Good morning,
I followed ripsting’s tutorial and was able to run the script with no errors in the file he supplied; though when I try to run the script on my own mesh and click on estimate faces it estimates 0. I did the vertex painting and I compared his file to mine, so if anyone can help me trouble-shoot my problem I’d appreciate it.
-Brian
Start off with an unpainted mesh and make sure it’s selected. Then set your values for density and thickness quite high. Use what’s generated there to show you what colors to paint where.
If you still get no estimated faces is there something in the console?
%<
Ok, I added a plane and tried it and it worked. So far so good. I then scaled it up 15 times, and it stll worked. I then subdivided the plane about 5 times and it no longer worked. I appreciate your help Fligh %.
Do you or anyone else know what I am doing wrong? Does the script not work on a sub-divided mesh? Should I be doing something different? Any help is appreciated.
-Brian
This time I counted the subdivisions:
1 subdivide: worked
2 subdivide: worked
3 subdivide: worked
4 subdivide: didn’t work
Again, that’s adding 1 plane and scaling it up to be 15x 15 first.
Any thoughts?
-Brian
Yes, I wasn’t aware of this but after subdividing too many times it does come back with ‘0 Faces’. Probably because I’ve never tried to grass over a whole continent! What I’ve done is generate the grass mesh and then position a whole lot of them just below the “soil” mesh. This way you can have non-uniform patches, tufts and tussocks, with different texture, frizziness, gravity etc…, arrange them where you want them and scale the ones in the background down to give the scene depth. This way you just have so much more control than you do trying to paint a whole scene. And you can save the presets and the meshes for future use.
I wouldn’t call this a bug, just a limitation.
%<
I followed your steps- creating a plane that’s 15x15 and running the script. Note that the script will not run sucessfully unless the base mesh has vertex color properties. So either hit V to enter vertex paint mode, or press the tan ‘Make’ button next to the VertCol label in the edit buttons. Originally when I ran the script no fibers were created (because the blue denisty color was 0). To fix this I vertex painted one of the corners white. Now it created fibers.
I subdivided once and ran the script. Everthing was ok. I repeated this 8 times until it seemed to not work. I hit the ‘Estimate Faces’ button in the Fiber GUI and it told me “0 faces predicted”. I simply increased the density and hit ‘Estimate Faces’ again until it returned non-zero.
Explanation:
My old fiber script created a certain number of fibers per base-mesh-face. However, this was a bad way to do it because the fiber density would be higher on smaller faces, and less dense on larger faces. So I wrote a subroutine that calculates the area of each face and alters the density based on that so everything appears uniform. However, once the area of a face becomes so small the script will set the density to below 1 fiber. However, more blue vertex paint or a higher density value will counteract this.
I appreciate both of your answers and help. Fligh %, I liked your idea of a soil mesh and grass mesh, that will definitely come in handy in the future. Ripsting, this is a great script! keep up the good work.
My old fiber script created a certain number of fibers per base-mesh-face. However, this was a bad way to do it because the fiber density would be higher on smaller faces, and less dense on larger faces. So I wrote a subroutine that calculates the area of each face and alters the density based on that so everything appears uniform. However, once the area of a face becomes so small the script will set the density to below 1 fiber. However, more blue vertex paint or a higher density value will counteract this.
So if I understand correctly, if the subdivided mesh’s face area is too small then to counter this I would need to add more blue vertex paint and adjust the density value. Ok I will try this after I get off work.
If I want to create a valley with sloping hills up each side with a consistant grass density and height (my goal) would I just vertex paint my whole seen blue or white or cyan and then set the density high?
Thanks again for the help.
-Brian
If I want to create a valley with sloping hills up each side with a consistant grass density and height (my goal) would I just vertex paint my whole seen blue or white or cyan and then set the density high?
Technically, yes. BUT!
You are going to generate an enormous amount of faces. Half will not be visable because they are backfaces. 75% of the remainder will be out of range of the camera to depict them properly. And to assign seperate materials (so that you can vary the texture) you will either end up with a blocky look or a maze of multiple material interfaces that will drive you mad. That’s for stills.
For animation a lot of the detail provided by the grass mesh will be lost in AA and motion blur. Even if you are traipsing around all over your valley you still only need grass where the camera is pointing in each individual frame.
For both stills and animation a grass texture overlayed with grass mesh only where you need it would save you a heap of rendering time, memory, compression and hair.
oooohhhhhh!!! you know, I just didn’t realize the buttons to the right of the sliders could be changed… That changes everything! So you can change the maximum count that the slider will adjust. As for your advice Fligh %, I will take it but now I’m curious to max out my computer. They spoiled me at my job with dual 1.7 processors and a gig of ram ~ I’m curious to see how well it will handle.
Thanks again for all of the help!
-Brian