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Comments
Looks really cool, what you've done! :)
Agreeing with 3dage and EP, I dislike maneuvering in a Large scaled scene when I have to zoom in on anything smaller than a mountain.
Just a quick FYI, You may drag Large scenes from the browser into a medium scene, if you wish. However...
I really like making terrains in the terrain editor! lol
Not sure why. It seem s to take a lot of patience, and even when I've had over two and a half gallons of patience, I still swear and throw hard, heavy objects. But I still enjoy it. I also really like the terrain shaders that come in the Native content in the browser. Editing it is really a worthwhile experience.
Anyways, whether you make your own or drag one in, you can double click on it in the Instances tab to the right, which will get you into the terrain editor, where on the right grouping of parameters, towards the bottom, there's a spot where you can tell it to resize the terrain to any numbers you like. If you change the size at the top, it will mess with all of the other attributes that make it look the way it looks... but if you use the rescale option on the bottom, it will keep the terrain's appearance intact.
Another tip of worthy note:
Using the Directors camera to see the overall terrain and the center grids of the scene, move the terrain around until you get a good surface at the grid's spot so you don't have to move everthing else you load into the scene to the spot you want it to sit. If the optimum location happens to be near the edge of the terrain, just hit 'Ctrl D' or 'Edit > Duplicate' to create a low memory instance of the same terrain, and just drag it off behind that edge to continue your terrain. With a duplicated instance, you can rotate it, move it, and scale it with the scale tool in the assembly room. But if you enter the terrain editor with either copy, you'll be asked if you want to edit the master (this option will make your changes to all such instances that you made using Ctrl D) or to Create a New Master. So if you only need a quick scaling, just use the tool in the assemble room (keyboard shortcut "s").
Really cool thing about Ctrl D (duplicates): They don't add a new object to your scene anywhere. Not in the shaders tab, Objects tab, or the sequencer. In effect, it's just a trick on the eye that it's even there! :)
If you need a whole lot of something (figures don't duplicate, which is a real bummer), you can Cntrl D it, then move it and rotate it, then Ctrl D again and it will automatically move and rotate the new one just like what you just did, as long as you don't deselect it in between. So you can keep Ctrl Ding until that direction and rotation is no longer useful. Then you can select as many duplicates as you want, and Ctrl D those and continue the process. Replicators are great, but nothing quite beats a nice Control D session every now and then!
Keep in mind, however: These duplicates are incredibly not there as far as RAM is concerned, the Render Engine sees them as individual units all the same - so each thing you add still adds that much more to the render time - but is still a huge advantage!
To see how a master sets up his outdoor scenes, open Howie's Snow scene, choose to view from the left or right isometric view and zoom out using the magnifying tool. You will notice a three terrains (as I recall). The first (and smallest) is the one the scene's preset cameras are set to view. I'll call it the hero as that is what you want to look at. It's the one with the most detail put into it. The other terrain(s) are set back from the "hero" terrain and are the distant foothills and mountain ranges.
I try and think of that when I set up my scenes. I may have a terrain only a couple hundred virtual feet centered at the working grid and then build out from there with other distant terrains. I find it much less frustrating keeping things in scale and perspective. Plus, if you have an angle you really like, but wish there was a big mountain in view, it's easy to move a separate terrain in view without worrying about all your other scene elements.
I'm sorry ManStan but converting to vertex is something I don't understand yet , but thankyou for your input, I will surley discover that at some point
thank you dartenbeck for the nice comment. are you saying that I can open a new medium scene and then drag my saved scene into it even tho the saved scene was created in a larger setting?
I was curious as to whether you could put more than one terrain in a scene, which I did do in my scene after all... the bottom left corner is a separate terrain, but when I tried to put trees all over using surface replicator it only applied to the first terrain. Do I have to apply to each terrain separately?
Yes, you would need to have a surface replicator for each terrain. You could name each terrain to help keep them straight. See screen-shot.
The neat thing about surface replicators is that you can apply multiple replicators to the same terrain or other object. So using a terrain, you could have a replicator just for trees, one for grass, etc. You can even create and use distribution maps (black and white image maps) to control regions where you want trees or grass and where you don't.
As an example, here's an exported height map from the terrain editor which I used as a reference to create a distribution map (the black and white image) to control where I wanted cattails along the river bank. The white area is where the cattails will be distributed. I also had a second replicator to drive the placement of my trees.
Edited to make a correction: I should have clarified I hand painted the height map, imported it into the terrain editor.
your scene is fabulous evilproducer, thanks for posting it. I did something similar to your distribution (black & white image?) following the tutorial but creating a shader to show the different areas I believe for where I wanted my surface replicator to put the trees in my valley and not on the mountain areas but the trees weren't big enough and they didn't apply to the second terrain and even with using shuffle still blocked view of the tower...so I am working on redoing that and trying it again
I can't believe how much I have learned in just a few days...thank you all for answering my questions :)
Edit to add: when you use more than one terrain do you have to merge them together, I dragged the second one onto the first one, so it showed a as sublayer? of the main terrain
No merging is required for terrains. again, you would need a separate surface replicator for each terrain, and a different distribution map to drive tree placement.
ok no merging, good to know, I will have another go at it and post my results soon ...thanks again :)
If you want a seamless terrain that goes on for as far as the eye can see, you can use a plain replicator and add your terrain to it. The replicator cell size should be the same size as the terrain, so if you have a 1000'x1000' terrain you would set the cell size to 1000' feet in the X and Y (I think) fields. If you check the Seamless box, it will replicate them seamlessly. Works for oceans as well. I'd post a screen shot, but I'm rendering at the moment.
Or you can simply create an illusion of 'forever' terrain as shown below. The big, obvious terrain in this is really huge. I applied a zero edge filter to make the base square like that. I shuffled and filtered and shuffled and filtered until I got the center to sink down like I wanted it to.
Now look really closely at the center. See those little green blocks that form a circle? Those are each 100' x 100' and covered with I think six different trees using a replicator with like, 180% in the scale field to get massive changes in size. There's a lot of trees on each one. I set one of those tree covered terrains way out away from the center terrain, which is the second image. Once I got the tree covered terrain way out there, I set the hot point (CapSLoCk) to the center of the scene and hit "Ctrl D" to duplicate the entire block of terrain with a bazillion trees on it. With the hotpoint in the center, when I rotate the duplicate, it follows the same diameter as the first one, way out there. I made that one so close that it almost overlapped. Then I just kept hitting Ctrl D over and over until the center was completely surrounded. Then I went to each of those terrains, in turn. Select one and hit "Ctrl H" which centers the hotpoint again on the terrain. Then I rotated them and moved them into their own, unique position, leaving gaps to give way to that huge surrounding horizon terrain. The second Image is the central terrain that I spent many days on. The water is a single small square of the Ocean primitive with animation waves set to follow the wind. I then replicated (standard, not surface) that into the large square of water that you see. The original is hiding below the terrain. Slightly under the lowest waves of the replicated water is an infinite plane that shares the same shader as the Ocean primitive. I made smaller terrains too. The next smaller size has shrubs, twigs, dead trees, still standing, some leaning, and trees. Some are replicated and some are solitary, hand-placed signature trees. The smallest terrain's vegetation is placed entirely by hand.
The small, medium and those large 100 x 100 blocks are all stored as objects, in the browser, so that I use them to decorate my scene. The Base in the second picture lies in the center of the scene in the first picture, and is then saved as one scene, full of lighting options, environmental FX and such. Then I drag in the other terrains to create entirely different scenes. This is an up and coming product I'll be releasing very soon. But you can simply do this all yourself.
Furthermore, Since Carrara is thankfully a vertex modeler, I made a 3,000 foot sphere and deleted all but a slice of it, vertically. I made a nice selection of morphs that allow you to widen or shrink the slice horizontally. The same vertically. Before I explain that I made two more that are shaped like what you'd expect to see from a thunder storm, I should explain that this object was made to replicate volumetric clouds upon. Rather than slow the computer down using an entire sphere, I chose this instead. As a nice side effect, you can animate the clouds rolling toward you in a storm! All of my morphs strategically leave the single, bottom vertex at or really near point zero in the scene.
I like to create things that are really easy to operate! :)
Anyways, half the time I don't need the clouds slice because the one cloud that is replicated all over it looks really good all by itself. Since I duplicated the cloud replication slice, I have a second cloud to play with as well. The first is set so that the top of the fluff is just protruding through the entire top of the central terrain as shown in the third image. This is the ground fog option. For animations, simply open it by double clicking it in the instances tray, and type the number of seconds the animation runs where it says: "Animate". You can also move and rotate it for further effect. This leaves a duplicated version to be used as a nice cloud somewhere, which changes appearance drastically depending upon it's rotation and scale.
What else can I tell you....
Hmnpf. That's enough brain food for now, eh? The fourth and fifth images were created using the kit :)
Have fun.
EP, Scene's looking cool!
With the snow scene open, find the spruce tree in the instances tray on the right side of the screen and drag and drop it into your browser. I placed a snow covered version and a plain version in the Basic Plants directory in the Objects browser since the directory was already there.
So I have the snow scene open and on the instances tab it shows the groups of trees, when I click on spruce tree or birch tree and drag to the objects/plants folder I get an error message saying an I/O error occurred and nothing happens. Can you tell in more detail what I should be doing to get a spruce tree to my basic plants folder? thanks you
Not sure, exactly, why that's happening. Try this:
Select the tree you want and copy/paste it back into the scene. With the new copy selected, go Edit > Send to Origin (it's good to place them at zero coordinates, so they come in that way). Just for good measure, go Edit > Remove Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders.
Now try dragging that tree into the browser.
Here's the other way:
In any scene, insert Plant. This will launch the plant editor. Use the "Load" button, those spruce trees, I believe are under Misc? I don't remember, but I know I see them in there. Both his spruce and winter spruce.
I must be doing something wrong..I load the tree, click on it in the instance tab to hilite it, drag it onto the part where all the trees are listed in the basic plants folder of the object tab ( which turns green when I have the plant over it) then I release a box comes up to name the plant, I type in Spruce tree click ok and box pops up saying an I/O error occurred whil executing...should it be this hard???
Edit to add: I now tried to put it in the My Objects folder which worked, why can't I put it in the Basic plant folder...that would make more sense
The first thing I can think of offhand is maybe some kind of permission issue with your OS causing that directory to be read only? Could be a resource issue as well. You could load the snow scene and delete everything in it except the tree you want and try dragging the tree to the Browser. You could also quit Carrara and relaunch it to see if that clears out anything.
It might be that it's a protected browser folder? If you like, go into the installation folder > Presets > Plants > Basic, and make a new folder inside the "Basic" folder. This folder will give you access in the browser. That's how I do it if I'm making products for other people to instal. This way they don't have to go through the "Add Folder" process. But for saving my own personal stuff, I make an organizational file saving structure within the My Objects part of the browser. I have a nice little article all about how easy it is. Making such a thing early on is best, because it gives you a completely non-destructive way of backing up your own saves that is completely independent of the installation directories - so they transfer very easy from this version of Carrara to another.
ok I will try making my own folder and putting it there, I will check out your link to find out how