Released: HedgeMaker [Commercial]

Totte

Love that one barbult!

GhostofMacbeth

Been waiting for this. Glad it is out.

barbult

Here is an UltraScenery scene with two hedges. One hedge has lavender, daisies and primulas. The other has just a few pebbles and dandelions along the edge of the road. I used the mask that HedgeMaker created to mask out trees, grass tufts, and long grass in the hedge area. I left the base grass unmasked, because I didn't want bare ground under my hedges. I posted this over in the UltraScenery thread, too.

Totte

Very good barbult - you are the Michelangelo of scattered scenes. 

If you dream about scenes like this, is that to be called scattered dreams? :P

 

Gogger

barbult said:

Here is an UltraScenery scene with two hedges. One hedge has lavender, daisies and primulas. The other has just a few pebbles and dandelions along the edge of the road. I used the mask that HedgeMaker created to mask out trees, grass tufts, and long grass in the hedge area. I left the base grass unmasked, because I didn't want bare ground under my hedges. I posted this over in the UltraScenery thread, too.

 

And just when it seemed like UltraScenery couldn't possibly get any better - we find it plays well with other things for incredible nearly unlimited potential! Thanks, barbult for your frequent testing and proof of concept!

alexhcowley

Gogger said:

barbult said:

Here is an UltraScenery scene with two hedges. One hedge has lavender, daisies and primulas. The other has just a few pebbles and dandelions along the edge of the road. I used the mask that HedgeMaker created to mask out trees, grass tufts, and long grass in the hedge area. I left the base grass unmasked, because I didn't want bare ground under my hedges. I posted this over in the UltraScenery thread, too.

 

And just when it seemed like UltraScenery couldn't possibly get any better - we find it plays well with other things for incredible nearly unlimited potential! Thanks, barbult for your frequent testing and proof of concept!

I would like to nominate Barbult as the queen of UltraScenery and its various extensions and add-ons.

Cheers,

Alex. 

Totte

alexhcowley said:

Gogger said:

barbult said:

Here is an UltraScenery scene with two hedges. One hedge has lavender, daisies and primulas. The other has just a few pebbles and dandelions along the edge of the road. I used the mask that HedgeMaker created to mask out trees, grass tufts, and long grass in the hedge area. I left the base grass unmasked, because I didn't want bare ground under my hedges. I posted this over in the UltraScenery thread, too.

 

And just when it seemed like UltraScenery couldn't possibly get any better - we find it plays well with other things for incredible nearly unlimited potential! Thanks, barbult for your frequent testing and proof of concept!

I would like to nominate Barbult as the queen of UltraScenery and its various extensions and add-ons.

Cheers,

Alex. 

Universal Empress Of Scatters !

barbult

Michelangelo, Queen, Empress, I'm flattered by all of them, thanks! 

MarcCCTx

Trying to make a road that covers a UltraScene path. Colored the pebble black and make it look like a tarred road. How do I get rid of the little wedges between blocks in the curve? I tried moving the markers closer (and added more morkers to the end), but it just made the blocks smaller.

Also: what would be a good way to make evenly spaced white stripes?

Totte

MarcCCTx said:

Trying to make a road that covers a UltraScene path. Colored the pebble black and make it look like a tarred road. How do I get rid of the little wedges between blocks in the curve? I tried moving the markers closer (and added more morkers to the end), but it just made the blocks smaller.

markers closer in curves.

Trick 2:
Make several parallell not so wide roads as the problem (which I spent like a month trying to solve), becomes bigger the wider the road
 

Also: what would be a good way to make evenly spaced white stripes?

That's probably really difficult.

Edit: make a new set of poles, thin line, and use gaps where you want no line!

 

DoctorJellybean

Totte said:

MarcCCTx said:

Trying to make a road that covers a UltraScene path. Colored the pebble black and make it look like a tarred road. How do I get rid of the little wedges between blocks in the curve? I tried moving the markers closer (and added more morkers to the end), but it just made the blocks smaller.

markers closer in curves.

Trick 2:
Make several parallell not so wide roads as the problem (which I spent like a month trying to solve), becomes bigger the wider the road
 

Also: what would be a good way to make evenly spaced white stripes?

That's probably really difficult.

Edit: make a new set of poles, thin line, and use gaps where you want no line!

You can also ask @barbult, what she doesn't know is not worth knowing 

barbult

@DoctorJellybean, your confidence in me inspired me to give it a try. This is my result.
(Note: the paths in UltraScenery aren't really wide enough to be a divided road, but I ignored that for this experiment. I used Dirt Track 2 and Harpwood 2.)

• I wouldn't try to make an existing path in UltraScenery into a tarred road with HedgeMaker pebbles. Getting full coverage would be very difficult. Instead, I applied an asphalt shader to the UltraSceneTerrain Roadbase Layer and Roadsurface Layer surfaces. I used albedo and normal maps from a Mec4D Asphalt shader. Use HedgeMaker to scatter some pebbles shaded black on top of that, if you want a gravel looking road texture. I didn't, but I did darken the UltraScenery road pebbles to blend in with the road.
• I added HM Sign Poles in the middle of the path. I used poles 1 through O (letter O) for the visible path area in my scene. Hint: the preview map of the path is not real accurate. Change the UltraScene Terrain Terrain surface Preview Color to the roadbase feature map for an accurate viewport view of where the road is. 
• For the white lines, I created a flattened white cube and saved it as a prop. Then I built a HedgeMaker set with HM Set Builder, including only that white cube in the set.
• I built a hedge with every other config stretch set to Leave Empty to create the gaps between white lines (thanks for the tip, Totte). I made the hedge density VERY dense, to be sure the cubes overlapped each other. Use Layer Rotation Follow and Layer Untidy 0 to get uniform white lines. It looks pretty good, but is lighting dependent. In some lighting, you can see the overlapping edges making shadows on each other, ruining the effect of a continuous line segment.
• I used the same sign posts to create some additional hedges. Making a wider hedge allowed me to place plants and posts along the edge of the road. I used road marker posts, weeds, grass, and daisies.
• In the end, I hid the Leaf Litter (roads) layer, because I didn't like the sharp contrast with the dark road. The leaves looked out of place, when I didn't see any other leaves on the surrounding ground anyway.

Lots of screenshots attached below.

barbult

Here's a view and lighting that shows how the individual parts making up the white stripe can be seen in the render.

Totte

@barbult: DrJellyBean was not mistaken, great work!

MelanieL

@barbult - my, that is really clever! I'd never have thought of creating the white lines that way.

By the way, I had trouble finding this thread because Daz Deals wasn't reporting it as a forum reference - so here's my attempt to link it up to the product page for Hedgemaker

MelanieL

Well, I've spent more hours than I should this weekend playing with my latest toy!

First setting up many sets from the (many) plant products I have accumulated. One thing I would have liked is the ability to change the scale of the items in a set - some of the plants in the store seem to be over-large (not your fault of course). I suppose I could scale and resave - maybe I will do that.

I've created many hedges (some more successfully than others) and found it a great way to spend time  I didn't fully render out everything I tried, but thought I ought to show something for all my "lost" hours.

The first is on a Ultrascenery base: there are three "hedges" in the scene, one for the irises, one for the mixed nettles and genista and an extra short but wider one for the nettles in the foreground (only needed because I chose that particular camera angle).

The second is a bit naive-painting style (postworked because I was too impatient to render out the fireflies): it has six rows of sunflowers which, because of their nature, I fixed rotation so they all pointed towards the sun. Looking at it again, I wish I'd moved the camera further to one side because they look a bit like a child's painting pointing forward like that, but live and learn...

barbult

I think the straight forward view of the sunflowers works very well with the style of the painting. I wouldn't change it. I like it a lot!

Totte

Nice renders MelanieL! 

MelanieL

Thank you, both. Here's my latest - I was practising with a more curved hedge layout. Ultrascenery again, one of TA's Upland features, with a mixed-set hedge on each ridge and a few Ultrascattered nettles on the steep slopes because they looked a bit bare. I wondered how Hedgemaker copes with extreme slopes? (I should have experimented for myself and may do so tomorrow if I have the chance)

And a question for @Totte - I noticed when saving selection sets that the file name picks up a random character on the end - is this deliberate and if so why? e.g. I created a set called "ML Predatron-Genista" and it produced a .json file called "ML__PredatronGenistaw.json"

Totte

MelanieL said:

Thank you, both. Here's my latest - I was practising with a more curved hedge layout. Ultrascenery again, one of TA's Upland features, with a hedge on each ridge and a few  Ultrascattered nettles on the steep slopes because they looked a bit bare. I wondered how Hedgemaker copes with extreme slopes? (I should have experimented for myself and may do so tomorrow)

It tries to cope with it, but sometimes it's too steep to find somehwere to plant (it will look like they are flying as the plants cant get the roots into the ground

And a question for @Totte - I noticed when saving selection sets that the file name picks up a random character on the end - is this deliberate and if so why? e.g. I created a set called "ML Predatron-Genista" and it produced a .json file called "ML__PredatronGenistaw.json"

My little safety thing I have for mosts scripts that save things, it's deliberate (and not really anyone will see unless you poke around :P

 

MelanieL

Totte said:

And a question for @Totte - I noticed when saving selection sets that the file name picks up a random character on the end - is this deliberate and if so why? e.g. I created a set called "ML Predatron-Genista" and it produced a .json file called "ML__PredatronGenistaw.json"

My little safety thing I have for mosts scripts that save things, it's deliberate (and not really anyone will see unless you poke around :P

Oh, I always poke around!  (I had a window open with the file location so I could quickly see what I'd done and what I hadn't because I sometimes forget to save things). 

Totte

MelanieL said:

Totte said:

And a question for @Totte - I noticed when saving selection sets that the file name picks up a random character on the end - is this deliberate and if so why? e.g. I created a set called "ML Predatron-Genista" and it produced a .json file called "ML__PredatronGenistaw.json"

My little safety thing I have for mosts scripts that save things, it's deliberate (and not really anyone will see unless you poke around :P

Oh, I always poke around!  (I had a window open with the file location so I could quickly see what I'd done and what I hadn't because I sometimes forget to save things). 

Poking around is how I learened Poser/DS ten years ago. looking inside files to try to understand how things worked.

 

 

3dLux

I keep getting a Critical Error message of the HedgeMaker engine plug-in is not installed 

I downloaded it both the .zip file and .exe manually and have tried HM in D|S 4.12 & 4.15 

I've also watched the video and when I bring a pole into the scene, there's no "drop down" thingie like in the video 

Did I miss a step or a file?  I would like to avoid using DIM or Daz Connect 

Totte

Did you install the plug-in ? 
I recommend using DIM for plugins otherwise you need to drop the plug-in into the plugins folder of every DS installation.

Totte

You can check in about installed plugins in DS if it is installed 

3dLux

Totte said:

You can check in about installed plugins in DS if it is installed 

Hi Totte, definitely not in installed plug-ins.  I would prefer installing the plug in manually, although it doesn't seem to be in the .zip file.  Does that mean I have to use DIM? 

My mistake.  It is there but has failed to load 

 

DoctorJellybean

3dLux said:

Totte said:

You can check in about installed plugins in DS if it is installed 

Hi Totte, definitely not in installed plug-ins.  I would prefer installing the plug in manually, although it doesn't seem to be in the .zip file.  Does that mean I have to use DIM? 

There should be a hm_engine.dll file in the zip.

3dLux

DoctorJellybean said:

3dLux said:

Totte said:

You can check in about installed plugins in DS if it is installed 

Hi Totte, definitely not in installed plug-ins.  I would prefer installing the plug in manually, although it doesn't seem to be in the .zip file.  Does that mean I have to use DIM? 

There should be a hm_engine.dll file in the zip.

No hm-engine.dll file in the .zip 

EDIT:  I did run the .exe again and it reinstalled.  The hm_engine.dll is in the plugins folder but once again it has failed to load in both D|S 4.12/4.15

Totte

If you look in About installed plugins..

Did you restart DS after installing the plug-in?

3dLux

Totte said:

If you look in About installed plugins..

Did you restart DS after installing the plug-in?

Several times and  rebooted as well.  Still no joy:  hm_engine has the red plug