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Author Topic: Use Forest colour map on it's own + Bug with map  (Read 1558 times)

3dwannab

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Use Forest colour map on it's own + Bug with map
« on: December 20, 2014, 04:51:22 AM »
First thing is I need to use the forest colour map on it's own without it been part of a forest scatter. I think after payment for the complete plug-in something like this would be allowed to be used separately. I wanted to use this function for leaves on a tree but test it on the original file, then import that file and scatter it in the scene. It is possible to have the map type accessible without the need to scatter the object. As it would be easier to update the base file and import it into multiple projects instead of having to do the same tweaking every time.

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Scond is, is there a bug in the map type? It's unclear from the help docs.

The definition of an element in max is:
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An element is one of two or more individual mesh objects (that is, groups of contiguous faces) grouped together into one larger object. For example, if you attach one box to another, you create one mesh object from the two boxes. Each box is now an element of the object. Any function you perform on that object affects all its elements. However, you can manipulate the elements independently at the Element sub-object level.

That exactly how I created the mesh by creating seperate boxes, then attaching them. Whereas the Forest color map behaves on a per (ID/face) way instead of a group of elements. I have set the material up so that it's get ID and tint variation are element.

See attached with scene file saved as 2012:




« Last Edit: December 20, 2014, 04:57:06 AM by 3dwannab »

iToo

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Re: Use Forest colour map on it's own + Bug with map
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2014, 10:28:15 AM »
Unfortunately it's not possible to use Forest Color separately from the scatter, because for certain features it's necessary to generate data structures that are stored in the Forest object.
One of these structures is the hierarchy of elements in the mesh. By technical reasons, these data cannot be generated by the map plugin.

If you want to test Forest Color in a single tree, you may create a Forest Object in Custom Edit mode, with an unique item.

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The definition of an element in max is:

Forest doesn't use Max elements, but its own structure as described in the documentation:

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The Elements are the mesh pieces that define an Item, as the leaves or the branches of an individual tree. Note that the Elements are not the faces of a mesh, but an upper hierarchy. Internally, Forest Color consideres an Element as each group of adjacent faces of a mesh that share the same material ID.

We use this method because it works better to identify elements as leaves in a tree. Also, the hierarchy of max elements may change, depending of how faces were attached to compose the mesh. That would generate unpredictable results in Forest Color.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software