Hi,

I am having a problem and to be honest its starting to annoy me :) I am using Vue 7 Complete, but the image was originally made in Vue 6 Infinite.

I have an ecosystem, where the underlying material is also an ecosystem. At the time it allowed me to create grass and not worry about it interacting with the trees or other things(which isn't what I wanted). If you click the link you can see a picture of the current setup.

i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/jonj16111/Vue.png

Now, when I clear the underlying material and double click on it to select a new ecosystem, I get an error which you can again see on the link.

i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp114/jonj16111/Error.png

I can understand what the message is saying but why? It worked perfectly fine before and apart from the ecosystem change nothing else has.

Jon

i don't think it was supposed to work that way.... (could be wrong LOL)

here's a work around... delete the grass ecosystem and then click on your grass material layer, click the ecosystem button AGAIN (after the grass material is highlighted).  You can have multiple ecosystems within a material - if each one has a different "base" material.  This is possible when you have a mixed or layered material - as yours appears to be.... not possible if your material only has one layer.

Another way to make sure your trees & grass interact (or dont, as you see fit)... is to create a grayscale image in your favorite paint program and save it.  i still cant quite wrap my head around the black versus white versus various ecosystems, but i managed it .... once LOL.  Had about 10 or so different ecosystem "zones", each with a minimum of 5 items - and all on one huge terrain/material that i also used a "map" on.

Hi Jon,

It still works, you still can build layer upon layer upon layer of ecosystems. I have cases where I pile 10 or more of those. You just can't load a material with an ecosystem on top of another, that's all (it wasn't possible in Vue6 either, as far as I remember). You'll have to create your ecosystems layers manually.

By the way, if you want a layer to populate depending on the underlying layer, you have to adjust the afinity and/or repulsion in the Distribution section of the General tab of the ecosystem settings. But I guess this wasn't your question, right?

Ahhh, is that the trick?  I was never quite successful... i kept getting the same error message...  but lately, i've been doing my own ecosystems, and just haven't attempted layering ecosystem materials like that.

melikia, multiple ecosystem layers are extremely useful and that's how nature works, in most cases. If you use just one ecosystem with, say, pebbles and grass, in each spot you either have pebbles or grass, not both. But that's not how nature works. In nature you have everything together. The way to simulate this is by having multiple ecosystem layers, one with pebbles and one with grass, in my example.

I suggest that you take a look at my video tutorial, called "Making of Sic-Transit" in the Classroom of Cornucopia3D. I show an example of these things.

hehehe, i've done multiple layers, just on different material layers...  makes for some great results, actually... especially if you do your mapping properly

ive just not managed an ecosystem based off an ecosystem...  now i have something to play with today (and so i can compare how it works next to one that i've done before) =D

Ah thanks for clearing up that Rutra, and thanks Melikia

I usually use ecosystem layers but normally I create them myself, I didn't know you couldn't load a material like that though, seems a bit backwards but there you go :)

Cheers
Jon

Ecosystems on different material layers, with separated zones by mapping or whatever is a completely different game. In that case, each ecosystem will populate its own area and will not overlap. What I'm talking about is intentional overlapping of various ecosystem populations. My tutorial talks about both scenarios.

Jon, this is one of the things that I really hope they add in Vue8. Another thing would be to be able to do multiple selection when you're adding the ecosystem objects. Like, for example, select 3 or 4 trees in one go, click ok and you have your ecosystem all setup, instead of adding tree by tree.

i did it by using two different layers with the same map... not sure how it worked, maybe i got lucky?  this was back in 6 pro studio, btw.  havent used the mapping way since i got 7inf (PAINTING!!! YAY!!!!)

melikia, that also works, it's just more time consuming... :-)

WAY more time consuming.  And baffling at times (as i said, i cannot manage to wrap my head around the black versus white)... it took me two weeks to set that scene up. 

it was worth it though... that was one of two i had professionally printed & framed, and the other one took honorable mention in a state-wide digital art contest... both are sold now.  what i found funny was the image I took 2 days on got honorable mention LOL.  (i still think it was cus it was of polar bears and the gallery in which it hung was the "Bear Gallery")...

the person who won (Bryster, you'll love this if you're reading this thread...)... used Bryce (and did some postwork).  it was quite obvious what program he used... his terrain material SUCKED.  (no offense to bryce users, but honestly... it SUCKED)... I still feel that he won first place because of two things:  his images were printed HUGE (the largest of any there), custom framed with ornate frames... and the judge was his instructor at the Uni of Alaska Anchorage.  Guess where he got it printed, too?  He used Michael 3, some cool armor, did little to make the glints stand out on the armor... it was just a guy standing there in a barren terrain, a dragon over his shoulder (with that horrid "cracked earth" texture - NO bump, nothing... it was terrible - a better terrain and i could see the image flying into 1st)... and at the bottom, he added in scripture.  His other image was pretty much the same.

hmmm... speaking of that contest, wonder if its being held again this year....  out of 50 entrants, only 20 images total were chosen to hang in the gallery - i had 2 in there out of three i entered.

mmmm, back to playing with ecosystems ;)

Yes indeed Rutra, ecosystem creation would certainly be less cumbersome by being able to create ecosystems that way.

Jon

SWEEET!  Thanks guys, i got it to work =D  amazing... wonder how i missed this?