Terrain Editor help please

Wilmap

How can you tell which part of the image in the Terrain Editor lines up with your terrain?

After rotating my terrain several times I can never seem to find the right spot if I want to add or remove parts, such as adding a river or path.

Is there a way to tell?

David Brinnen

My solution to this perpetual problem is not to rotate the terrains and to have the camera pointing what I call North.

Image 1 shows a newly created terrain.

Image 2 shows the terrain lab for this terrain.

As things stand, in this scene, the bottom left hand corner of the terrain relates to the bottom left hand corner of the height map.

Taking this approach I find reduces the confusion considerably.

Edit: the images came in backwards for some reason, but if you mouseover the file names are shown.

Wilmap

But if you have rotated your terrain and then want to change a small part of it. Then what?

I followed one of your tutorials on making an island and I turned the island around until I got a good scene, but I wanted to remove a large mound that was in the way. When I went into the Terrain Editor, I couldn't work out which bit I had to alter as there were similar mounds around the edges.

David Brinnen

wilmap said:

But if you have rotated your terrain and then want to change a small part of it. Then what?

I followed one of your tutorials on making an island and I turned the island around until I got a good scene, but I wanted to remove a large mound that was in the way. When I went into the Terrain Editor, I couldn't work out which bit I had to alter as there were similar mounds around the edges.

OK, right, what you can do is this.

Use Edit > Copy Matrix on the terrain you want to edit.

Then reset the terrain orientation by clicking on one of the control points while holding down ctrl + alt.

This will then align the terrain in the scene so that you can place your camera over it (point your camera North as shown) - save your camera position first - before moving your camera.

You will now be in a position to look a the terrain as shown above - with known orientation.

Once you have made your changes.

Use Edit > Paste Matrix to restore your terrain back to it's original orientation.

And restore your camera position with the camera dot.

A bit fiddly I know...

Wilmap

Thanks David, will give it a go. :-)

Horo

Save the camera position and move the camera around, instead of the terrain. In this way, the terrain and the height map match. I do it as David outlined above (well, he crossposted meanwhile), with the camera looking to the upper screen edge if looked from above. You can then consider up=north, right=east, down=south and left=west - and this is also how the terrain height map appears in the DTE. Make sure to use the Perspective camera, not the Directors.

Dave Savage

In the past I have been known to just put a small hard edged white dot on the height map and then go back to the viewport to see where it corresponds to.
Once you know that, just use 'undo' to get rid of the tall spike you just made.

Chohole

Maybe another stupid question, but on the terrain editor, si there any way to increase the sixe it appears when using it? My extra keyboard keys don't work in Bryce, not even the zoom

David Brinnen

chohole said:

Maybe another stupid question, but on the terrain editor, si there any way to increase the sixe it appears when using it? My extra keyboard keys don't work in Bryce, not even the zoom

Yes, I keep mine small for video, but otherwise it can fill the screen almost. Image shows where the little menu is "hidden".

Horo

Do you mean that one?

Horo

Oh, David and I am crossposting today :)

David Brinnen

There are also controls on the 3D preview that allow changes in scale and if you have a fast enough PC to have the preview update as you paint and have it rendered - after a fashion.

Dave Savage

chohole said:

Maybe another stupid question, but on the terrain editor, si there any way to increase the sixe it appears when using it? My extra keyboard keys don't work in Bryce, not even the zoom

Yes. If this is what you mean.

It's also in the same place for the 3D preview pane too.

Edited to Add: See how quickly this forum moves on sometimes. :lol:

David Brinnen

Horo said:

Oh, David and I am crossposting today :)

And now Dave has joined in!

Horo

Which means, we all love Pam and are eager to help her :)

Chohole

Ah, isn't that nice. :red: Thanks all. This never bothered me too much before, Only has since I have this nice big widescreen monitor ( Ebay bargain) I have i been cursing. Just goes to show that no matter how long you have used Bryce there is always something new you can discover about it.

LordHardDriven

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he/she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to bother with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

David Brinnen

LordHardDriven said:

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he'she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to other with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

This was mostly the intention of this video Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - setting up the default launch state - a tutorial by David Brinnen

Wilmap

That video of David's is one I followed to set up my own launch scene with the camera pointed at North. This is a good video to watch as it saves a lot of changing things to get started, you can just load and go.

LordHardDriven

David Brinnen said:

LordHardDriven said:

Hey here's an idea relating to the answers but has little to do with the question directly. Maybe a worthwhile new tutorial or perhaps part of a future product would be some artistic aides. What I mean by artistic aide is something that can either teach a user how to always start their scene so as to be able to, for example, efficiently use the terrain editor. It seems in this case part of the problem here is the person asking the question has already gotten fairly far along in his/her work to where he'she needs to take an extra step or two to be able to know what side is north in the terrain editor. If however there was something that say taught one how to make a default blank scene that already has a north pointing camera or something that can add a north pointing camera more quickly and easily then copying and pasting matrices then this wouldn't be a problem. Perhaps also it would be nice to have your scene start out in other ways that are already set up in anticipation of other needs. Like the way David sets up his scenes with the perspective camera. It could greatly facilitate things for people trying to follow David's tutorials if their default blank scenes opened already set up in ways to follow the tutorial so that the person following the tutorial didn't have to other with setting that up before proceeding.

I don't know if what I'm thinking is possible but if so then perhaps it could be provided as a blank scene all set and ready to go and the user just opens it and saves it under edit/preferences such that it makes that page set up the default set up. If that can't be done then it could always be saved somewhere as an optimized blank scene and the user could just opens that scene as opposed to creating a new blank scene. That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do. Like a blank scene with all the proper settings already engaged for doing IBL or TA, or for doing an abstract vs a landscape, etc.

This was mostly the intention of this video Bryce "Nuts and Bolts" - setting up the default launch state - a tutorial by David Brinnen

Ah okay, I missed that one I guess, never mind then :)

Dave Savage

LordHardDriven said:

That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do.

I've been meaning to do this for a while now.
I thought it would be great to set up an 'indoor studio default' and an 'outdoor landscape default' at the very least.

I constantly get fed up with opening a new document and getting faced with default sky, everything pointing wrong and with the wrong render settings... But I haven't got around to it yet. :shut:

David Brinnen

Those with access to the bugtracker feel free to offer support for the feature request I made for this at the beginning of 2010.

https://bugs.daz3d.com/view.php?id=36077

Horo

Yup, the request is still valid - and has a lot of support.

GussNemo

Dave said what I usually do when in the terrain editor, place a blob in one corner, render to see where it actually is, then remove the blob.

I didn't do David's suggestion of placing a default scene in my Bryce files folder, but created a Camera folder in my Bryce saves and just load my pre-made scenes from there.

mermaid010

TheSavage64 said:

LordHardDriven said:

That might be even better because then you could have several blank scenes all optimized for various scenarios and you just open the one that best matches what you want to do.

I've been meaning to do this for a while now.
I thought it would be great to set up an 'indoor studio default' and an 'outdoor landscape default' at the very least.

I constantly get fed up with opening a new document and getting faced with default sky, everything pointing wrong and with the wrong render settings... But I haven't got around to it yet. :shut:

It would be cool if you shared them with us too. ;-):-)

Marshian

Terrain editor- imported jpg posterized.

Hi All,
I've been using Bryce for a year only to create blank terrains and bring them into DAZ. I'm having an intermittent problem where imported jpgs (that have been edited in photoshop) become posterized in the terrian editor area. Smoothing, eroding and dampening help a little but end up changing the form too much. I'd like to get it right in photoshop where there's more freedom. This doesn't happen all the time so I'm not sure what to do.

The result of this is a terrain that's stair stepped like a pyramid- not good especially for water.

Thanks in advance for the help.
let me know if you'd like to see screen caps.

Dave Savage

When terrains 'step' it's most likely because the bit depth of the original in Photoshop hasn't been set high enough.
Terrains need (at least) 16bit tif files. 8 bit (the default) will cause steps to show.

David Brinnen

TheSavage64 said:

When terrains 'step' it's most likely because the bit depth of the original in Photoshop hasn't been set high enough.
Terrains need (at least) 16bit tif files. 8 bit (the default) will cause steps to show.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing, but Dave got there first. SO OK yes, Bryce is a little bit fussy about terrain import and export. It likes 16 bit greyscale tif or 16 bit greyscale png.

Edit. Oh just to be clear, greyscale is part of the format, it's not just that you are providing a greyscale - and this format is not supported by every paint package. For example, PSP8, which I use doesn't support this format. Which is why I process my terrains in Grome 3. Which does support this format, but is quite tricky to use.

Horo

@marshian - Photoshop can save as 16.bit grey scale. Already version 6 can. However, you need to save in a 16-bit greyscale capable file format. TIFF can do it. JPEG is always only 8 bit.

Marshian

Thanks for the quick and thorough response! I'm gad this there is a recipe that I can cook up.... Back to terraforming.