenting with making my own paths in US without having to resort to changing the format files.

Attached is the custom heightmap I made, along with one showing the custom path. I made the path by creating another layer and placing a series of dark black rectangles for the path line. Then duplicate the base heightmap, select the black line, then alter just this selection (on the heightmap level) to be either -10 or +10 brightness. This will allow the path to follow the general flow of the road, but still be offset. The best results happen when the custom path follows the general curves of the grayscale.

The black pathline is then used as the mask in UltraScatter Pro, as long as the rest of the height map is turned white.

US can then be used to place the bits of nature on each side of the path line. Then bricks, stones, dirt patches, what have you, can be placed just on the path line using the inverted mask.

I've also found that bigger height maps work better than smaller ones and don't seem to have an impact on memory or rendering. These particular height maps are 5000x5000. Smaller ones tended to both make it harder to set up a path, as well as making more jagged edges in the terrain.

UltraScatter also has a "repel" function that can be used to keep items from scattering onto the bricks of the path, as long as the bricks have been placed first. The US will recognize the previous scatter as a set of objects to repel from.

Artini · July 2020

Jason Galterio said:

I've been experimenting with making my own paths in US without having to resort to changing the format files.

Attached is the custom heightmap I made, along with one showing the custom path. I made the path by creating another layer and placing a series of dark black rectangles for the path line. Then duplicate the base heightmap, select the black line, then alter just this selection (on the heightmap level) to be either -10 or +10 brightness. This will allow the path to follow the general flow of the road, but still be offset. The best results happen when the custom path follows the general curves of the grayscale.

The black pathline is then used as the mask in UltraScatter Pro, as long as the rest of the height map is turned white.

US can then be used to place the bits of nature on each side of the path line. Then bricks, stones, dirt patches, what have you, can be placed just on the path line using the inverted mask.

I've also found that bigger height maps work better than smaller ones and don't seem to have an impact on memory or rendering. These particular height maps are 5000x5000. Smaller ones tended to both make it harder to set up a path, as well as making more jagged edges in the terrain.

UltraScatter also has a "repel" function that can be used to keep items from scattering onto the bricks of the path, as long as the bricks have been placed first. The US will recognize the previous scatter as a set of objects to repel from.

Excellent findings - thanks for posting.

sandmanmax · July 2020

If anybody feels like spending any money, Harpwood Trail and UltraScenery - Harpwood Trail are both on sale. Picked them up with my PC+ coupon. I can't wait to test them out.

barbult · July 2020

Who do you think will win?

Gallery link with list of products used.

barbult · July 2020

That (above) is what he has. This is what he needs:

alexhcowley · July 2020

barbult said:

That (above) is what he has. This is what he needs:

What he needs is Archmage Serena, head posterior kicker with the sisterhood of the Future Mages. She kills huge evil monsters for a living. Dealing with a mere giant bear would be no problem at all.

Cheers,

Alex.

richardandtracy · July 2020

barbult said:

That (above) is what he has. This is what he needs:

barbult said:

Who do you think will win?

Gallery link with list of products used.

In his shoes, I'de be happier with this:

Overkill is always preferable. Failing that, an adequate thickness of armour helps.

Regards,

Richard

sandmanmax · July 2020

Excellent image, Barbult! I have an off-topic question, although still related to UltraScenery... How on earth are all these json files normally built by the PAs? Surely there's a tool that will do this? They don't manually have to key all these settings in a text file, right? Although,that's how programming works - manually key in the source code and test-test-test. Unless there's some new magic-software generation tool that's been invented since I stopped coding.

sandmanmax · July 2020

And why are all the material settings in the json file when the duf for each plant has them in there? Are those overrides for the plant's default settings?

HowieFarkes · July 2020

sandmanmax said:

Excellent image, Barbult! I have an off-topic question, although still related to UltraScenery... How on earth are all these json files normally built by the PAs? Surely there's a tool that will do this? They don't manually have to key all these settings in a text file, right? Although,that's how programming works - manually key in the source code and test-test-test. Unless there's some new magic-software generation tool that's been invented since I stopped coding.

Yes in fact it is just a text editor (Adobe Brackets to be precise that I use) and manually typing in the properties to a JSON is how this PA creates the ecologies and features. No secret software.

And yes the material settings in the JSON are overrides against the ones already attached to the prop.

Jason Galterio · July 2020

HowieFarkes said:

sandmanmax said:

Excellent image, Barbult! I have an off-topic question, although still related to UltraScenery... How on earth are all these json files normally built by the PAs? Surely there's a tool that will do this? They don't manually have to key all these settings in a text file, right? Although,that's how programming works - manually key in the source code and test-test-test. Unless there's some new magic-software generation tool that's been invented since I stopped coding.

Yes in fact it is just a text editor (Adobe Brackets to be precise that I use) and manually typing in the properties to a JSON is how this PA creates the ecologies and features. No secret software.

And yes the material settings in the JSON are overrides against the ones already attached to the prop.

Emphasis mine... And I think this is why sometimes using UltraScatter with US can cause really bad memory issues for me. Picking the wrong prop and things escalating out of control.

sandmanmax · July 2020

Cool - now I know how to fix the weird grey colors of my dead grass. Original version looked better, when I had a mix of Howie's grass and mine (well, Traveler's RDNA freebie from year's past). And I decided to pull out Dimension 3D's DSON Editor, which seems to work fine with the json files.

sandmanmax · July 2020

Got it a little bit more golden, learned more about json files. Of course, changing the Sun's time to 5:30 pm helped a lot.

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