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UltraSceneryXT - large terrain/landscape generator

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  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    I highly suggest using Matte fog or similar to create nice distance effects. It adds a huge amount to the realism of shots.

    As for a large lake, you can always raise water levels to get what you want, if you can get a valley of some kind. You could also create a simple mask of a torus and mix that with a noise map to create what you want... I think I'll experiment with that now!

     

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    Totte said:

    @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.

    thanks ... any idea why it isn't processing the shader on my non-m1 (see above)?

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    so the sand shader looks like above and terrain3 has this weird micro repetitive texture, kinda like lots of minis of the one big shader that should cover the whole surface.

    ss3.png
    722 x 379 - 503K
  • shedofjoy_a0bca15db4shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 Posts: 23

    I have tried to get the trees (biome) to show up, and i understand that it doesnt show up in the preview, but im getting nothing in the render either, even when i change the restrict to camera, and ive changed the optimization to memory then auto and speed, but still nothing, checked the visiblity in the parameters, checked the shaders, still can't find anything to make the plant life show up, can get the water though, so the landscapes look a bit rubbish without life.and i did save the terrain to a folder as well, what am i missing?

    Ryzen 7 3700x, 32gb ram, rtx3090 oc, daz studio 4.20

  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    Obviously this plugin wasn't out of the beta testing stage and DAZ didn't test it sufficiently either b/c it isn't working on any M1s from what I can see.... the guinea pigs would be us ,... I hate (totally hate) the time wasted and frustration caused by these half measures ... it's a complete imposition on my time ... like I have four hours to trouble shoot this mess. We should be able to just install and play, like some are able to do, and others not. The development of this wasn't thought through enough. Great if its working for you, as it does on my pc, but I can't get it to work on any mac (and that is where I do my work), not an M1 and not on an intel mac either ... and this thing was devloped in a mac ..... go figure. I promise, this won't happen to me again.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 said:

    I have tried to get the trees (biome) to show up, and i understand that it doesnt show up in the preview, but im getting nothing in the render either, even when i change the restrict to camera, and ive changed the optimization to memory then auto and speed, but still nothing, checked the visiblity in the parameters, checked the shaders, still can't find anything to make the plant life show up, can get the water though, so the landscapes look a bit rubbish without life.and i did save the terrain to a folder as well, what am i missing?

    Ryzen 7 3700x, 32gb ram, rtx3090 oc, daz studio 4.20

    How did you install the product? (DIM, manual install, Daz Central, Daz Connect inside Daz Studio)

    Does the log file have any info? (Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File then scroll to the end for the most recent info)

    Which biome did you select?

    When you selected the biome, did you see a window pop us saying it was loading files, like in the attached screenshot?

    Screenshot 2022-03-20 14.53.04.png
    356 x 400 - 11K
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited March 2022

    alexhcowley 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
     

    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. 

    The UltraSceneryXT Displace function is one way to make a lake. Here I made minimal changes to the default setup (circled in red).

    • I changed the Noise gamma from 1 to 0.5 to make the noise more uniform (lower mountains and fewer water areas dispersed around the whole terrain)
    • I put a check on the Displace section and added an image file. I chose USC_Pond_01_heightmap2.png from UltraScenery. You can make your own map with any image editor.
    • I set the displace amount to -100
    • I put a check on Water

    For the render, I enabled the Biome and set the biome's Min Altitude (m) to 1. I used on of the included sun-sky render presets and the Matte Fog on preset.

    USX Lake.jpg
    2114 x 1247 - 337K
    USX Lake.jpg
    2000 x 1125 - 1M
    Post edited by barbult on
  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,386

    barbult said:

    alexhcowley 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
     

    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. 

    The UltraSceneryXT Displace function is one way to make a lake. Here I made minimal changes to the default setup (circled in red).

    • I changed the Noise gamma from 1 to 0.5 to make the noise more uniform (lower mountains and fewer water areas dispersed around the whole terrain)
    • I put a check on the Displace section and added an image file. I chose USC_Pond_01_heightmap2.png from UltraScenery. You can make your own map with any image editor.
    • I set the displace amount to -100
    • I put a check on Water

    For the render, I enabled the Biome and set the biome's Min Altitude (m) to 1. I used on of the included sun-sky render presets and the Matte Fog on preset.

    Thanks for your comments, especially the bit about noise gamma. I will be back in the land of RPG IV compilers for the next few days but I will definitly be committing further dark experiments with USXT. 

    Incidentally, apart from those in Howie's original US, there are also some promsing looking heightmaps in Tango Alpha's US directory. 

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244
    edited March 2022

    Here's another lake with higher mountains. This time I left noise gamma alone and changed the min and max altitude of the Terrain Properties (0 min and 175 max) and used an Absolute Displacement of -50. To make the lake bigger I lowered the displacement gamma to 0.5 and added Smooth of 10. I'm just playing around. There is no magic answer that I know of. There are so many ways to accomplish similar things with infinite variety in the detailed results!

    USX Lake 2.jpg
    2000 x 1125 - 1M
    Post edited by barbult on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    alexhcowley said:

    barbult said:

    alexhcowley 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
     

    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. 

    The UltraSceneryXT Displace function is one way to make a lake. Here I made minimal changes to the default setup (circled in red).

    • I changed the Noise gamma from 1 to 0.5 to make the noise more uniform (lower mountains and fewer water areas dispersed around the whole terrain)
    • I put a check on the Displace section and added an image file. I chose USC_Pond_01_heightmap2.png from UltraScenery. You can make your own map with any image editor.
    • I set the displace amount to -100
    • I put a check on Water

    For the render, I enabled the Biome and set the biome's Min Altitude (m) to 1. I used on of the included sun-sky render presets and the Matte Fog on preset.

    Thanks for your comments, especially the bit about noise gamma. I will be back in the land of RPG IV compilers for the next few days but I will definitly be committing further dark experiments with USXT. 

    Incidentally, apart from those in Howie's original US, there are also some promsing looking heightmaps in Tango Alpha's US directory. 

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

    For my lake, I didn't even load a Height Map in the Terrain Generators. I just used Noise for the basic terrain. I put the pond heightmap in the Displace section. There are many many options in this tool!

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    By the way, did you know that you can save your own presets? File>Save As>Properties Preset. Then click the Other tab and check Include Other Settings in Preset.

  • paulawp (marahzen)paulawp (marahzen) Posts: 1,371

    XT for the background, classic Ultrascenery foreground, with a really simple horse and rider. There's a bunch of faults and flaws in this - which was really done as part of a series to test the effect of various Sun-Sky environmental settings on the foreground and background - but I'm pretty happy with it for my first afternoon of testing XT. This takes about 6 minutes to render on my 32GB RAM/3060 ti machine.

    xt-us-horse-A2.jpg
    1500 x 1000 - 1M
  • UthgardUthgard Posts: 863

    mcorr said:

    Totte said:

    @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.

    thanks ... any idea why it isn't processing the shader on my non-m1 (see above)?

    I don't know if this is the case for you, but my Windows machine has an issue with Daz (that tech support has given up on) which makes it so any surface with a non-standard shader doesn't render correctly if it wasn't on the scene when it loaded. My workaround is to generate whatever I want (like an Ultrascenery scene), save the scene, and reload, and then everything works. I don't know if this will help you at all, but I can only hope so.

  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 766

    I was finally able to export heightmap, colormap and normal map from worldcreator, create a USXT terrain in daz and apply them all.

    Terrain 4.png
    1931 x 869 - 3M
    Terrain 5.png
    1931 x 869 - 3M
    Terrain 1.png
    1931 x 869 - 1M
    Terrain 2.png
    1931 x 869 - 2M
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

  • TotteTotte Posts: 13,965

    mcorr said:

    Totte said:

    @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.

    thanks ... any idea why it isn't processing the shader on my non-m1 (see above)?

    I have no shader issues (as you see on my renders, so that's probably something completey different.
    On the M1, it looks like the plugin when loading and doing initialize on the M1 fails and DS is slain by the os, not crashes. 
     

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    Oso3D said:

    Ooooh, looks like a caldera. That's a big skeleton!

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    paulawp (marahzen) said:

    XT for the background, classic Ultrascenery foreground, with a really simple horse and rider. There's a bunch of faults and flaws in this - which was really done as part of a series to test the effect of various Sun-Sky environmental settings on the foreground and background - but I'm pretty happy with it for my first afternoon of testing XT. This takes about 6 minutes to render on my 32GB RAM/3060 ti machine.

    Even though the rider is heavily shaded, that is really a very lovely render. I find myself looking at it several times. It looks like a wonderful place to be. 

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    Just to share the fun, the above lake image used the following mask mixed in with noise:

    Enjoy!

     

    Ring Mask4.jpg
    2000 x 2000 - 70K
  • HowieFarkesHowieFarkes Posts: 607
    edited March 2022

    mcorr said:

    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.

    Looks like the shader is not picking up the cavity and flow maps.

    • Have you set the Terrain Maps folder? Is it readable/writable from DS?
    • If you press the "Update Maps" button what happens?
    • If the maps are being saved correctly can you manually add them to the shader? Does that fix anything?

     

    Screen Shot 2022-03-21 at 8.36.50 am.png
    748 x 1108 - 113K
    Post edited by HowieFarkes on
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    Uthgard said:

    mcorr said:

    Totte said:

    @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.

    thanks ... any idea why it isn't processing the shader on my non-m1 (see above)?

    I don't know if this is the case for you, but my Windows machine has an issue with Daz (that tech support has given up on) which makes it so any surface with a non-standard shader doesn't render correctly if it wasn't on the scene when it loaded. My workaround is to generate whatever I want (like an Ultrascenery scene), save the scene, and reload, and then everything works. I don't know if this will help you at all, but I can only hope so.

    thanks for the input. tried that, but it seems that isn't the problem for me. would have been weird if it was, b/c I've never had render probs before.

  • vikl1964vikl1964 Posts: 28

    Just have to say how fantastic this is! Can't wait to see what biomes will eventually be added (would love to see a proper jungle). Not my first render, but was playing around with adding a height map and adjusting settings.

     

    0320221540.png
    1300 x 731 - 1M
  • mcorrmcorr Posts: 1,084

    HowieFarkes said:

    mcorr said:

    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.

    Looks like the shader is not picking up the cavity and flow maps.

    • Have you set the Terrain Maps folder? Is it readable/writable from DS?
    • If you press the "Update Maps" button what happens?
    • If the maps are being saved correctly can you manually add them to the shader? Does that fix anything?

    yes, terrain maps folder set, yes it is readable/writable (or it wouldn't have the files (flow, cavity, etc) saved on it, nor would I be able to load the files, which I am able to do. The loading does nothing, nor is there anything strange when I update maps, it just saves the new maps with the changes that were made. Loading them manually again also does nothing.

    Pict attached.

     

    ss4.png
    1858 x 773 - 2M
  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 766

    Another worldcreator and USXT combination.

    1.png
    1931 x 869 - 2M
  • shedofjoy_a0bca15db4shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 Posts: 23

    barbult said:

    shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 said:

    I have tried to get the trees (biome) to show up, and i understand that it doesnt show up in the preview, but im getting nothing in the render either, even when i change the restrict to camera, and ive changed the optimization to memory then auto and speed, but still nothing, checked the visiblity in the parameters, checked the shaders, still can't find anything to make the plant life show up, can get the water though, so the landscapes look a bit rubbish without life.and i did save the terrain to a folder as well, what am i missing?

    Ryzen 7 3700x, 32gb ram, rtx3090 oc, daz studio 4.20

    How did you install the product? (DIM, manual install, Daz Central, Daz Connect inside Daz Studio)

    Does the log file have any info? (Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File then scroll to the end for the most recent info)

    Which biome did you select?

    When you selected the biome, did you see a window pop us saying it was loading files, like in the attached screenshot?

     I installed via DIM, And i tired several biomes and the window did pop up saying it was loading files, the log file had this and a lot more below it :-

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.674 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_UltraSceneryXT water node__Default_1969_9494' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.675 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_Oak Trees 1a prop[1] color[1]__Foliage_1993_9518' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.675 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_Oak Trees 1a prop[1] color[2]__Foliage_19ae_9544' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.675 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_Oak Trees 1a prop[1] color[3]__Foliage_19c9_9570' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.676 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_Oak Trees 1a prop[1] color[4]__Foliage_19e4_9596' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.676 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : found 48 textures, 41 lambdas (37 unique)

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.677 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating volumes.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.678 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating lights.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.678 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating object flags.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.678 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating caustic portals.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.678 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating decals.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.679 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Allocating 1-layer frame buffer

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.681 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Using interactive scheduling, caustic sampler disabled

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.689 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Initializing OptiX for CUDA device 0

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.793 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Rendering with 1 device(s):

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.793 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090)

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.793 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Rendering...

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.793 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.5   IRAY   rend progr: CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Processing scene...

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.817 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.14  IRAY   rend info : Importing lights for motion time 0

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.817 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.14  IRAY   rend info : Initializing light hierarchy.

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.817 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.14  IRAY   rend info : Light hierarchy initialization took 0.000 s

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.373 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.14  IRAY   rend info : JIT-linking wavefront kernel in 0.306 s

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.373 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.5   IRAY   rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Scene processed in 0.580s

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.374 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.14  IRAY   rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Allocated 16.162 MiB for frame buffer

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.374 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.5   IRAY   rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Allocated 1.906 GiB of work space (2048k active samples in 0.000s)

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.374 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.5   IRAY   rend info : CUDA device 0 (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090): Optimizing for cooperative usage (performance could be sacrificed)

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.443 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend progr: Received update to 00001 iterations after 0.646s.

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.445 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Rendering...

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.449 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating geometry.

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.452 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Updating motion transforms.

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.452 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Importing scene graph.

    2022-03-20 17:33:31.452 Iray [INFO] - IRAY:RENDER ::   1.0   IRAY   rend info : Auto instancing compression ratio 1.00 (Full instancing compression ratio 1.00)

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,244

    shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 said:

    barbult said:

    shedofjoy_a0bca15db4 said:

    I have tried to get the trees (biome) to show up, and i understand that it doesnt show up in the preview, but im getting nothing in the render either, even when i change the restrict to camera, and ive changed the optimization to memory then auto and speed, but still nothing, checked the visiblity in the parameters, checked the shaders, still can't find anything to make the plant life show up, can get the water though, so the landscapes look a bit rubbish without life.and i did save the terrain to a folder as well, what am i missing?

    Ryzen 7 3700x, 32gb ram, rtx3090 oc, daz studio 4.20

    How did you install the product? (DIM, manual install, Daz Central, Daz Connect inside Daz Studio)

    Does the log file have any info? (Help>Troubleshooting>View Log File then scroll to the end for the most recent info)

    Which biome did you select?

    When you selected the biome, did you see a window pop us saying it was loading files, like in the attached screenshot?

     I installed via DIM, And i tired several biomes and the window did pop up saying it was loading files, the log file had this and a lot more below it :-

    2022-03-20 17:33:30.674 Iray [INFO] - MATCNV:RENDER ::   1.0   MATCNV rend info : Material instance 'DS_UltraSceneryXT water node__Default_1969_9494' uses MDL JIT compilation.

    ...

    Did you specify a Save Location folder in the Terrain Maps section? If not, do that and see if that fixes the problem.

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,384

    barbult said:

    By the way, did you know that you can save your own presets? File>Save As>Properties Preset. Then click the Other tab and check Include Other Settings in Preset.

    Aha! I was wondering about that. I must try it tomorrow (it's midnight here already). 

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,384

    Oso3D said:

    Ooh, land of the giants? Great scenery, clever use of that simple-looking map. 

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    I encourage people to zoom in; there are a bunch of extra bits :)

  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,384
    edited March 2022

    Just another couple of renders using terrain.party height maps.

    Wasdale-01.jpg
    1024 x 576 - 567K
    Zugspitze-01.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 550K
    Zugspitze-Eagle.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 589K
    Post edited by MelanieL on
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