My horrible day
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 22.02.07You’d think it’d be simple… use the 3D terrain data to generate particles, use a series of tree images to texture the particles… and render out a forest! Unfortunately, Lightwave doesn’t do this so well. Either the particles are transparent, or they’re cropped using the particle “circle”, or shadows won’t work. Or all of the above, which is what’s happened to me.
So skip the 3D, it’s not worth trying to create each tree as a polygon and facing them towards the camera, and randomly applying an image from a bank of 120 different variations. Lightwave just can’t do this.
Next step is to move this library of trees (painstakingly created by myself in the past two days) into an array that Painter can use for its Image Hose. Well, Photoshop can’t support transparent layers when creating an image array, since it merges a background no matter what. It also can’t insert images at a 1:1 ratio, it insists on scaling things vertically by 1 pixel, either taller or shorter. Also no matter what. This is a problem, since resampling my colour or mask renders will cause them to blur the background into the foreground, thus creating black halos on all my layers.
I went through and applied the masks to the colour renders, creating transparent layers in photoshop and removing any matting, dragged each separate layered file into a single file, then brought that file of 120 layers into Painter. Painter could then create an array from a group, but doesn’t allow you to select more than one layer at a time… and you can only view 8 layers at once (since the layers window won’t expand to view more than this, and that’s just layer names, without thumbnails, which can cut it down to 2 layers at a time). And the mouse scroll button doesn’t work in Painter. So you’re stuck with shift-clicking each layer, clicking to view lower ones, shift-clicking them, and repeat.
Thankfully, Painter eventually created the image array. Unfortunately, it centered each tree, removing all baseline reference for the roots. And once the array file was saved, no matte was present. Effectively ruining all of this. I double checked everything, redid the array, and turns out Painter ignored the transparency altogether, truly ruining any usefulness.
Since I couldn’t get a raw RGB image + alpha out of Lightwave, I’m using the Photoshop equivalent. Not quite as clean, but it works. I’ve gone through and roughly derived the raw RGB by duplicating the element’s transparent layer 100+ times so the transparency is removed, then flattened them.
Once this is done, I can use Photoshop’s contact sheet to create an array without transparency, then use the original masks to create another array with masks. So long as file names haven’t changed (and they shouldn’t have) then the two arrays will match up properly and I can redo the transparency by reinserting the alpha. Keep in mind this wasn’t possible without first going through the transparency process and then deriving the raw RGB, since Photoshop will scale the images no matter what, and if the RGB is matted, it’ll create halos.
Hmm… I finished the arrays. Evidently Painter doesn’t support Alphas when importing for an image hose. This is bad news, as if the previous troubles hadn’t been enough. Thankfully, it seems I’ve got it built now. No thanks to Photoshop or Painter, but I’m finally able to spray trees wherever I want. Granted, pressure sensitivity isn’t controlling the tree species, nor do I have the correct brushes built. But it’s 3 hours late, and I want to go home. Goodnight!
mediaboxAdvanced
Your determination is inspiring!
But, did you really just say “... I'm finally able to spray trees wherever I want.”?