Forests in maya mental ray.

#601

I wanted just a breeze (that is 1m/s wind). If I look through the window leaves really move like that. If you want you can have much stronger wind plus you can adjust elasticity for trunk, branches and other parts of tree.

#602

could you pleaze describe precisely the steps in order to have that onys tree animated in maya?

#603

I think he animated it in 3ds Max. You can use the onyx tree plugin for max which allows you to animate the wind. I also used that method: http://vimeo.com/sko/videos
You can create a fbx point cache in max to export the tree with the animation. But it only worked for me when the tree had less than 30.000 polys.

#604

Yes, that is right procedure. I tried to export separate OBJ and pointcache files, but that in maya always creates somekind of error. FBX export with pointcache works everytime.
That tree on video has around 60k polys. I will test how far can I go, but I think limitation is size of pointcache file (1,2GB for 2000 frames in this case) rather than tree polycount.

#605

@Infernal: Thanx man, actually I can’t take much credit for the actual scene other then chaning some render-settings/dof and some very heavy postwork :wink:
The scene is pretty much rendered as if:
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/duncan/scene_files_from_tech_talk

@igi: Much obliged! :wink: Your animation looks promising btw, nice job!

#606

A quick doodle, I’m sort of starting from scratch with some new stuff, If it’s going in the right direction it will probably end up with that tutorial that I’ve sort of promised :wink:

High rez: http://www.nicz.net/grasser01l.jpg

#607

Hey arkanoid, it says the file dosnt exist anymore.

I also can’t download it from the mediafire link. Would be greatly appreciated if you could re-host this pdf :smiley:

Thanks mate.

#608

Sorry I changed the shared folder in:

http://www.wuala.com/arkanoiz/Root/Documenti

#609

Hi!
I followed this thread… really interesting. One thing I would be interested in is passes. Proxy object always render black here as soon as I try to render for example a depth pass… anything I’m missing here or is this a known problem?
-klaus

#610

worldofmaya—
Im kinda having the same problem with my passes and proxies/instances. Im trying to hide the reflections in my mirrored glass from the groups of grass im using for my land.

My only way of going about it is, well its kinda a hack for me but its working. I m just creating a whole new scene with the grass deleted and reflections on. From another file, where I have everything in the scene, and reflections turned off. Its a pain, but I couldnt figure anything else out. Tried the obvious of unchecking “visable in Refl.” and a couple of things, but couldnt connect the dots.

#611

@worldofmaya

Hey there, I’ve been able to render a depth pass using the built in maya depth map camera pass. But I’d setup the layer and remove all textures only leaving the alpha for the leaves.

@3drenderer

I hope I am right. I’m getting rusty on this but I have been able to do what you are talking about. I would actually select all the instanced Binary Proxy Trees and hit my attribute spreadsheet and turn off visible in reflections. Given my scenes weight, it takes FOREVER but it does work.

Try to apply the settings to your master tree aswell just incase.

#612

Kinematics:

Hey there, I’ve been able to render a depth pass using the built in maya depth map camera pass. But I’d setup the layer and remove all textures only leaving the alpha for the leaves.

Could you explain perhaps how you left the alpha (cutout_opacity, in mia_x) intact? I’m struggling with depth pass in mental ray, works fine in Maya software of course, but I can’t seem to keep my leaf-alphas intact and of course this is bad when compositing. Kinda OT, but a quick outline of the workflow would really help.

#613

My quick and dirty solution for now was to enable the depth channel and render Iffs. Not a good long-term solution, but okay for now.
A second solution which got into my mind was by setting up a MI-file with textures (…) and another one with a depth shader and just exchange them in a separate render layer.
Over-ruling a render proxy isn’t possible or am I wrong?
-Klaus

#614

Cutout opacity in mia_material_x_passes shader, Camera depth/Camera depth remapped pass in Mental Ray works no problem. Cutout remains intact. Might want to play with the ‘Custom Entity’ options for the depth channel calculations, but it works either way here. :shrug:

#615

about rescaling leaves/needles when all of them r combined into 1 object:

-1st of all u ll have to separate them first, and ofc they will all have messed up pivot points
if all leaves have same topo , vertex order will remain same for all, so u just have to pick 1 vertex … the one u want to be pivot and put that vertex number in script:

// SELECT ALL LEAVES

string $sel[]=ls -sl;
vector $tempor;

for ($i in $sel)
{
select ($i+".vtx[115]"); // REPLACE VERTEX NUMBER TO PIVOT VERTEX
cluster -n tempclu;
$tempor=getAttr tempcluHandle.origin;

select -r $i;
setAttr ($i+".scalePivot") ($tempor.x) ($tempor.y) ($tempor.z);
setAttr ($i+".rotatePivot") ($tempor.x) ($tempor.y) ($tempor.z);

select -r $i;
DeleteHistory;

}

now as u have correct pivots u can use some randomization script if u want random scaling etc …

in case u just want to make leaf/needle thiner on top, lets say
use this modified version:

THIS WILL WORK FOR SQUARE SHAPED LEAVES/NEELES

//SELECT ALL LEAVES
string $sel[]=ls -sl;
vector $tempor;

for ($i in $sel)
{
select ($i+".vtx[0:1]"); //ON SQUARE 0 and 1 ARE BOTTOM VERTEXES
cluster -n tempclu;
$tempor=getAttr tempcluHandle.origin;

select -r $i;
setAttr ($i+".scalePivot") ($tempor.x) ($tempor.y) ($tempor.z);
setAttr ($i+".rotatePivot") ($tempor.x) ($tempor.y) ($tempor.z);

// AMOUNT OF ROOT SCALE
setAttr tempcluHandle.scaleX 2;
setAttr tempcluHandle.scaleY 2;
setAttr tempcluHandle.scaleZ 2;

select ($i+".vtx[2:3]"); // TOP VERTEXES
cluster -n tempclu1;

// AMOUNT OF SCALE ON TOP
setAttr tempclu1Handle.scaleX 1.2;
setAttr tempclu1Handle.scaleY 1.2;
setAttr tempclu1Handle.scaleZ 1.2;

select -r $i;
DeleteHistory;

}

#616

Finally got some grass that is decent enough to post so I figured I’d go ahead and do it. This thread has been a massive help!

#617

One more test with some different types of grass and objects casting shadows and stuff:

#618

Hey guys,

What is your method to scatter grass across a large terrain with hills. My issue comes about as the instances always point up leaving dark lines across the hills instead of facing the normals or anything like that.

Also…I need control of where the grass is and isn’t, for example. to create a footpath. Any ideas on this? I know paint3d is a good plugin but for covering massive areas, it isn’t a solution I think.

#619

I use spPaint3D for detailing and Array or SpreadObjects script for automation/massive spread. Array has a better GUI/front end, but Spread has some nice features too. All three can be found over at CreativeCrash.

To make a path, simply isolate your instances/proxies, select the ones you don’t want visible, and hide them. You could delete them, but of course that’s destructive, and I only do that if I’m certain I won’t want them there later. Sometimes my paths appear too barren if I hide 'em, so I can then go in and unhide them, and shrink them down all tiny so they add some detail but still help make a path.

#620

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up about those two scripts. I’ve never tried them before but just got 'em off creative crash. Will give em a whirl later on tonight!