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Author Topic: Box around trees (aerial perspective)  (Read 8998 times)

RJ1367

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Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« on: June 30, 2008, 07:14:29 PM »
Hi

Still having a few problems with a slightly opaque box around some trees in the middle distance.

Forest Pro 3.02
MR SKY
MR SUN
Viz 2008
Aerial Perpective (10%)

I have tried adjusting the Trace depth and refractions, adjusted to opacity etc but I still get the boxes. It only happens on trees in the middle distance, far and near are fine. If I increase the aerial perspective the effect of the box is slightly reduced but I need to keep my perspective setting if at all possible..

Any ideas?

Thanks

Geoff

iToo

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #1 on: June 30, 2008, 07:40:41 PM »

Hi,

Have you disabled "Fast Opacity" on Material rollout ?


Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #2 on: June 30, 2008, 07:52:17 PM »
Hi Carlos

Yep Fast Opacity is disabled..

iToo

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #3 on: June 30, 2008, 07:58:31 PM »
Hi,

Please, send us a scene to support@itoosoft.com. These type of problems is very conditioned by scene's settings.


Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #4 on: June 30, 2008, 08:05:33 PM »
Yeah I thought that might be the case , the scene is very large though. I'll see if I can strip out some data and recreate the problem

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2008, 08:20:35 PM »
Carlos

The problem seems to be when using a bitmap as a texture for the grass fields.

I was trying to condense the file to send it to you - the boxes disappear when the material is removed from the terrain so it is some problem with the opacity map and the jpeg I'm using for grass. I'm just going to try altering some of the bitmap settings to see if that helps. The materials are standard at the moment so I wonder if changing them to AD might work. Does any of this sound likely?

iToo

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2008, 09:07:16 PM »
Geoff,

I'm creating some test scenes, with grass and trees, using Mr Sky, Mr Sun and Aerial Perspective, but i cannot reproduce the problem that you describe. The attached image uses all default parameters, including "Fast Opacity" enabled. I think i will need your scene to know what is happening...

Btw, what is AD ?

« Last Edit: June 30, 2008, 09:09:08 PM by Itoo »
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #7 on: July 02, 2008, 11:43:37 PM »
Hi Carlos

Sorry I was unable to get back to you about this we're having some serious system problems here. The upshot being we've had to 'fudge' the landscape a bit so we can get onto the animation. The boxes are still present but not so bad as I adjusted the aerial perspective a bit.I might see if I can send a stripped down scene once the project is finished for you to have a look at so we can deal with it in the future.

However we have run into a small quirk...the file we're dealing with is 14mb. There are a lot of trees in the scene (some used as hedges) and we need to edit out some where they show up in rivers etc. We used the edit function (in the itoo rollout) to remove the trees, no problem, but the file jumps to 26mb with less trees. Seems really odd and I wondered if there was a reason for this or if it has happened before? We tried editing the tress 'manually' by adding a edit mesh/polly and although this takes out the extra trees the forest fail to follow the camera after the edit.

The AD was for Arch & design material I was just testing out different base materials to see the results on the render. I've added an image of the scene we're working on for the animation. Still very much in production but I guess you may like to see your trees in action just as much as we do!

Cheers

Geoff

iToo

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #8 on: July 03, 2008, 04:54:00 PM »
Hi Geoff,

A Forest object on "Custom Edition" mode always takes more memory, because it have to store the position of each tree. Instead, trees on "Generate" mode are not saved with the scene, but created dinamically. If you want to remove trees, sometimes is better to use Exclusion area splines.

However, i going to send you an username and password to our FTP server, so you can upload the scene. See it on the private messages.

About the materials, we suggest to use always "Forest Material 3" for Forest objects, because it's needed for a lot of features (shadows, random tint and more).

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2008, 05:54:50 PM »
Thanks Carlos that makes sense what what you said about the memory.

I've got the password and ftp details so will upload the scene - I'll send a file with the images used for the materials/textures in the scene so you can recreate it. There is still work to do an it is beta although we are running out of time..

many thanks

Geoff

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2008, 10:37:35 PM »
Hi Geoff,

After completing some tests, we have found that there is some problem with Aerial Perspective and transparencies. Unfortunately, it's not related with Forest and seems to be fixed on latest versions of Mental Ray, but not in Max 9 / Viz 2008.

I've attached two images rendered on Viz 2008 and Max 2008. The scene includes some full transparent objects, using Standard Material, Forest Material and Forest + Fast Opacity. As you can see, in Max 2008 is possible to get a full transparency.... but not in Viz 2008.

Sorry, but in Viz there is not solution, except disable Aerial Perspective or adjust the distance to minimize the effect.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

RJ1367

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Re: Box around trees (aerial perspective)
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2008, 11:04:23 PM »
Hi Carlos

Many thanks for trying to sort this out for me I really appreciate you guys going the extra mile just a shame there is a problem with viz that is out of everyone's control :-(

All the best

Geoff