Itoo Software Forum

Forest Pack => Forest Pro (*) => Topic started by: TG4018 on February 06, 2016, 09:45:58 PM

Title: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: TG4018 on February 06, 2016, 09:45:58 PM
Hello again,

Let's say I've made a house with a thatched roof, and the roof consists of multiple Forest objects, and I want to make tons of instances of the house, or even xref it into the scene and make tons of copies of the xref object. Is this even possible?

I've tried so many different ways but none seem to work. Probably because the Forest objects need their surfaces, and when simply instancing/cloning everything at the same time, the surface mapped to the cloned Forest object doesn't get automatically remapped.
When xrefing it and making tens of copies of the xref objects (all xref objects constitute the house, so I just selected them all and copied them), I had the problem that Forest pack cleaned out the Forest library objects fairly shortly after having made all the copies, and thus all thatched roofs disappeared.

Is there any way to accomplish this? If you can't automatically reassign the cloned Forest object to the new cloned surface, can't you just make the Forest object completely detached from/independent of the surface and just clone it regardless, as if it were in Custom edit mode?

Thanks!
Title: Re: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: iToo on February 08, 2016, 09:09:51 AM
Hi, yes it's possible to detach items for the Surface and keep their position. In the following way:

1) Switch to "Custom Edit" mode.
2) Uncheck "Surface->Custom Edit mode->Link to Surface" (just at bottom of the Surface rollup)
3) Click "Place items".

Next, you can delete the surface and copy/move Forest freely. Even it's possible to create instances of it.

To avoid that Forest cleans up any library item which is not in use, just move it from the "forest_templates" layer to any other layer.

Title: Re: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: TG4018 on February 08, 2016, 07:38:04 PM
Thanks! I'm able to make tons of copies of the forest objects in one group and instance the rest of the house in another group along with it and have it all working now, but making an instance of the entire house as a group incl. the forest objects doesn't work.
Basically, when instancing a forest object, the clone works fine but the original disappears - it's visible in the viewport but isn't rendered. The object is listed in the geometry rollout and everything (and I also tried changing the object in the geometry rollout to the same as the geometry object in the one that worked). Making copies however, works fine.

Any idea why, or maybe it isn't supposed to work (I figure Forest pack doesn't support Max's instance-mechanics)? It doesn't matter much since copying forest objects doesn't increase the polycount or anything, but it'd be nice if I could have the clones depend on each other by instancing them instead.
Title: Re: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: iToo on February 09, 2016, 08:45:04 AM
What renderer do you use ? I will try to reproduce the problem here.
Title: Re: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: TG4018 on February 09, 2016, 12:07:20 PM
Much appreciated! I'm using 3ds Max 2014 x64 with V-Ray Adv 2.40.04. I've also reproduced it myself in another scene, by the way, with another forest object (that wasn't tied to a surface to begin with - it was entirely made in Custom edit mode), and instancing it makes the original invisible and clone visible upon render just like in the other scene with the houses.
Title: Re: Making tons of copies of forest objects
Post by: iToo on February 09, 2016, 04:20:17 PM
Ok, you are right. I've tested it with V-Ray and doesn't work, but theorically it should.
I've added this to our to-do list to check it.