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Author Topic: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.  (Read 1904 times)

Klonsemann

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Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« on: November 24, 2015, 09:47:31 AM »


As u can see in the animated giff.

Some of the bushes sudenly disappear during the animation.
The Frames are rendert on backburner on various machines.
Therefor the bushes are not flickering. I think its not a problem of a single machine.

Forestpack just decided not show these bushes any longer, as the camera moves.
The distibution source is a collapsed EditPoly.

See the FP Settings in the image. Are there any interpolationsettings for animation for the Distributionmap that i missed ?

Michal Karmazín

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #1 on: November 24, 2015, 11:14:46 AM »
Hi,

I would suggest you to make a quick test turning off Camera - Limit to Visibility. If that solves the problem, you can try to turn on clipping again and adjust settings of the Limit to visibility feature - raising the Expand value might prevent that behaviour. Also might help to set the Back Offset value (actually set just to 10m) to a higher value (for example like 100m should be fine).

Anyway, please feel free to send us your scene to support@itoosoft.com and we´ll check it. In case of big file size, please use a web sharing service as WeTransfer.

Best regards,

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #2 on: November 24, 2015, 02:37:19 PM »
The test is done. But it does not change anything.
As far as i see, the disapearing bushes are the same as with limit to camera enabled.

Btw: The terrain and FP objects with all proxys are in a seperate maxfile and come in as XRefFile.
Aswell we have several cameras in the Mainfile were are rendering from.

I just get rig of that setup and give it another try. If that fails too ,i export the FP object
to proxys for rendering this sequence.

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2015, 03:14:10 PM »
That does not help either. Only rendert 2 frames, the exact same bush is disappearing.
Converting to Proxys now.

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2015, 12:07:29 PM »
I cleaned up a maxfile and it via wetransfere.
In frame 33 and 34 u can see one bush appearing.
Framerange and reagionblowup, all set up in this maxfile.

Would be nice if u hav any suggenstions for our problem.
I tried to "collapsed" the FP object yesterday but fail cause of the huge amount of bushes.

Thanks in advanced.

Michal Karmazín

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2015, 03:39:56 PM »
Hi,

Thanks for provided scene. This issue is caused by the Area Scale Falloff feature used over the Surface Area, which consists of two "overlapping" surfaces (Google Earth Terrain_002 & Büsche Source Collapsed).

As mentioned in this "Edges of Surface Areas" tightly related post:

"When Forest uses a Surface as a scattering area, it extracts a "virtual" spline from closed edges of the mesh, and this is used as a Spline Area for several operations, including Size/Edge boundary checking, Area Falloffs and others.

Depending of the surface topology, this spline is more or less adequate to be used as Spline Area. In some particular cases, it could result in some not ideally working shapes (even lead to self-intersections, that may create an endless loop in one of the Max functions which process it).

If similar problem occurs, it can be fixed manually:

1.- Create a Copy of the surface object & convert it to Editable Poly if needed.
3.- Under Polygon Selection mode select all faces used for scattering (sometimes the Select By Angle from Ribbon could be very handy).
4.- Having Ctrl key pressed switch to Edge Selection mode.
5.- Than hit under Edit Edges -> Create Shape. It creates a new Editable Spline object to be used with Forest.
6.- Select the Forest object, under Areas rollout Add a new Spline Area and assign the shape created before.
7.- Select the Surface Area and turn it Off (Forest will not generate items from it)."


I've replied you also by email, with modified scene attached.

Kind regards,

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2015, 09:32:54 PM »
I took a look at your workaround and did a quick test. No bushes seem to change during the frames set in the framerange.
Thats good, but we lost all controll of scale and density of the bushes near the edges.

If i understand ur explanation correct. The problem appears because there are 2 geometries set as surface.
But if i delete the Google Earth Terrain_002.
And only have bushes on one surface, the disappearing issue is still there !

Michal Karmazín

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2015, 10:56:34 AM »
Hi,

"Thats good, but we lost all controll of scale and density of the bushes near the edges."

My apologies, I didn't notice, that newly created "Shape002" Spline Area covers also the area of "Shape001". The Density / Scale Falloff is applied, but for both of these Spline Areas and it's overlapping in this case. That's easy to fix (I've send you modified scene) by attaching copy of "Shape001" to the "Shape002" Spline Area.

"If i understand ur explanation correct. The problem appears because there are 2 geometries set as surface. But if i delete the Google Earth Terrain_002. And only have bushes on one surface, the disappearing issue is still there!"

Not necessarily that might happen just with multiple overlapping surfaces. As commented previously, it's depending of the surface topology. The "virtual" spline is more or less adequate to be used as Spline Area, but in some cases may lead to not ideally working shapes (as you've pointed out, in your case it's probably linked to the "Büsche Source Collapsed" surface itself) thought it seemed to be a "stacked surfaces" related.

Best regadrs,

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #8 on: November 26, 2015, 02:52:42 PM »
Yes, the scale and density works now as supposed.

Did you testrender your last fix ? Cause i got still disappearing bushes.

Michal Karmazín

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #9 on: November 26, 2015, 05:40:43 PM »
Hi,

You're totally right. After some additional testing with your scene we've noticed, that the Camera - Distance Falloff - Density/Scale is causing it. As mentioned in our on-line reference guide:

"Be careful if you use falloffs with camera motion, because items may appear or disappear suddenly (the distance to camera changes when moving)."

When rendering a walk-through animation, this feature shouldn't be used to prevent this kind of troubles. Sorry, I didn't notice that before.

Best regards,

Klonsemann

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Re: Help, bushes suddenly disappear in animation.
« Reply #10 on: November 27, 2015, 10:19:48 AM »
Hi,

thanks for your further investigation. I just tested with both disabled and finaly the issue is gone.
The number of bushes and the rendered look didnt change that much, so we are really happy.

Its no good idea to use this features in animations anyway ! That setup came from our not-moving-single-picture cameras.
Didn't notice that its still active.

Very good that you find out what causes this. But its a little pity that this took 3 days.
The keywords cameramotion and disapearing objects i mentioned from my very first post.

Dosent matter now, big thanks that you find out.  :)