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UltraSceneryXT - large terrain/landscape generator

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  • sandmanmaxsandmanmax Posts: 992
    edited July 2022

    barbult said:

    sandmanmax said:

    barbult said:

    Artini said:

    Thanks, @barbult. You wrote:

    "Maybe decals or procedural shaders are the way to go. I recently tried decals on USXT. I applied one decal to part of the mountains and another to the ground."

    What decals and procedural shaders, are you talking about?

    I used decals from the Ground Decal Materials.

    Barbult, that look awesome and so useful AND it's on sale.  So I purchased it and have been playing around.  I just dropped a decal on the US terrain, also on a DAZ plane.  Nothing happens when I render.  I can see the decal in my Scene tab, I can select it and see all the material settings, but no render.  If I hide the terrain or plane, just blank screen renders.  Oh - and I closed DS and restarted (I'm on 4.20.0.17)  Any ideas what's going on?

    Decals must be parented to the object that you want them to show up on. For example, parent the decal to the UltraSceneryXT object. The decal must encompass at least part of the parent's geometry. The decal cannot float entirely above the parent object or completely off to the side, etc. The decal is just shown in textured viewport as bounding box corners, so sometimes it is hard to position.

    Would it be best to dform it to the terrain, then?   Never mind... I figured it out.  It depends on the terrain.  Mine is relatively flat, so it work out-of-the-box, but if you are trying to hills or something, then obviously a flat decal isn't going to work.  The other thing I found (the hard way), is that the decal has to be the LAST thing you do, especially if it's parented to US or USXT because everything gets wiped out if you have to regenerate. 

    Sample dirt patch in grassy field.

    Ground Decal Test.jpg
    591 x 447 - 125K
    Post edited by sandmanmax on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    sandmanmax said:

    Would it be best to dform it to the terrain, then?

    You can scale, rotate, transform a decal, but I don't know how to "dform" a decal. The decal itself has controls for clipping and UV projection and more. I don't know what most of them do.

  • sandmanmaxsandmanmax Posts: 992

    barbult said:

    sandmanmax said:

    Would it be best to dform it to the terrain, then?

    You can scale, rotate, transform a decal, but I don't know how to "dform" a decal. The decal itself has controls for clipping and UV projection and more. I don't know what most of them do.

    Ok - I guess i'm going to have to experiment some more then.  I think I was assuming it was some kind of a plane.  I vaguely remember seeing a tutorial somewhere about decals and how they worked.  I'll have to track that down.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    sandmanmax said:

    barbult said:

    sandmanmax said:

    Would it be best to dform it to the terrain, then?

    You can scale, rotate, transform a decal, but I don't know how to "dform" a decal. The decal itself has controls for clipping and UV projection and more. I don't know what most of them do.

    Ok - I guess i'm going to have to experiment some more then.  I think I was assuming it was some kind of a plane.  I vaguely remember seeing a tutorial somewhere about decals and how they worked.  I'll have to track that down.

    Iray decals are not a plane. The word "decal" is used in some products (like Stonemason architecture, I think) to refer more generically to a graphic element that overlays some other texture, even though it is not using an Iray decal. It is easy to get confused.

  • sandmanmaxsandmanmax Posts: 992

    I found the tutorial on decals in DS, if anybody else needs it: The WP Guru How to use Iray Decal Nodes in DAZ Studio 

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454
    edited July 2022

    Thanks for all of the tips. I think, I will wait until someone will create some shaders for USXT to fix the problem with the steep parts.

    Right now, I will experiment more with Unity terrains. They also look not so bad and it is easier for me to create them.

    Genesis 8 dressed in aviatrrix clothes flying over the canyon.

    Video on YouTube rendered in Unity 2021.3.6f1:

     

    Post edited by Artini on
  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 766

    Artini said:

    For the comparison, one render from Unity:

    image

    This might be of some help to you, Artini. But I have no tried it: https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-4-cliff-face-shaders

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454

    Thanks, I have these shaders. The problem is that I cannot apply them to USXT and not to loose the other features.

     

  • paulawp (marahzen)paulawp (marahzen) Posts: 1,363
    edited July 2022

    This test was conducted in traditional Ultrascenery, but the principle would apply to USXT. I just have my doubt that the scale - at least of the decals I have - would be practical for USXT ...

    This is a basic path from the USC feature that has a path next to a river. On close inspection, the terrain is actually surprisingly non-level.

    I have created a small primitive plane, which I made dynamic and simulated so it would settle over the area. I then applied this decal from "Liquid Decal Materials" to the plane and set the opacity of the plane itself to 0. The dead branch is from this USC ecology, but the water and rocks are the decal.

    I was reasonably pleased by the outcome. I bought a couple of decal sets but haven't done much with them yet.

    Decal-1.jpg
    1300 x 1000 - 995K
    Decal-2.jpg
    1300 x 1000 - 1M
    Post edited by paulawp (marahzen) on
  • TugpsxTugpsx Posts: 738

    paulawp (marahzen) said:

    This test was conducted in traditional Ultrascenery, but the principle would apply to USXT. I just have my doubt that the scale - at least of the decals I have - would be practical for USXT ...

    Nice one Paula, looks great. Thanks for sharing. 

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    Why not just scale the decal? The decal will project onto the non-flat terrain surface without the need for any dynamic plane or simulation. It seems like you are making this much harder than necessary.

  • HighlandHighland Posts: 178

    paulawp (marahzen) said:

    I was reasonably pleased by the outcome. I bought a couple of decal sets but haven't done much with them yet.

    Nice! Thanks for sharing those.

  • paulawp (marahzen)paulawp (marahzen) Posts: 1,363

    barbult said:

    Why not just scale the decal? The decal will project onto the non-flat terrain surface without the need for any dynamic plane or simulation. It seems like you are making this much harder than necessary.

    Well, in explanation and apology, I started off on this plane tangent when I wanted to apply a ground shader to a specific spot on a USXT scene (eg, the little slope where my "guy on the mountain" was sitting) and since it worked for that, I figured, hey, let's see if it works with decals. Aside from testing the decal products when I bought them, this was literally the first scene I've created with one.

    I am really, really new to decals but one thing comes to mind: These decals seem to only be visible in the viewport with Nvidia, so if I put them on a plane, I can make the USC/USXT objects invisible and turn on Nvidia viewport to see the decal and arrange it. 

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240

    Whatever works for you! smiley We don't all have to do things the same way. Experimentation is what leads to discoveries and new techniques.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454

    Great renders and explanation, @paulawp. Thanks for sharing.

     

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454
    edited July 2022

    Thanks again. I have made a quick test with dForce plane and decals on UltraScenery scene with Bridge 1.

    Very clever to make the opacity of the dForce plane to 0, while rendering.

    I have hidden the UltraScenery and have switched to Nvidia viewport to see the decals. Preview is much faster on my computer that way.

    UltraScenery also suffer from that distorted look on the steep parts of the terrain.

    I have left some parts of the hill without the decals on my render below, to see the difference.

    image

    bridge1sc02pic01.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 1M
    Post edited by Artini on
  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 766

    Looks promising but the texture stretching is still evident. Keep it up. Soon you'll be teaching me a thing or two.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,240
    edited August 2022

    UltraScenery XT Archipelago preset goes nicely with Secluded Island. I use an HDRI for lighting and background. I deleted the Secluded Island water and used the UltraScenery XT water for the whole scene. The hut in the water is from Beauty in Paradise.

    Secluded Island USX Philippine Hut.jpg
    2000 x 1125 - 1M
    Post edited by barbult on
  • TugpsxTugpsx Posts: 738

    barbult said:

    UltraScenery XT Archipelago preset goes nicely with Secluded Island. I use an HDRI for lighting and background. I deleted the Secluded Island water and used the UltraScenery XT water for the whole scene. The hut in the water is from Beauty in Paradise.

    This looks very cool barb, Nice kit bashing. I just picked up a ton of stuff in the last below $2 sales and am doing the same thing bashing them together.

     

  • HighlandHighland Posts: 178

    barbult said:

    UltraScenery XT Archipelago preset goes nicely with Secluded Island. I use an HDRI for lighting and background. I deleted the Secluded Island water and used the UltraScenery XT water for the whole scene. The hut in the water is from Beauty in Paradise.

    Beautiful Barbult.

  • davesodaveso Posts: 6,990

    Just bought the tropical bundle for XT. It feels like the tropics here today.

     

  • paulawp (marahzen)paulawp (marahzen) Posts: 1,363
    edited August 2022

    I did this strictly for the lulz - it's not really a practical usage of any of the products. This is Polish's Forest Road as a mountainous pine forest, thanks to USC/USXT.

    CurveAhead.jpg
    1300 x 1300 - 1M
    Post edited by paulawp (marahzen) on
  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,386

    paulawp (marahzen) said:

    I did this strictly for the lulz - it's not really a practical usage of any of the products. This is Polish's Forest Road as a mountainous pine forest, thanks to USC/USXT.

    The two fit beautifully together!

    Cheers,

    Alex. 

  • AnEye4ArtAnEye4Art Posts: 766

    paulawp (marahzen) said:

    I did this strictly for the lulz - it's not really a practical usage of any of the products. This is Polish's Forest Road as a mountainous pine forest, thanks to USC/USXT.

    One of the best use of USXT. Get rid of the road tiles and you have perfection IMO. 

  • Norman_RNorman_R Posts: 95
    edited August 2022

    Played with the noise map a bit.

    003611.jpg
    3840 x 2160 - 6M
    Post edited by Norman_R on
  • 3DScreencraft3DScreencraft Posts: 490

    Hi Howie, I wanted to check the licensing rules with you please? Does the licence allow me to create my own landscapes, ie not directly what you have created but my own topography etc,and then make 2D backgrounds that I can sell, eg on Rendo? I don't want to break copyrights etc...? I have almost everything you have created, but this is the first time we can play with creating, our own mountains, lakes, etc. What guidance can you give, please? It's just for 2D images, no bits of the software being packaged. Thanks!

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454

    Does anybody knows, if this new set can be used with USXT?

    https://www.daz3d.com/tropical-botanica--understorey

     

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,386
    edited August 2022

    Artini said:

    Does anybody knows, if this new set can be used with USXT?

    https://www.daz3d.com/tropical-botanica--understorey

     

    This is part of a promised add-on for the original Ultrascenery, not USXT. There should be two more sets plus a bundle. Quite where the rest of the sets have got to is anyone's guess.  

    Cheers,

    Alex.  

    Post edited by alexhcowley on
  • MelanieLMelanieL Posts: 7,377

    I suspect today's release may have escaped a little early - with luck the rest will turn up tomorrow. [What do I mean with luck?! My credit is trembling again]

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,454

    Thanks, will wait, then.

     

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