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Author Topic: RC & Camera settings  (Read 2375 times)

arch3d

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RC & Camera settings
« on: March 10, 2018, 08:40:13 AM »
Hi all,
I think camera settings similar to ForestPack could be extremely useful for RC:

- limit to visibility
- LOD

Michal

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2018, 08:58:33 AM »
Hi Michal,

Thanks for your suggestions, but these features doesn't suit well with RC , because the position of segments in RailClone is always dependent upon their position within the array, so it is always necessary to build the entire array to calculate the position of each segment correctly.

Said that, i must add that in V-Ray already exists some kind of camera clipping:
By default RailClone computes only the bounding box for all segments, and the final geometry is generated only when the raytracer hits that part of the RC object.

In fact, this method is more precise and efficient than Forest clipping, because has not problems with reflections, items near of the camera's bound, etc.

This feature can be enabled/disabled with a registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Itoo Software\RailClone Pro\DynamicGeometry), and is enabled by default.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

arch3d

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2018, 12:21:53 PM »
Hi Carlos,

Thanks for info. I was thinking about saving resources mostly during modeling stage. I love FP camera clipping because if i switch to different view it "freeze" clipping so i can work without losing performance. If i got a lot of geometry ( curbs, sidewalks, roofing slates ) i would like to work in same way. So even if RC could create "mixed" display (e.g parts of rc array visible in camera display as mesh and rest of array as boxes or point clouds) it could be nice because most of a cases working with rc demands to be more precise.

Best,
Michal
« Last Edit: March 13, 2018, 12:23:27 PM by arch3d »

Paul Roberts

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2018, 12:10:11 PM »
Hi Michal,

It might be possible to fake camera clipping using a couple of tools already in RailClone.  You could draw a simple clipping spline to match the camera frustum and use this to show only those segments that are in view. The process for that would be as follows.

1 - Draw a spline from the top view the size of the camera frustum, ensuring that it includes all the parts of the RailClone object that are in the final render.
2 - Add a clipping spline to the generator(s).
3 - Change the clipping mode to Include.
4 - For more efficiency, and if the style allows it, you should also turn off slice for all the segments. Set the generator's No Slice mode to Preserve to ensure you don't lose geometry around the edges of the shot.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Many Thanks,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

arch3d

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2018, 02:11:10 PM »
Paul,
Thank you very much for help

Best regards,
Michal

Terri Brown

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #5 on: July 17, 2020, 02:44:50 PM »
Hi guys,

I'm building a farm-style barbed wire fence. There's a big house, lots of vegetation, the fence etc. I have at least ten cameras in my scene, so a plugin like FP is perfect for when I swap views, as I'm using LODs and whatever is closest to the camera is high res, and furthest low res etc. Simple enough.

The issue comes in with my fence. I have some views that show the fence close up, whereas in others it's in the background. I am using a megascans asset for the posts, and I'd love to have the high res post for when the fence is a certain distance from my camera, but use a low res one for the posts that disappear into the background.

I realise you say that LODs aren't possible in RC, but is there a workaround to try achieve something like I have explained above?

Thanks,
Terri

Paul Roberts

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2020, 03:14:34 PM »
Hi Terri,

You could probably use the technique described in my post above. But I would also run some tests to check it is work the effort. If the post's Deform and Slice options are disabled then it will be fully instanced by RailClone and you might find there is very little to be gained from LODs in this case.

Cheers,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Terri Brown

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Re: RC & Camera settings
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2020, 11:30:21 AM »
ok thanks Paul