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Author Topic: Some Suggestions and issues  (Read 1606 times)

Mahmoud Keshta

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Some Suggestions and issues
« on: May 04, 2016, 02:33:28 AM »
Hi,
This is my first post here as I am a new user of railclone and forest pack. first of all I have to say that railclone is  amazing plugin and I really like its workflow.

I have some suggestions or feature requests you may take it in mind it in the future updates if possible :

- Parameters rollout :It will be better to make it accessed directly (not from list) like normal parameters of 3ds max objects and modifier or like attribute holder because sometimes I add many parameters to the style for more controlling and current method is a bit annoying.

- Segments Xform : Are there any ways to reset xform of railclone segments after applying the style (without converting it to regular mesh).  For instance If I want to create a generic style for tiles or cladding and I used regular box as segment with square proportion , when I scale it inside railclone with fixed size parameters and apply chamfer modifier to the original object it will be not good specially when I use scale role type in generator settingor even I scale it twise in x or y only. also it will be so nice if we can apply chamfer inside the style in some way.

- Instancing railclone object : Today I used railclone apply to poly script it is amazing and saved my time a lot but at end I realized that I have about 12 unique railclone objects and If I want to update setting I should update all 12 object separately. So If there is a way to instance all object parameters and style ( except base object rollout) it will be very useful specially for large count of railclone objects.

- I don't know if it is possible to create adaptivity mode in y size direction separately. I did it manually by Arithmetic operators but it took long time and graph becomes very messy

- Cap holes for sliced geometry will be very useful feature.

- How can I use coronaMultiMap or vrayMultiSubTex with railclone ? it always give unexpected results.


Thanks

 


Paul Roberts

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Re: Some Suggestions and issues
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2016, 03:19:55 PM »
Hi Mahmoud ,

Thanks for contacting us, we're glad to hear that your enjoying using RailClone. Thanks too for the suggestions, they're always helpful. I've responded below but you'll be glad to know that some of these are already on our to-do list.

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Parameters rollout :It will be better to make it accessed directly (not from list) like normal parameters of 3ds max objects

At the moment we use standard Max parameters, but they are saved in the form of arrays because the number is variable and changes dynamically. As far as we recall Max doesn't work well with arrays parameters in the UI but we'll double check it and see what's possible for a future release.

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Segments Xform : Are there any ways to reset xform of railclone segments after applying the style (without converting it to regular mesh)?
RailClone is optimised for instancing and resetting the XForm of each segment would make each one a unique objects. Unfortunately, as you've found, this means that segment's scaling affects any modifiers that are applied. Equally we don't plan to replicate any of the features that are already found in max. However there are a couple of workarounds.

You could slice your model so that the chamfered sections are separate, and then scale only the areas that will not cause visible distortion. You can see thread about this here: http://forum.itoosoft.com/index.php?topic=2367.msg8945#msg8945

Or if you're not worried about losing instancing you could simple distribute planes and then apply a Shell and Chamfer modifier directly to the RailClone object. In some cases, such as floors, this can work quite well because you also get capped ends where the geometry is sliced. You can see an example of this in the attached file.

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Instancing railclone object
This is already on our wishlist. We'd like to make something like global variables that can be accessed from any RC object but we haven't finalised the details yet. Also though we're looking into the ability to apply RC styles to surfaces ro make roofs and walls even easier. In that way it might be possible to populate all those faces from a single RC object and you wouldn't need to use that script any more :)

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I don't know if it is possible to create adaptivity mode in y size direction separately.

This is difficult to implement in a way that satisfies all possible conditions due to the way the A2S generators work (rows of linear generators). However we do have plans to be able to collapse groups of nodes so it could be possible the custom node graph your using to solve the issue now could be represented by a single node in future versions. This too is on our wish list :)

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Cap holes for sliced geometry will be very useful feature.
This feature was available in the first betas of RC 2.4, but unfortunately we had to remove it, because an unsolvable problem with the mapping coordinates. It's still on our wish list but very difficult to solve due to problems with UVWs and the way in which some slices occur. The only solution at the moment is to apply a capping modifier to the object though this has many of the the same limitations as we encountered in RC 2.4.

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How can I use coronaMultiMap or vrayMultiSubTex with railclone
You might find this post in our knowledge base helpful for materials and maps like this: http://docs.itoosoft.com/display/KB/Can+I+Use+Bercon+Gradient,+Multi-Texture+or+CrossMap+with+RailClone it shows how to set up materials and maps to use common texture randomising tools.

There's also this thread which looks at how to use these types of maps in a Multi/sub object material setup which is often when problems occur, it includes examples on using VRarMultiTex maps: http://forum.itoosoft.com/index.php?topic=3065.0

In the next major version we'd like to include a map similar to Forest Color that can be used with both our plugins, this should make this type of scenario much easier.

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

Many Thanks,

Paul




Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Mahmoud Keshta

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Re: Some Suggestions and issues
« Reply #2 on: May 04, 2016, 08:41:23 PM »
Thanks  a lot Paul for your useful replay.

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At the moment we use standard Max parameters, but they are saved in the form of arrays because the number is variable and changes dynamically. As far as we recall Max doesn't work well with arrays parameters in the UI but we'll double check it and see what's possible for a future release.
yes please this is very important issue for me at least.

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You could slice your model so that the chamfered sections are separate, and then scale only the areas that will not cause visible distortion. You can see thread about this here: http://forum.itoosoft.com/index.php?topic=2367.msg8945#msg8945
I know this method but can I get full control for the composed segment scale or not ? I should give it a try ... also the second method is very nice  but I must set display to mesh all the time. thanks for the file.

Quote
Also though we're looking into the ability to apply RC styles to surfaces ro make roofs and walls even easier. In that way it might be possible to populate all those faces from a single RC object and you wouldn't need to use that script any more :)

This will be very useful  :)

Thanks for links about multimap usage I will check them.

There is another issue also which will make things easier :

- Exporting parameters from drop down menu is very confusing in some cases if we can hover on the parameter in properties panel and simply right click and export it will be like a magic  :) .

I wonder if railclone is able to create stuff like this or not (at least arraying objects with custom scale roles) :









Thanks again Paul for your support .

Paul Roberts

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Re: Some Suggestions and issues
« Reply #3 on: May 05, 2016, 01:53:10 PM »
No problem at all, it's always really helpful to get feedback and suggestions, so thank you too.  :)

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- Exporting parameters from drop down menu is very confusing in some cases if we can hover on the parameter in properties panel and simply right click and export it will be like a magic .

Making exporting multiple items easier could be interesting. I've added this to the wishlist, thanks for the suggestion!

I wonder if railclone is able to create stuff like this or not (at least arraying objects with custom scale roles):

Though you could scatter objects with different sized apertures (for example) and control there placement using expressions at the moment controlling them with attractors or maps is not currently possible. Somewhere on the wish-list (which gets bigger every day!) is the idea to revamp RailClone's expressions editor similar to the new Forest Pack 5 effects feature which might add some possibilities for this kind of object.

Many thanks,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software