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Like you, I prefer a document or book I can flick back and forth through. I am currently learning Blender. I found the book Blender for Dummies far more useful than the videos that are available. I have two problems with videos, they are generally 720P rather than true high definintion 1080P and they are often done in the Darkside style, which I find very difficult to read. My eyesight was never good to start with and it hasn't improved with age. 1080P and the Highway style are your friends when you have poor eyesight.
Cheers,
Alex.
Thank you for your feedback on the documentation. UltraScatter is an evolving product - there are bug fixes and enhancements in the pipeline already - and the pdf will of course be updated.
I obviously can not anticipate how every user of the product will interact with the software and therefore can not pre-emptively answer all possible questions - but I do have some solid ideas how to improve the written pdf.
I would also like to thank fastbike1 and Richard Haseltine for bringing to our attention the existence of Iray section planes. I was unaware of that functionality until their posts and may include it in future documentation once I've had a chance to play with them.
I have found this script easy to use and can see it being an invaluable tool in nearly all future renders. I will be surprised if it is not encorportated into DAZ functionality in any version 5+.
I downloaded it with the DIM. I use an older Mac, with a relatively small HD so everything is on an external drive. Sometimes that causes problems but not in this case. It went right were it was supposed to go.
I find the interface to be pretty straight forward. Select the item you want to duplicate. Open the script. That part took a couple of beats to get - I wanted to open the script first. So, open the script, select what you want the duplicated items to "grow out of" - like a plane but I guess you can use a ball, or whatever shape. I find the other controls pretty easy to understand, like slope, scatter, attraction, rotation, etc. I'm no programmer but I'm a little familiar with script so that might help me out. Slope and stuff is the same as anything you see in Bryce texturing, for example.
I think the mapping is the best at controlling where you want things to go. I put out a hilly ground plane (from the New Colony set), and just added one each of the elements from Archaic Ruins set. I moved the camera so I couldn't see the Ruins elements. I created (in a graphics program) a simple, 500 pixle square map in black and white. The black is where I didn't want items, the white is where I wanted them. I know that within the white area placement is still random, so its not going to be marching ranks of items. In the script I loaded that map. It took a couple of tries to understand how the map was being applied - to make it easy on myself I created a geoshell of the ground, applied the B&W map to that to see where it was - I ended up flipping the map in the graphics program to get more items where I wanted the camera to point.
One downside that I saw: the boxes that indicate where the instances where going to go are appearing on the underside of the plane Im attaching them to, with just a little peaking out. I had to turn off the ground plane to get an idea of where things were.
I found the documentation a little sparse, but simple and clear.
I really recommend anyone who is tired of placing a million instances of clumps of grass, or trees, or ruins, or birds or whatever, to get this item. I don't know HowieFarkes or anyone that produced this product and I don't want to know - people that smart and creative scare me.
So take this review for what its worth. I think just fiddling with the controls a little will get you going.
Below are a couple of grabs of a work in progress. The ruins are sparse because I was too hesitant. I did less than 80 on each element. It took about a minute per item to generate, problably less than ten minutes total. Most of them are far back in the hills, but at least I didn't have to hand place them. In the future I'll make the numbers higher. The B&W is the map I used to place the ruins on the plane.
And thank you for this thoroughly (as everybody has already said) awesome product, as well as your beautiful and affordable creations for Carrara and now also Daz3D.
I am heartened that the documentation will get a redo and that there will be an enhanced (even better), bug-fixed update (I hope for free for the early buyers).
More power to you!
Thanks for the tips .... very useful!
Thank you. This is helpful.
I tried this as a top view and it seemed to keep all the instances on the ground (for a change, lol). Thank you very much!
I've just been trying UltraScatter for the first time today and I ran into exactly the same problem. The manual says "Limit Scatter to ... allows the selection of a material zone or selection set to constrain where instances are scattered" - are you saying it MUST be a selection set and NOT a mat zone? If so, perhaps you could add a clarification of this in the manual.
I found a couple of posts on Page 5 that give a work-round (using Geometry editor to create a selection set) which I successfully did for a primitive plane. But how does that work for an environment prop from another product - would I have to (a) repeat this bit every time I wanted to use that prop, or (b) save a copy of it with modifications (not ideal in case the base product is updated one day)?
ETA: I must add that I'm really enjoying using the script in every other respect. I can see it will get a lot of use from me - thank you for creating it
Well, I played a little more and came up with this as a "first" attempt - grass and weeds restricted to the path area (creating the selection set as advised) and trees restricted just by max slope.
MelanieL, I'm very confused by this, too. I wanted to scatter something on Genesis 3 Female's face. When I go to the Advanced tab the "Limit scatter to" drop down box shows the surfaces of G3F. It does not show the G3F Surface Selection Sets, like Skin, Nails, Skin-Lips-Nails. If I select the Face, nothing happens and I get errors in the log file.
2016-12-12 19:12:41.681 Loading script: D:/DAZ 3D/Studio/My DIM Library/scripts/ultrascatter/ultrascatter.dse
2016-12-12 19:12:55.296 WARNING: Script Error: Line 1233
2016-12-12 19:12:55.296 WARNING: TypeError: Result of expression 'oSelectionGroup' [null] is not an object.
2016-12-12 19:12:55.296 WARNING: Stack Trace:
<anonymous>()@D:/DAZ 3D/Studio/My DIM Library/scripts/ultrascatter/ultrascatter.dse:1233
2016-12-12 19:12:55.343 Error in script execution: D:/DAZ 3D/Studio/My DIM Library/scripts/ultrascatter/ultrascatter.dse
Yep, that's exactly the error message I got with my primitive-plane-with-added-mat-zone and using the Mountain Trail prop and selecting the path mat zone.
I just loaded up a G3F and used the Geometry editor to select the "face" polys and create a selection set which I called "G3F-Face" - then I scattered some tufts of grass on this selection and here's what I got - grassy hands! I must admit I'm mystified!
I wonder if you could somehow do 'snowy peaks' using ultrascatter. Hrrm.
You are right to be mystified - it is not working as expected and I'm working on a fix for it.
Thank you for letting us know. We can stop pulling our hair out now and wait for the fix.
Here's another problem I'm having. I created a cone and scaled it in the Y direction. I set up the UltraScatter to Inherit Object Scale. I thought that would use the 50% Y scaling of the cone on the instances, but it didn't. Am I doing something wrong, or is it a bug? My scene file is attached.
The script will only use the "global" scale of the object - not individual x,y, or z scaling.
Thank you for the clarification. I really appreciate you participating in the forum and answering questions.
Here is something interesting I made while playing around.
I like it!
Thanks, Will! Here's another weird one for you.
And here is his weird cousin, which I think I like even better.
Hhmm, looks tasty! But I think you have posted the same image twice. Having a replicator in the armoury opens up a lot of things, not just trees and grass on terrains, as you guys are finding out.
OMG!
Will, look at this! I used your WTP shaders. It makes me drool - blueberries, chocolate fudge ripple ice cream, and whipped cream.
No, they are subtly different. If you look at the enlarged images, you can see the difference. The first one shows a large brown grooved sphere on which the other spheres are resting. The second one has that large sphere hidden, and you can see some of the small brown spheres that had been rotated inside of the big sphere. They are very similar. That is why I called the second one "his weird cousin".
NOM!
Those are utterly cool:-)
I felt compelled to put it in a bowl.
Now I definitely want some of that!
Those are amazing, barbult!
And thanks for taking a look, Howie - I'll look out for that fix. Meanwhile I plan to spend my afternoon creating a few (more ambitious) landscape renders - this is such fun!
Are these Selection Sets (a kind of polygon group, created by the Geoemtry Editor tool) or Surface Selection Sets (a collection of surface groups that are used for mutli-selection of surfaces and properties in the Surfaces pane)?
Both actually, selection sets on simple primitives seems to work but on a Genesis figure with lots of surfaces and facet groups are doing strange things. User created surface selections cause the script to error. Trying to fix both problems 'cause they're kinda related.
I agree! Barbult is making yummy looking desserts