Distributer tool

[andylegate]

All I can say is........woooooooooow!!!

When I first glanced over the docs that Chogon gave us, I thought; "Oh yah, this is the tool that puts like your random bushes over large areas so you don't have to put them all in your self."

I saw how long the read was and thought it was really involved.

It's not. It's actually VERY easy to use!

The problem I'm having right now, is that my alpha chanel on the bushes, is making each bush act like a X-ray machine and you can see through the ground mesh to the void.

Have to get that figured out.

[Aloys]

I hoped that with the Max plugin transparencies issues would be easier to sort out, but it looks like we still have a couple thing to figure out and new tricks to learn.

[TheMagician]

Ah, so many things to look at ... I really think the distributor is an incredible tool as well. I haven't had a look at it yet.

Could you perhaps upload a small example scene or at least your 3d bush so that I can have a look at it and play around with it?

[andylegate]

Sure, np. Here's a link to the zipped up Max file. I don't know if it includes the textures though.

Outside Max File

Using the Distributor is easy:

You have to have 2 things: a surface to use it on, and an object to distribute.

So have like your ground somewhere, and then make one bush/rock/weed, etc. You give them materials and texture of course (and as you'll see in mine, the transparency is causing X-ray vision through my ground, still have not figured out how to solve this yet, however, using PrpShop to look at some of Cyan's prp files, I see that in their Materials, they have some flags set that can only be found in the Material Editor under "Advanced Parameters" that has the warning note that they are experimental and not supported......yet when you open up the KI Max file Chogon posted, you can clearly see that they ARE using some of those flags, heh. ).

Anyway, go to your surface, and using the component manager, add a distributor, and a cluster as components for the surface. Then go to the Utils tab and in Component Utils for your surface and select the Distributor. In the first roll out box, called "Replicant Objects" you'll have a blank box. Click on the "Add" button below it, and then in your 3D scene, click on your Bush/Weed/Rock that you want to replicate.
Then go back to the Component Utils, click on Cluster in your components. You'll have one box called Cluster Geometry, with 2 buttons: "Clear" and "Go!" click on the "Go!" button, and it will take your one object and make clusters of it all over that surface. You can export, link in and look at that point.

You use the rest of the roll out boxes under Distributor to adjust how your clusters work, align, amount and density of them, have them conform to your surface, etc, etc.

You can also do this with more than one object, say you want to do this with some bushes and some small rocks. If it's the same surface, you use the same Distributor and Cluster, just go to your Distributor component, and in the "Replicant Objects" box, click on the "Add" button again, and then select the other object you want to distribute.

Pretty nifty tool I think.

Now if I could just get this "X-Ray" affect to go away. I asked Mark (Chogon) about possibly getting a Max file for one of the Uru Ages ( I suggested Kemo or Gira, or both, heh), and he said he'd add the request to their "list" they have), when he replied, I asked about this X-Ray affect, he might get back to me on this.

[Paradox]

Good luck with clusters, they do not behave the same way as other geometry, especially in terms of vertex paint and realtime lighting.

They were so confusing that we actually gave up trying to use them in PyPRP, and implemented other hacks (such as multiple objects pointing to the same vertex data in the DrawableSpans).

[andylegate]

The clusters themselves are actually pretty easy.

It's the Material that we're having a problem with. The "X-Ray" affect that I'm talking about happens to everything, not just clusters. If I set up a window, and give it a transparent texture that makes the window look dirty on the edges, when I look through the window after linking in, it will allow you to see through it, and see through the ground out side!

We know how to take care of this in Blender with the GoW Plugin: Passindex and in some cases the Zoffs.
But we don't know what the equivilant in Cyan's Plugin is. I'm pretty sure it's in the Material Editor, but the Passindex and Zoffs in Blender is what you guys assigned in your Plugin.

Anyways....I finally finished the tutorial for Distributors, whew! It's a long one!

http://www.guildofmaintainers.org/Forum ... 154&t=1679

[Chuckles58]

That's a great tutorial Andy. Now all we need is a tutorial on how to get a relatively cheap version of 3ds max 7.

[Paradox]

The drawable flags are most likely set using some of the components in the Render menu. I recall seeing things like "Draw in front" and "Blend".

[andylegate]

:Smacks forhead yelling: "DOH!"


I forgot! I ran into this problem with Camp Bravo, and none of you could figure out what was wrong, as I was doing everything you said.

It was my ground. The ground meshes were way to big. I had to slice up the mesh. The moment I did, the chain link fence transparent textures stopped acting like X-Ray glasses.

I just tested this in Max....and sure enough! The transparencies are no longer doing it!!!!!

So Yay to fix!

Yay to Blender and the GoW Plugin, as it was never a problem with them like I always thought.


It's Plasma that's having the issue! hehehehehehehe

[TheMagician]

You mean by splitting the surfaces of your ouside age into smaller units you were able to resolve the transparency issue?
Because I tried the same on the file you sent me and it didn't have any effect.
Also I had a look at Ercana and the ground planes used there are of the same size of yours and there are no problems.