UltraSceneryXT - large terrain/landscape generator

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Comments

  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 702

    Totte said:

    I've also been playing with this new toy (at least as much as time permits).
    The second the terrain is based on a terrain heightmap generated with World Creator and imported into heigjtmap, and some noise added to it.


     

     Welcome fellow WorldCreator user. I'm glad to see someone else using WC and USXT together. If you find a way to apply a WC colormap on your USXT terrain, please share. Looks great, by the way.

  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 702

    bohemian3 said:

    AnEye4Art said:

    I wonder how others deal with finding a good spot to scroll to; I sometimes load a small prop or character that I can position in place and "jump" to that spot.

     

    Hiya - Eye4Art - I always keep my primary model at 0,0 along with the camera - I move all large props and scenary around the model, not vice versa.  With a large terrain, I find it easier to rotate the terrain on y around my model to find a visually interesting spot to use.  Also I use my auxilizary viewport extensively on top view to move things around (especially cloud groups) kinda like a map locator in a game.  Be sure to lock things you don't want to move, also.  And groups are your friend.  

     

     

     

    Thank you. I will try that. 

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,942

    I am getting a preety much reliable 'render engine error' when using a HDRI with this product. I saved a scene, loaded an HDRI and got th error (which means as I have to cycle Daz Studio as it lock sthe rendere as ;in use'), Loaded the scene after the restart and used a SUn-Sky setting and it worked. Played a little, added some VDB clouds and it worked. Then, suddenly, render engine crash again.

  • smoke14smoke14 Posts: 245
    edited March 2022

    Quick render using UltraSceneryXT. Thank you for the wonderful product.

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    Post edited by smoke14 on
  • JackReasonJackReason Posts: 144

    Another one...

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  • DaventakiDaventaki Posts: 1,621

    Thanks HowieFarkes!   Will give that a try.  Here is a mix with US and USXT.  Second image is edited in Luminar.

    Not sure what is up with the rock.  Looks like it was cut off. 

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    USXT2TM03202022Cropped.jpg
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  • ioonrxoonioonrxoon Posts: 885
    edited March 2022

    I was anxious to see how resource heavy this is, but I'm very happy with it. Worked just fine with a sub-d 4 character with spectral and caustics enabled.

    I can already say this is going to be essential, a quick and easy way to make beautiful backgrounds without the limitations of  hdris. If you're planning on making add-ons, I'd really love to see a caribbean flavoured one... my ships and pirates could use a nice playground.

     

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    Post edited by ioonrxoon on
  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,309

    Totte said:

    I've also been playing with this new toy (at least as much as time permits).
    The second the terrain is based on a terrain heightmap generated with World Creator and imported into heigjtmap, and some noise added to it.


     

    Totte,

    How long before we see a USXT toolbox?  One thing that surprises me about USXT is that there is no "large lake" surrounded by mountains" landscape. I think I could probably achieve this with height maps but I have no experience of generating these. 

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018
    edited March 2022

    HowieFarkes said:

    Gogger said:

    Sooo... I seem to be missing something. Purchased, and installed via DIM, the directory shows up right next to Ultrascenery but there are only supporting folders, Materials, Plants, etc. but nothing to actually run like Ultrascenery has in its root. I tried loading a preset, thinking it might trigger USXT to pop up - nothing. I even ran Ultrascenery and looked for XT elements in that but nothing. What am I missing?  I uninstalled USXT, shut down DAZ and reinstalled USXT then restarted DAZ - still nothing. 

    USXT shows up in 'Installed Plugins' with a green plug.

    DAZ Studio v4.20.0.6 Pro Edition and my computer hardware is well within spec. The original Ultrascenery runs fine.

    Any ideas?

     

    Go to Window -> Panes (Tabs) -> UltraSceneryXT from the Studio menu bar to open the UI

    Installed via DIM ... Ultrascenery is working, but no USXT pane under Panes (Tabs) Ultrascenery. Does this require a certain version of Studio? Help?

    Also, manually installing USXT causes both 4.15 and 4.2 to crash at start up (only when installing manually does the plug-in get put into the place where it belongs .... for some reason DIM doesn't do it). The second I remove USXT from the plug-ins folder, Studio starts up w/out any probs. Totally useless so far on a M1 MAC.

    Post edited by mcorr on
  • DoctorJellybeanDoctorJellybean Posts: 7,845
    edited March 2022

    alexhcowley said:

    Totte,

    How long before we see a USXT toolbox?  One thing that surprises me about USXT is that there is no "large lake" surrounded by mountains" landscape. I think I could probably achieve this with height maps but I have no experience of generating these.

    2024 is my educated guess laugh

    Post edited by DoctorJellybean on
  • PaintboxPaintbox Posts: 1,633
    edited March 2022

    Making a heightmap is super easy, if you know how to load maps (and you can in USXT)

    This one is pretty cool (you have to wait for a little for it to load) :

    https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper
    ^ Making a map using real world data
     

    Post edited by Paintbox on
  • AnEye4Art said:

    Totte said:

    I've also been playing with this new toy (at least as much as time permits).
    The second the terrain is based on a terrain heightmap generated with World Creator and imported into heigjtmap, and some noise added to it.


     

     Welcome fellow WorldCreator user. I'm glad to see someone else using WC and USXT together. If you find a way to apply a WC colormap on your USXT terrain, please share. Looks great, by the way.

    Maybe just converting the terrain to the Iray Ubershader and pasting the materials would work? Otherwise, seeing how the Ultra XT shader works, I don't think there's a straightforward solution.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,711
    edited April 2022

    NM

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 4,979
    edited March 2022

    Just a little scene with US Australian Botanica, a nice kitty and one of the USXT backgrounds. Will take time to get the best out of USXT.

    Regards,

    Richard.

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    Post edited by richardandtracy on
  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,309

    Paintbox said:

    Making a heightmap is super easy, if you know how to load maps (and you can in USXT)

    This one is pretty cool (you have to wait for a little for it to load) :

    https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper
    ^ Making a map using real world data
     

    Thanks for the link but it doesn't seem to be doing what I want. The nearest I could get was a map of one of the Great Lakes, which is the wrong shape. What I want is a large lake surrounded by mountains. It doesn't matter whether it is "real world" or not.

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018

    is a specific version of mdl materials necessary for this?

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018

    why is there no documentation regarding mac OS versions it will run on, as well as any other dependencies that might be necessary?

  • HowieFarkesHowieFarkes Posts: 582

    I don't have an M1 Mac so can't test that. It was developed on an iMac OSX Catalina using DS versions 4.8, 4.15, 4.16 and 4.20 - the Windows version was also developed and tested on Windows 10 with DS versions 4.12, 4.14, 4.16 and 4.20 - I think that was a pretty nice spread of versions to see if anything came up - they all worked the same.

    If anyone else using an M1 Mac has anything to say I'd be interested to hear their experience.

     

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018
    edited March 2022

    Although the M1 installation is not working (as others have also commented on), a non-M1 install is bringing up the window, I can put in all the parameters I like, and then when I render I get a washed out, uniformcolor acrosss the lanscape, as if the shader isn't working. The surfaces tab in Studio is, however, showing that materials have been applied. What's up with that?

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    Post edited by mcorr on
  • HowieFarkesHowieFarkes Posts: 582

    Looks like the content is not installed

  • HowieFarkesHowieFarkes Posts: 582
    edited March 2022

    rochard.frantz said:

    Hi everybody

    The biome never appears... I try all the presets (terrain and water are OK, but no biome). 

    I dont understand...

    Are you setting the folder for the terrain maps to be saved to? Because this is what it looks like when the plugin can't write or find the maps.

    Post edited by HowieFarkes on
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018

    HowieFarkes said:

    Looks like the content is not installed

    Nope ... DIMM installed and also once hand installed the data files, the textures and the environment folder. Let me ask you again, does this require a certain version of MDL files. If not, then what could the problem be?

  • jag11jag11 Posts: 885

    mcorr said:

    Although the M1 installation is not working (as others have also commented on), a non-M1 install is bringing up the window, I can put in all the parameters I like, and then when I render I get a washed out, uniformcolor acrosss the lanscape, as if the shader isn't working. The surfaces tab in Studio is, however, showing that materials have been applied. What's up with that?

     Looks like Matte mode is on. Just to to make sure check your render settings.

  • jag11jag11 Posts: 885

    mcorr said:

    Although the M1 installation is not working (as others have also commented on), a non-M1 install is bringing up the window, I can put in all the parameters I like, and then when I render I get a washed out, uniformcolor acrosss the lanscape, as if the shader isn't working. The surfaces tab in Studio is, however, showing that materials have been applied. What's up with that?

     Looks like Matte mode is on. Just to to make sure check your render settings.

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018

    jag11 said:

    mcorr said:

    Although the M1 installation is not working (as others have also commented on), a non-M1 install is bringing up the window, I can put in all the parameters I like, and then when I render I get a washed out, uniformcolor acrosss the lanscape, as if the shader isn't working. The surfaces tab in Studio is, however, showing that materials have been applied. What's up with that?

     Looks like Matte mode is on. Just to to make sure check your render settings.

    render settings: render mode: realistic

    Those are my settings .... don't even see a "matte" mode .... where is that?

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018
    edited March 2022

    Also .... I can go into the surface tab and change all the colors ..., but it does nothing to the render (none of those colors show up), except snow (if I have chosen a material with snow) and sand (which I have in the scene) .... none of the tints work though.

    The biome seems to be unaffected by this problem ... it is functioning correctly.

    Attached a screen shot proving that the resources are loaded as necessary in the surfaces tab.

    SS2.png
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    Post edited by mcorr on
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,018

    HowieFarkes said:

    Looks like the content is not installed

    Howie .... your plugin doesn't work for MAC M1 people and on non-M1, the surface shader is not working either. Again, are there any dependcies, like a particular MDL library?

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,309
    edited March 2022

    Having had a play around with the presets yesterday, I decided to try something a wee bit more ambitious today and attempt to create my own custom scene: a large lake surrounded by mountains.

    The first problem was the height map. I solved this by borrowing USC_Wetland_01_heightmap1 from the original Ultrascenery. The first attempt produced a huge mountain so I inverted the heightmap.

    Next problem was the lake was infested with trees.  I set the biome minimum altitude to 1 metre, following the useful tip from @daveso,  which solved this issue.

    The lake was far too small so this was fixed by setting the minimum altitude, on the terrain properties tab, to -100 metres. 

    My resultant spawn is not the Mona Lisa but, like any father with a new baby, I’m quite pleased with it nonetheless.  

    Watch this space for further developments.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

     

     

     

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    Custom Lake 2.jpg
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    Custom Lake Render 1.jpg
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    Custom Lake Render 2.jpg
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    Post edited by alexhcowley on
  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,091
    edited March 2022

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    Paintbox said:

    Making a heightmap is super easy, if you know how to load maps (and you can in USXT)

    This one is pretty cool (you have to wait for a little for it to load) :

    https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper
    ^ Making a map using real world data
     

    also https://terrain.party/

    Are you still able to get anything from terrain.party? I downloaded a bunch of maps from there about four years ago but now I keep getting "Application Error" when I try.

    Anyway, this is my first trial of USC-XT with a terrain.party map from 2018 and a USC Oaks scene in the front. 

    I'm absolutely loving this product, by the way - I wish I had much more time to play because it has so many options. Well worth the first-day buy! (Thanks for your skill and effort, HowieFarkes)

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    Post edited by MelanieL on
  • TotteTotte Posts: 13,473

    @AnEye4Art  : I think turning WC materials into shaders is probably lots of work. 
    @alexhcowley : Heh,  guess DrJellyBean is correct. But a set of heightmaps for "mountain in the sea" could be created and uploaded here if I get a little time left
    @mcorr: I will test on my M1 shortly.

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