Just two quick questions for anyone who has successfully imported an object from Lightwave into Vue 5 I and been able to populate that object.  I have no problem populating a Vue terrain.  I've tried the obvious answer which is to change the mapping methods which are object standard, object parametric, just for fun tried all the rest as well.  No joy.
  I went to e-on site and evidently you can populate other Vue objects such as spheres and cubes.

The second question is related to the first.  One of the Lightwave objects I wish to populate has muliple surfaces.  Of course I'm unable to populate that either, but is populating an individual surface even possible?

Thanks to all!

Hiya nabit, Tho not a lightwave user/owner I do use Imagine which exports a useful .lwo file which I imported into Vue5InfDEMO, turned it into an eco system and but for the scene exceeding the resources of this old internet computer I would have had an example for you. Worked flawlessly if a bit slow, but that's the 'puter.....

Maybe you could write out just how you go about populating an imported terrain and I or someone else here may be able to spot where you're missing it...

As I don't use LW I'm in the dark as to "multiple surface", are these mesh objects or surface textures?...if they are seperate objects you may have to save them out of LW seperately because I read somewhere LW doesn't do groups as Vue, Imagine,3DS etc seem to, and import them seperately and reposition them unles Vue has a method of converting tween LW coordinates and it's own...must have cuz in the docs it talks about exporting skies and atmospheres I think.

Hope this has been some help.....

Hey Bobby,

    Thanks for the encouragement!   It was really a very straight forward problem.  SCALE!
  I made the wrong assumption that Vue would import at the same dimensions as the original object.  My bad!  When I scaled things up everything is just hunky dorry.   I just wished all the problem of the day were so simple....

LOL...a common mistake...did it myself till i started tweaking every dial and hitting populate.

it's really cool how you can control the falloff of the tree density thru the sliders or thru a graphic, placement as well...tell, soon as I can get the cash this is the 2nd program for me...even resembles the app[Imagine] that I currently use in a lotta ways.

To your population question.

Eco population is - simplyfied said - a projection of objects from the z axis "down" to your object you want to populate. Like creating all items up in the sky and then drop them onto your object. So the answer is "no" i fear, you can not populate just one surface of an object.

We should not forget, this technology is very young here, just one year old and i would say - version 1 so to say.

• give this surface a unique material id.
• uncheck "decay near foreign object" for the material.
• rotate the object to make the surface face the zenith
  -populate the individual material of the surface
  -rotate back the object.

(image of a simple sphere with four different ecomats)

HEY Paul,

good to see you around here. And of course, YOU are right. Cool trick!

Indeed.. a very cool trick, and now archived in my trix vault for when I get a full ver. to work with...

Lots of good info here.  Hats off all around!  Thank you for your thoughtful replies!