slaps AS with a very large, smelly wet trout
These PC people......always looking for ways to trounce the Think Different™ crowd.

;-)

So Dan......that sounds like running Ivy Generator on my PPC isn't going to happen? :-/
(me can't afford an intel mac right now - sigh)

Hey, I'm a programmer.. you ought to hear me talk some day ;-)

Anyway, let the computer do the work, is my motto.

Just to give a little more detail... When I said squishing bugs, I must make it clear that these where problems relating to expected files and frameworks not being in place. And Apples compiler being more pedantic about typecasting. All the open source code worked very well and as expected. Fantastic work by all those guys! They are the true heros. I'm just standing on the shoulders of giants. I've been compiling everything as Universal so all going well this should run on both Intel and the older PPC G4/5s. More news to follow... again I find my render Mac being used for programming:-(

Hrm, why the :-( ?  Programming is great! Rain or shine, you'll find me programming in one virtual desktop and Bryce in another virtual desktop. :-)

Yes, I've noticed Bryce render doesn't suckup all the RAM and CPU cycles. Ivy question: When you press birth does it display a textured vine and leaves on screen? I've got it displaying the vine but it's not textured until I use Bryce.

On my laptop the leaves show up green, but it's too far for me to see if there's any texture. In my desktop, the leaves come in white, not textured. I have to go to Bryce to get them textured.

Attached Link: Robert's C4D Ivy Mac Port Post (scroll down link to read)

*"We have a Mac port... :)

I'm going to pass this to Thomas.  It would be excellent if someone on a PPC Mac could volunteer to verify that it runs there as well.  Also, since I have the Qt frameworks, it will be necessary to verify that this is indeed a completely static app (Qt built into the app rather than relying upon its frameworks which probably don't exist on others' systems).

Due to limitations with Qt4 and Xcode (gcc 4.0), this will only run on 10.3.9 and later.

Look forward to getting this out there tomorrow."*

kave - perhaps you could hook up with them and share your progress & findings too?
(just a thought)

Many thanks from me for all you've done so far (and to Robert as well). ;-)

I need an ivy for dummys manual. Seems I'm not intuitive when it comes to which way I should slide the sliders. I know to hover over them to be told what they do, but I don't know if sliding to the left makes more/less, larger/smaller, taller/shorter etc etc. Its gonna take me a long time to figure this stuff out. But man do I love this program, can't wait till I understand enough to get a result that knocks me on my butt.

Here's a question:  I bring up a figure in D|S, export the .obj file so I can bring it into ivy maker, but also bring the same figure into Bryce; what export setting do I use so that when the .obj (the ivy file) is imported into Bryce, it's the same scale as the D|S import.?

Am I making sense?  Appologies if I'm not, had a rather rough St. Paddy's Day...

I've been sending some Poser girls over to the Ivy Generator so that I can redo some of my Dryad projects from years ago. Playing with the sliders help, but once I bring them back into Bryce, I have to resize the ivy.  It's a lot easier to resize an arch or wall than it is a person :-(

Trial and error!

If you change the branching probability all the way to the right, the vine does't branch much.. great for having creeping ivy on a floor.

I haven't played with all the settings, but here's another little thing I discovered: you can make a setting, then have the ivy grow. Then you can stop the growing, alter settings again, and continue growing.

So, changing branching probability to 1, click grow, it'll grow with one vine. Then after a bit I stop it, change the branching probability to .955 and it starts to branch. Changing the other settings and it starts looking very interesting.

VERY cool observation D_a_m, thanks!

**I need an ivy for dummys manual. Seems I'm not intuitive when it comes to which way I should slide the sliders.

**-Same here, lol. The effect of using the sliders wll most likely still be a random thing since it looks as if each "growth" is somewhat random in itself, especially if you re-position the Growth source point.

**Here's a question:  I bring up a figure in D|S, export the .obj file so I can bring it into ivy maker, but also bring the same figure into Bryce; what export setting do I use so that when the .obj (the ivy file) is imported into Bryce, it's the same scale as the D|S import.?

**-Yeah...unless someone can pull a trick out of their hat, I'm not seeing anyway to get a perfect "sync" with the Ivy and the original obj. I think the only way is to "eyeball" it. (best guess)

**Anyone else - thoughts?
**
*I've e-mailed the Ivy author, giving as a suggestion that we could be able to export the Ivy obj and the original obj together. Having to re-smooth a figure and re-texture it would be simpler (sometimes) than trying to re-sync the figure and the Ivy, lol.

AS slaps forehead
Of course.

Thank you Dan!!

Excellent suggestion to use D|S  (now i can use it for something) :-p

thanks for the link, this is totally awesome. This has just got to be next months challenge!!!

The same thing about stopping a growth to alter the settings applies to birth as well. You can, for instance, be doing a growth, then stop it, click birth and see how things are. Change "ivy leaf size" to 2, biggest size, and click birth again to see how that would look. Changing "leaf probability" to .959 (some branches will have leaves near the center, less as it goes outward) and click birth again to test that. Then growth to resume growing. It's pretty nice.

If you get a white bunch of leaves in Ivy Generator, it might be b/c the program isn't finding it's own leaf png files in it's path. At least when I start the program from it's bin directory, it shows textured leaves. But when I make a shortcut so I can jump back and forth to my Bryce projects, it looses the path to it's own leaves.

Am I the only person seeing that there is a Macintosh version?

Maybe....now there is. (?)

There was not a few days ago.

Right, meaning maybe the Mac users from Renderosity sent Luft what they had, and now that is being made available there. My best guess.

I know Robert in the C4D forum did.  Maybe kaveman did too?
I'm just thrilled they both made the attempt & went to all the trouble.
At least there's now a Mac flavor.
Me hat's off to both of them. ;)

And, fast, too!

Been experimenting with this awesome program over the weekend (thanks to Ang25) and I was thinking that maybe Bryce’s new owners can put Luft’s program and whatever he can come up with to good use and they can all make money on the deal, Maybe Bryce 7? As perhaps a follow-up to Vue’s instant vegetation or some facsimile thereof. 

Been experimenting with inverting the vines, making them negative and Boleening them to a positive Bryce 5 terrain to create rivers and streams…no luck yet and handing it out there for further experimentation, perhaps as height maps? Maybe even as tree roots but would take some manipulation.

Rudy, nice catch! Tom Luft, great gift, thank you! If he’s not here, maybe he should be directed to this site (Luft I mean) and see our enthusiasm with this new tool.

Yes, I contacted Robert and he's got the smaller of the 2 working Mac versions, so he's tidying up a few pesky issues and forwarding it to Luft for distribution. If it's not in the current download then email Robert, I'm sure he could do with some more testers:-) Cheers Kaveman

This is probably a total newbie question but...

I've created something impressive (well I think so) in Bryce, how do I end up getting an obj file from that, can I get an obj file from that?  Is there any way to port it in to D|S?

There's probably some other way I'm not aware of. If it's a terrain, go to File -> Export and save it in the .obj file type. If it's B6 or greater you're using, you can export boolean'd objects. I think there's a pattern to follow (or at least this is what I always do) go ahead and click the "C" button in that object group. Bryce will take some time to "combine" the two boolean'd objects. Then go to File -> Export and save that new object in .obj.

If there are mats involved, it may take Bryce a bit of time exporting them all too. For the Ivy Generator (IG), I just export with a grey mat which makes exporting quick.

Maybe there's some other way to export... I haven't been experimenting with this feature too closely. I've made some arches and pillars and exporting to IG this way.

In B6, if it's not a boolean already, select what you want to use totally ungrouped, hit the little "A" gadget next to the objects, at set them to Positive, OK it and now group them. You should now have a "C" gadget, now click that. When it's done select the Export Object... item from the File menu. In the File Selector, name it and select .OBJ from the popup and Save. If ti's only one object you'll need to create a dummy object (like a Bryce Cube), offset from the target, then do the above. HTH; Dan

Thanks Dan.  I've always wondered why I couldn't always export and that's sorted it.

D@M wants to cover my loco with ivy.......don't tell him anything!

You can always make more than one growth of ivy on your mesh, exporting each out seperately, and then combining them back together in Bryce.

Otherwise, you have to practice with those Ivy slider settings

Traitor!

You can run the Ivy program "standalone", meaning, you don't have to import an obj model.  Simply double click and then click grow.  Click grow to stop (growing) and then click "birth".

This makes it a little easier to see your slider changes.  Double click again to start a new "ivy".  Export when you see something you like.

A little more information.  The material file points to three .png images for young and adult leaves and the branch textures.  You can edit the associated material file to use different images (textures).

When you import the obj into Bryce, you can ungroup it (make this easier by assigning a family color so you can select and group the obj easier.)  With it ungrouped, check the three textures to see if you need to set the blend transparency and maybe change diffuse or ambiance settings.

I can't wait to try the stand alone. This is good to know. Thanks

I should clarify my above post.  When I said click "grow" to stop, that's only if you want to stop before the grow function finishes,  It will stop on it's own, but you may prefer to stop before all the branches finish (growing.)

But there are more possibilities than only ivy, here you see my latest try to create a clematis. I replaced in both cases the young leaves by a blossom tex. In the picture on the left I choose a very small leave size and disabled anti aliasing for the ivy; in the picture on the right the leave size is on maximum and rendered with AA.

Like that first one (on the left)

generators are cool.
anyone know of any others?
like a building or skyscraper generator...

funny idea, a natural-growing skyscraper. I've never heard about such a thing but just imagine, one klick and you could watch your building growing ... quite fascinating!

Believe it or not, a freeware utlity called "CityGen"

*CityGen is a procedural 3D model generator application aimed for generating random urban models.

http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~tommer/citygen/

*Not as user freindly as Ivy generator

Thanks AgentSmith, I have already seen that app, I coulnt figure it out..confused:

as for the Ivy Generator, i havnet had time to play with it much yet, but Its really impressive !
I doubt he realises it yet, but Thomas Luft (the creator) could make some money out of this, it is quite remarkable app, and could be improved furher or incorporated into a big app like bryce, Vue etc. I would imagine they'd be VERY interested, as the response from just  the renderosity community is already good !

**and could be improved furher or incorporated into a big app like bryce, Vue etc

**-No, actually JUST Bryce, lol.   :oD

BTW - .OBJ objects that are smaller then 10mm don't load at all for me. Both Mac and PC.

I've had various .obj files that don't load on it, normally it errors to say that it can't cope with the material file (normally exported from Bryce) and then doesn't import the object.

Happens to me a lot, I just ignore it. The object tends to get imported... have to zoom out, pan around until you find it. Sometimes it's hovering above the camera and must zoom out a lot. Pan around, even do a 360 in all directions... above the ground level.

Yup, zooming out is important, the camera is usually smack dab in the middle of the mesh.

You might also want to try and have no mats on the mesh you bring out of Bryce. Just apply a flat color to it. Might help.

So that's what it is.  It's floating in the air.

Any idea how to land it?