surface replicator

dot_bat

Greetings all, I need a little help. my question is... Is there any way with the surface replicator to have the replicated objects respect each others space. ie not to pass thru each other and the ground? thanx

RoguePilot

Hi,
basically the surface replicator uses the hotpoint as the reference point for any replicated object, so to stop an object going through the surface you need to make sure that it is positioned at the bottom of the object.

To move a hotpoint simply press the caps lock button and move it with the translate manipulator.

If you look on the right hand side of the replicator panel you will see a box for 'Minimum distance between objects', set this to at least the lateral size of your object if you don't want the replicated objects to intersect.

You may need to press 'distribute' again to get the replicator to update.

dot_bat

thanx RoguePilot i have hundreds of objects all at random positions trying to pack them close and touching. i might try the replicator for o0bjects close in conjunction with the surface rep. thanx again

0oseven

You might also try changing the "mimimum distance between objects" in the replicator settings window.
Trial and Error to get it looking how you want

stitlown

Hi guys. Looks a good a spot as any for this query.

When I get up close and personal with the items replicated on a terrain surface I find they are floating about 0.3m above the surface. I tried many things none of which helped and then I saw RoguePilot's tip and thought "Eureka!" But unless I'm mis-understanding it does not seem to help.

I've tried lowering the hot point on both the surface being replicated onto and of the replicator object but neither seems to have any effect. I've done my changes through the parameters window, not with the manipulator, if that is relevant at all.

The work-around I'm using for now is to duplicate the terrain, make in non-visible, drop it the necessary distance below the visible terrain and use this as the object to replicate on to. But I'd really like to understand how to fix the issue properly without a work around.

Any suggestions most welcome.

Lx

evilproducer

Try looking at the object you wish to replicate using either the Left, Right, Front or Back view and compare the position of the hot point to the bottom of the object. If the bounding box around the object is larger than the object (in other words a space between the bounding box and the bottom of the object) then move the hot point upwards toward the bottom of the object itself.

Another thing to consider as well, is the preview quality of the terrain. Usually the preview quality is by default less than the render quality of the terrain. To really see how things are positioned on a terrain in the Assembly room, go to the terrain editor and make the preview quality the same as the render quality.

stitlown

Hit the nail on the head evilproducer with the hot point in the bounding box. Many thanks. "Every person I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of them." Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882). And in my case ... "Every person I meet is my superior in most ways ..."

And now for the next challenge AKA fifty shades of grey - NOT. Surface replicator states (when using a shader) that "objects will be placed on brighter areas first and black areas won't get any object."

Well in all my experiments, there is black and there is white and white is white and everything else is black, no matter how near to white it is. I've tried tiffs, jpgs and bmps. I've tried different colour depths and all I seem to get is white is rgb 255 255 255 and everything else is "black".

Any hints as to what I'm doing wrong. I'd really like to be able to grade some replications in from full-on to "won't get any object"

Thanks in advance. Lx

stitlown

And I'm such a Newb.

In D|S there is some short cut key that tells D|S to forget an old texture or other image that was once loaded but has since been updated and to re-load the file. Necessary if you are fine tuning eg a character's skin as D|S does not automatically pick up the revised texture.

I seem to be having a similar problem in Carrara where I update a surface replicator distribution map but ghosts of the old one seem to live on - sometimes bizarrely seeming to combine the old and the new.

Are there any tips on how to totally re-set C's view of a distribution map?

Here's the example. I needed a small vertical bar in the middle of a replicator to be empty of objects. I created a tiff with a vertical bar. Worked. But the orientation was wrong. Vertical in my graphics editor was horizontal in "top" view in C. Easy. Paint the bar over with white and cut out a horizontal black bar. And now in C I have an empty cross - both vertical and horizontal emptiness.

I just do not understand.

If a create an entirely new map, it is all good, and if I then reload the old map it is also all good. So why couldn't I get C to update the old map. And then bizarre upon bizarre ... deleting the original map and copying the "correct" one to the old name suddenly resurrects the cross artefact. It's like vampire distribution maps! You can't kill them. Obviously some retained memory in C. How do I delete it?

And maybe even more bizarre; even though the GUI shows the cross artefact, it is looking like a render does not. Seriously mind-warping stuff.

As always, any help gratefully received. Lx

evilproducer

Can't help you with all of it, but there may be some options in the shader room you're not aware of, so I'll add a couple screen shots. (As soon as my scene loads! ;-) )

evilproducer

I think there's been an issue with Carrara and image maps for replicator distribution in that Carrara either doesn't distinguish areas between absolute white and black, or it doesn't handle it with much nuance, so I don't think I can help there.

I may be able to help with the shader room problems- Maybe. When you load an image map, and it's orientation is wrong, you can edit it and re-save it, but I believe Carrara stores it in a cache. If you've saved the scene internally, then it will stay in the cache even if you quit and relaunch it. If you've saved the scene using local settings, in theory, if you quit and reopen it should refer back to the file as the memory has been cleared.

You should be able to reload the updated file without having to quit. Below the little icon you click when you want to load a file is another one for reloading the file. I've had good luck with that. It doesn't ask you to find a file, it just goes out and looks at the previously loaded file and updates it within Carrara. That may be the way to avoid the cross situation you were getting. My theory about the display in the shader room and what you see in the assembly room Vs. the final render is OpenGL. Carrara uses it for it's displays and not it's final render. Carrara may not be updating the card's onboard memory, or the card isn't clearing it. Just a theory.

If the problem is just the orientation, then you could use the little directional arrow icons along the side of the image thumbnail. You won't see the thumbnail change orientation, but you will see it in your preview window.

D'oh! :shut: Ignore the typo in my graphic!

RoguePilot

Evilproducer has covered the shader room file selection tools, including the refresh button.

If you're talking about the assembly room textured view not catching up, that's down to the OpenGL using lower resolution versions of the textures for the preview, these generally don't get updated until the buffer gets flushed.
You can force this sometimes by going into the preview settings and forcing a lower resolution preview then changing it back.
Dropping into 3d paint or switching from textured to untextured and then back again can update the textures too.
(Simply running out of texture memory forces a lower resolution to be loaded automatically which is why the preview can sometimes lose textures while they are being processed)

The distribution maps have always worked as black/white instead of greyscale as far as I know, I'm not sure whether that's the manual being worded badly or a bug. To get different distributions you can use multiple replicators on the same object each with different bands painted in, you could even start with the greyscale image as you wanted it and use the gradient filter to define the bands progressively.

Using a dithered black/white image produced from a geyscale image works too.

wetcircuit

stitlown said:

And I'm such a Newb.

In D|S there is some short cut key that tells D|S to forget an old texture or other image that was once loaded but has since been updated and to re-load the file. Necessary if you are fine tuning eg a character's skin as D|S does not automatically pick up the revised texture.

I seem to be having a similar problem in Carrara where I update a surface replicator distribution map but ghosts of the old one seem to live on - sometimes bizarrely seeming to combine the old and the new.

Are there any tips on how to totally re-set C's view of a distribution map?

It's hard to know what is happening without seeing your scene... Carrara doesn't seem to have a good way to preview the distribution map on the model, but in the Shader Room you can try swapping the distribution map shader with your terrain's shader. Maybe that will help you see what is going on...

Another issue I sometimes have is in the scaling... over or underestimating a measurement I have used in the Surface Replicator (inches, ft, etc), especially the distance between objects and the distance from edge...

stitlown

Thanks Guys. :)

And whose a dummy eh. I discovered that due to some looseness on my part the distribution map had 4 colours, not 2. Needless to say it was a black bar and an oh-so-very-nearly-but-not white cross bar. White is white and 254 is .... black! :red:

RoguePilot - my quote wasn't from the manual but from the text under the "use shader" check box in the model room. Looks like the intent was greyscale - but good to know the reality is "2"-colour. Is that worth a bug report????

Lx