Itoo Software Forum

Forest Pack => Forest Pro (*) => Topic started by: Short-Cuts on September 30, 2009, 06:56:29 PM

Title: Problem with surface function
Post by: Short-Cuts on September 30, 2009, 06:56:29 PM
First of all i really like the 3.0 Version of forest pack pro, lots of useful features and a real timesaver. You guys did a great job. But now i ran into a problem when using the surface function, which was by the way the reason for us to switch to the pro version. I am trying to scatter some grass VRayProxies and on a flat surfaces and it works very well but when it comes to an elevation it seems that not all proxys are rendered. To better illustrate the problem i attached a screenshot. You can clearly see that the grass looks good where its flat, but as soon the is an elevation it looks like there is a cut and its not scattered/rendered properly.  Judging from the Viewport it should be covered pretty well. I use more proxies there then on my flat surface but it still looks very poor. what i already tried was to increse or decrease the tesselation of the elevation - didnt helped. Aligned it to the normals(which i actually dont want) - didnt helped. There is no limit activated. Maybe i am missing something here so a little help would be much appreciated.

3dsmax 2009 x64
Forest Pack Pro 3.2.4

Olli
Title: Re: Problem with surface function
Post by: iToo on September 30, 2009, 08:11:11 PM

Forest scatters the items using a XY distribution, and then places the items on the surface. Because this, the density in sloped areas would be less than over a flat surface. To fix this issue, we have introduced the 'Scale to Fit' parameter (although it only works when 'Align to Normals' is enabled). The parameters are described here:

http://www.itoosoft.com/english/menu.php?id=forest_refsurface

However, seeing the image, i'm not sure if this is the problem or really there are less proxies in the render than in the viewport (as you pointed out, it looks correct).

Please, can you send us a test scene with this issue ? I need to check the slope of the surface and test some renders. You can upload it or send us an email to support@itoosoft.com.

Title: Re: Problem with surface function
Post by: dschaga on October 02, 2009, 10:23:50 AM
there are too many proxies with opacity maps - it's an vray limitation.
Try less proxies
Title: Re: Problem with surface function
Post by: iToo on October 03, 2009, 12:56:32 PM
I didn't know that VRray limitation. However, remember that is not needed to use proxies with Forest. In our scenes usually we use meshes, it renders faster and we have not found these type of problems.

Title: Re: Problem with surface function
Post by: Erik Clemens on October 03, 2009, 05:12:06 PM
there are too many proxies with opacity maps - it's an vray limitation.
Try less proxies

What specifically do you mean ? I have used more then 100K opacity mapped proxies (trees, grass or whatever) in FP, VRayScatter and Groundwiz and never had any problems. So far as I can see he only uses about 15K proxies !

It looks like you're just seeing the green base plane because it is making another angle and is facing more towards you. If you look at the wireframe there are just as many instances...you're just looking more "between" them !! You can also try to make a more smoother elevation and also try another base material wich is closer to the grass color.
Title: Re: Problem with surface function
Post by: Short-Cuts on October 05, 2009, 11:51:15 AM
I am not using any opacity maps, so i dont think that is the problem. In this scene i was just experimenting with different proxies to create a nice looking lawn. I had 3 different blades that were scattered around the ground plane. I think Erik was right about that i might looking "between" them. I "solved" the problem by using larger grass patches instead of single blades as the proxy object. It works in this scene and i am quite happy with the result. Also that "scale to fit slopes areas" function did helped quite a lot, dont know why i missed that last week.
Thanks for the replys and help.

Olli