UltraScenery [Commercial]

plasma_ring

HowieFarkes said:

plasma_ring said:

Hello! The script was working yesterday and I was able to build one scene, but today I'm getting a script execution error and scenes aren't loading. I did install/update some other products in between my successful attempt and now. Log of the error is attached!

I'm not sure if it's a problem with the script or if I've accidentally snorked something up. 

An update is in the pipeline and I'm hoping that correct metadata might fix some problems. 

Awesome, thank you so much! I'm looking forward to playing with it more, and all the renders folks are coming up with are a huge inspiration. :D 

 

alexhcowley

TangoAlpha said:

Here's a peek at my willows addon wip. There will be summer, autumn, and probably winter variations

I can't wait to see this. My credit card, however, is trying to hide at the bottom of the garden, again. 

Cheers,

Alex.

SimonJM

alexhcowley said:

TangoAlpha said:

Here's a peek at my willows addon wip. There will be summer, autumn, and probably winter variations

I can't wait to see this. My credit card, however, is trying to hide at the bottom of the garden, again. 

Cheers,

Alex.

Dig it up and you'll be able to build a new garden ..  

Elettrodado

HowieFarkes said:

Artini said:

What lights are the best to use with Ultra Scenery?

I have tried various HDRI maps, but they does not look right on the render,

so I use mostly just a sun light.

 

There's an Iray render settings duf supplied with the product which is pretty much what I used to create most of the promos with. Can adjust the time of day or rotate the dome to change the sun angle. I have seen some pretty lovely renders in this thread from people using HDRI though.

Sorry if I ask it again, there is also a camera prop in the product, which is not a camera but a shape of piramid. Does this something, or is just for the script? Thanks.

barbult

Elettrodado said:

HowieFarkes said:

Artini said:

What lights are the best to use with Ultra Scenery?

I have tried various HDRI maps, but they does not look right on the render,

so I use mostly just a sun light.

 

There's an Iray render settings duf supplied with the product which is pretty much what I used to create most of the promos with. Can adjust the time of day or rotate the dome to change the sun angle. I have seen some pretty lovely renders in this thread from people using HDRI though.

Sorry if I ask it again, there is also a camera prop in the product, which is not a camera but a shape of piramid. Does this something, or is just for the script? Thanks.

It is just for the script. I asked earlier and it was answered earlier in this thread.

Elettrodado

barbult said:

 

It is just for the script. I asked earlier and it was answered earlier in this thread.

Ok, thanks. I missed that previous answer.

fastbike1

@melissastjames "I suppose the only thing I can do is render out a small ~1,000px test run to check my lighting, etc and use that in place of the Iray preview. It's just a pain in the patoo"

That's the interesting thing about personal perspectives. I have a GTX 980 TI and render small "previews" all the time to check lighting etc because I think the Iray Preview mode is a pain in the patoo.

fastbike1

@AllenArt "all of this fit on my meager 6gb 980ti."

Isn't that funny. I have a 980 TI as well and didn't used to think it was meager, but I'm looking at RTXs now.

 

Gogger

fastbike1 said:

@melissastjames "I suppose the only thing I can do is render out a small ~1,000px test run to check my lighting, etc and use that in place of the Iray preview. It's just a pain in the patoo"

That's the interesting thing about personal perspectives. I have a GTX 980 TI and render small "previews" all the time to check lighting etc because I think the Iray Preview mode is a pain in the patoo.

I've recently upgraded to a new computer so am living pretty LARGE right now, and do NOT have any issues using Iray Preview in the smaller preview pane and then rendering 3440x1440 images one after another (without rebooting or restarting DAZ Studio). At times in this thread it sounded like it was a program error, or plugin fault, but I think it is just a resources thing. FWIW: I'm running a RTX2060 and RTX2080Ti on a new high-spec Alienware Desktop.  I'd point fingers at GPU/video RAM, updated drivers (all), then system memory, and then CPU, in that order if anyone is having issues.  Just my two cents worth. 

fastbike1

 I thought the render could be limited to the camera view. I so, doesn't that limit the area issues to a reasonable degree. I haven't gotten into UltraScenery yet, but I thought I saw the camera view option in this thread.

HowieFarkes said:

Kenkoy said:

Hi! The images in this thread are amazing. And here comes a 'but':

But I'm wondering if there's any chance of an update adding the ability to choose the landscape's area size, and the elevation for self-made height maps? This product is three or four times too large for any scene I normally need. And, elevation is very limited when using your own height map.

My little old machine is super-fast in Iray as long as I keep it simple. Plus, I love simple. This is a beautiful product, but it's too big area-wise, and too shallow height-wise.
Thanks for listening :-)

 

Changing the area of the terrain is not feasible in the near term but it is on the to-do list.

You can already change the height/elevation - even when using height maps - by setting the "Max altitude (m)" setting on the Noise tab. I realise it's not super intuitive where it is right now so will do something about that.

 

fastbike1

Use DIM. You will note that there have a number of products that don't seem to install with connect. 

Greybro said:

Well, I've installed and uninstalled a few time susing connect. Seems like it's still not fully installed. Please see my screenshots and advise of a solution.

 

NotAnArtist

HowieFarkes said:

Changing the area of the terrain is not feasible in the near term but it is on the to-do list.

You can already change the height/elevation - even when using height maps - by setting the "Max altitude (m)" setting on the Noise tab. I realise it's not super intuitive where it is right now so will do something about that.

OK, thank you. It helps to know what's coming. You've got a lot on your hands with this one, but it's going to help a lot of people with their productivity.

Oso3D

So I started wanting to make a lake shore. But I didn't find a really good way to do that, so I ended up generating a terrain in UltraScenery, and then used the assets from it (terrain map, water, plants) and then used UltraScatterPro to build the actual scene.

I found it very helpful to have the terrain shader in UltraScenery to work with.

dawnblade

Gogger said:

fastbike1 said:

@melissastjames "I suppose the only thing I can do is render out a small ~1,000px test run to check my lighting, etc and use that in place of the Iray preview. It's just a pain in the patoo"

That's the interesting thing about personal perspectives. I have a GTX 980 TI and render small "previews" all the time to check lighting etc because I think the Iray Preview mode is a pain in the patoo.

I've recently upgraded to a new computer so am living pretty LARGE right now, and do NOT have any issues using Iray Preview in the smaller preview pane and then rendering 3440x1440 images one after another (without rebooting or restarting DAZ Studio). At times in this thread it sounded like it was a program error, or plugin fault, but I think it is just a resources thing. FWIW: I'm running a RTX2060 and RTX2080Ti on a new high-spec Alienware Desktop.  I'd point fingers at GPU/video RAM, updated drivers (all), then system memory, and then CPU, in that order if anyone is having issues.  Just my two cents worth. 

I know I had said that Iray preview/DS would lock up, and I had to use task manager to quit. I was referring to using Iray preview in the large viewport. I didn't try and haven't used the smaller viewport in a while, as other stuff pretty much worked ok in the regular viewport. I hope I didn't cause any confusion, given that I didn't clarify which viewport in earlier posts.

 

Gogger

dawnblade said:

Gogger said:

fastbike1 said:

@melissastjames "I suppose the only thing I can do is render out a small ~1,000px test run to check my lighting, etc and use that in place of the Iray preview. It's just a pain in the patoo"

That's the interesting thing about personal perspectives. I have a GTX 980 TI and render small "previews" all the time to check lighting etc because I think the Iray Preview mode is a pain in the patoo.

I've recently upgraded to a new computer so am living pretty LARGE right now, and do NOT have any issues using Iray Preview in the smaller preview pane and then rendering 3440x1440 images one after another (without rebooting or restarting DAZ Studio). At times in this thread it sounded like it was a program error, or plugin fault, but I think it is just a resources thing. FWIW: I'm running a RTX2060 and RTX2080Ti on a new high-spec Alienware Desktop.  I'd point fingers at GPU/video RAM, updated drivers (all), then system memory, and then CPU, in that order if anyone is having issues.  Just my two cents worth. 

I know I had said that Iray preview/DS would lock up, and I had to use task manager to quit. I was referring to using Iray preview in the large viewport. I didn't try and haven't used the smaller viewport in a while, as other stuff pretty much worked ok in the regular viewport. I hope I didn't cause any confusion, given that I didn't clarify which viewport in earlier posts.

 

I had actually tried the large screen Iray preview with an UltraScenery scene too with no issues noted, but don't normally work that way as IRAY, when eventually doing the actual rendering, will often fall back to CPU if I do much fiddling about like that.  Doesn't seem to happen with the small preview window, only if preview checking it in the large screen.

Your results may vary.

barbult

HowieFarkes said:

barbult said:

I just ran into a problem. I regenerated my scenery and changed the ecology from Grassland 3 to Woodland 2, and ended up with no texture on the UltraScene. I did not change the Feature when I regenerated. The Feature was still Dirt Track 1. Maybe that is how another use ended up without the water texture being applied. My scattered instances have their texture, but the underlying terrain does not. Does something go awry if we don't go through the Terrain, Features, Ecology each time we build? Scene is attached.

Thank you for reporting this. If you've got time could you test if this is reproducable? I followed your steps and did not see a problem with loading the material the second time around. I have a suspicion that this might just be a random intermittant failure to load materials - gonna be hard to track down why.

I have not been able to reproduce this either. I have generated and regenerated dozens of scenes using various features and ecologies, and it has not happened again.

barbult

I find Canary's Cameras very helpful when working with UltraScenery. They provide interesting render angles and good top down "see it all" cameras. If your scenery has real high elevation, you may need to move the cameras up for a good view. Since they load in in a group, it is easy to grab the group and move the whole set of cameras up.

Currently I'm using the "CCam Scene Set - Distance 1K" camera group with Woodland 2 and getting very nice results.

AllenArt

fastbike1 said:

@AllenArt "all of this fit on my meager 6gb 980ti."

Isn't that funny. I have a 980 TI as well and didn't used to think it was meager, but I'm looking at RTXs now.

 

They're showing their age now ;)

Laurie

fastbike1

So am I  

AllenArt said:

fastbike1 said:

@AllenArt "all of this fit on my meager 6gb 980ti."

Isn't that funny. I have a 980 TI as well and didn't used to think it was meager, but I'm looking at RTXs now.

 

They're showing their age now ;)

Laurie

 

dawnblade

barbult said:

I find Canary's Cameras very helpful when working with UltraScenery. They provide interesting render angles and good top down "see it all" cameras. If your scenery has real high elevation, you may need to move the cameras up for a good view. Since they load in in a group, it is easy to grab the group and move the whole set of cameras up.

Currently I'm using the "CCam Scene Set - Distance 1K" camera group with Woodland 2 and getting very nice results.

Thanks, will have to check these out. I've been using IG Photographer's Toolbox: Cinematic Cameras 2 for their widescreen formats. The huge plus with these cameras is that you can actually see the sun and clouds in an HDRI, without adding in IBL Master Control, or messing with Dome Radius or Dome Scale Multiplier.

 

Artini

HowieFarkes said:

Artini said:

What lights are the best to use with Ultra Scenery?

I have tried various HDRI maps, but they does not look right on the render,

so I use mostly just a sun light.

 

There's an Iray render settings duf supplied with the product which is pretty much what I used to create most of the promos with. Can adjust the time of day or rotate the dome to change the sun angle. I have seen some pretty lovely renders in this thread from people using HDRI though.

Thanks for the tips. I have found that render preset and will explore it more.

 

Gogger

Just practicing my rendercraft.  This is my first UltraScenery scene again, but with a gradient style HDRI background - fits the mood and the figure. I am well pleased with the figure's interaction with the grass.  Rendered with in-camera Depth of Field.

Stay safe, everyone!

Daventaki

Gogger said:

Just practicing my rendercraft.  This is my first UltraScenery scene again, but with a gradient style HDRI background - fits the mood and the figure. I am well pleased with the figure's interaction with the grass.  Rendered with in-camera Depth of Field.

Stay safe, everyone!

Love the mood and the DOF!

Gogger

Daventaki said:

Gogger said:

Just practicing my rendercraft.  This is my first UltraScenery scene again, but with a gradient style HDRI background - fits the mood and the figure. I am well pleased with the figure's interaction with the grass.  Rendered with in-camera Depth of Field.

Stay safe, everyone!

 

Love the mood and the DOF!

Thanks, Daventaki.  I am finding Ultrascenery to be SO VERSATILE!  What a game changer!

Gordig

richardandtracy said:

I discovered, the hard way, not to use iRay preview on my PC.

If you thought that was bad, definitely don't do what I did and set all the instances to visible in viewport. I had to hide two or three specific instances of grass because they were poking through a prop, and I thought my computer was going to run out the door on me.

Daventaki

This time I decided to play with the height map options, so I just did the grassland.  I also recently aquired the Cloudscapes Bundle by DimensionTheory so I thought I would throw that in there.  Lighting is the preset included with UltraScenery.

barbult

Since HowieFarkes invited us to "hack the JSON files", I gave it a try. In the Woodland 2 ecology, I swapped out the Aspen trees for the Beech trees from The Harpwood Trail for Daz Studio (one of the other HowieFarkes landscape products). I also modified the pond image maps to make the pond more irregular. As I look more "under the hood" of UltraScenery, I am amazed at the creativity and detail that went into the architecture of the system, and the shaders for the various types of ground.  

Here are two renders of my modified woodland pond. I used the Canary's Cameras I mentioned in a previous post. The HDRI is from HDRI Haven and is called Green Point Park. I was pleasantly shocked at how well the UltraScenery grass and the HDRI grass blended in color. That was pure luck!

MelanieL

Nicely done, barbult - I've only hacked the "Features" json and images so far, you are brave to try the others but pulled it off really well.

Great renders, everyone else too!

ACue

Right out of the box. I have a very modest rig - ( GS65 MSI gaming laptop - i7-8750HCPU 2.2GHz - 16 GB RAM - GeForce GTX 1070 - Max-Q -)  I stopped the render at about 6 minutes. Made sure to restrict instancies to the camera. Used the pre-loaded render/lighting settings. Great resources. I will be exploring every nook and cranny and absoring feedback and advice in this and other threads. Thanks Howie.

gitika1

barbult said:

Since HowieFarkes invited us to "hack the JSON files", I gave it a try. In the Woodland 2 ecology, I swapped out the Aspen trees for the Beech trees from The Harpwood Trail for Daz Studio (one of the other HowieFarkes landscape products). I also modified the pond image maps to make the pond more irregular. As I look more "under the hood" of UltraScenery, I am amazed at the creativity and detail that went into the architecture of the system, and the shaders for the various types of ground.  

Here are two renders of my modified woodland pond. I used the Canary's Cameras I mentioned in a previous post. The HDRI is from HDRI Haven and is called Green Point Park. I was pleasantly shocked at how well the UltraScenery grass and the HDRI grass blended in color. That was pure luck!

Wow! I must have missed that post. (Then again my employer is keeping my life pretty hectic while trying to cope with COVID-19) I have many of his other products and would love to use trees from those as well!