All Vue 4 newbies should steer clear of the tutorial on page 263 of the manual ("Faking Distant Trees"). Or at least be in a very sedate mood if you're going to try it. It is frought with omissions that, without prior knowledge, make the tutorial impossible to complete. After about an hour and a half of trial and error (I thought I was back in Bryce), I think I figured them all out and completed the tut. But the look I got didn't look like what the book said it would! So maybe I didn't figure the whole thing out. If you insist on trying it and get stuck, lemme know. Maybe I can help. PS: The person who wrote that tutorial--the English version anyway--should be flogged.

Hey Mike, here's some customer feedback you can send to Eon... :)

Attached Link: http://start.at/arte

You have a ready made distant forest in Vue, have alook at it:-) in waiting for a better tutorial. I will try and see, if it works (the tut). :-)Guitta

Jackson, I have just followed step by step the tutorial for the distant forest and it works fine. Tell me where your problem is and I will try to help you. :-)Guitta

heyas; i didnt have any problem with it either, when i did it back in vue 3. they may not have updated it for 4, though. so yeah, what went wrong?

You guys must have a different book than I do. If you follow verbatim the instructions, they tell you in Step 6 to apply the grass material to the forest terrain. In Step 7, open the Material Editor for that material. In Step 8 go to the Transparency tab. There IS NO transparency tab in the material editor at that point. I didn't know this at the time (and the tutorial didn't mention it), but because Grass is a mixed material, there is no Transparency tab. You have to change it to a simple material to get the Transparency tab to appear. And now, you're no longer working on the original grass material; you've changed it. That was the first problem. Once you get to the Transparency tab, in Step 8, they tell you to open the Transparency Function Editor. Well, the Transparency Function does not appear in the Transparency tab at all...unless you know you have to turn click on the Variable Transparency check box. The tut doesn't mention this. But you CAN'T click the Variable Transparency check box! It's greyed out and you can't click it. That is, not until you change the Global Transparency slider to something other than zero. Once you do that, you can click on the Variable Transparency check box and the Transparency Function will appear so you can edit it. None of this is mentioned in the tutorial. Also, since you have to change the Global Transparency slider, what setting do you change it to? And Step 10 ... I have no idea what they're talking about in Step 10. Modify what filter? What do they mean by "step around 0.7?" After much hair pulling I was able to figure out everything but Step 10. It must be a key step, cuz I never did get the holes in the trees they said I'd get. Again, if you followed the tut verbatim, you'd be stopped at Step 8 because there is no Transparency tab for the Grass material and they don't tell you to change it from mixed to simple. And even if they did, you'd still be stuck because the Transparency function doesn't appear in the Transparency tab until you change the Global Transparency and click Variable Transparency. And there's still Step 10... See what I mean? Unless you're experienced in Vue enough to know these things in advance, this would truly be the Tutorial from Hell. It was for me, anyway. Thanks all for the offer for help. I would like to eventually get that effect if anyone knows how to do it.

Jackson, I used a grass material I had already and did not think about the mixed material. And,effectively, I'm so much used to Vue, I did not think it could be a problem for others. Please read : Step 8 :Go in the transparency tab, bring up transparency up to 100% and check variable transparency. Right-click in the TRANSPARENCY PRODUCTION window and choose EDIT FUNCTION. In the new window, click at TYPE and select noise linear from the list. Then go in the same window to TRANSFORMATION-FRACTAL LAYER---EDIT. When it opens do what is written in the tutorial step 8 from here on : "and increase complexity." Step 10 : To modify the filter... Right click in the TRANSPARENCY window next the TRANSPARENCY PRODUCTION window and choose edit filter. Add a key point and create a filter at at 0.7. as the image above shows. Click ok and again ok. I hope this helps. If not, feel free to send me to hell. :-)Guitta

You are RIGHT on this one...as a newcomer to much 3d and as I tried to do it, it set me back quite a bit. I began to wonder about my reading comprehension. This tut(along with AMAPI3d - another story- in general) really have tested my patience. I need just what they so cheerily say can be done - distant trees.

Thanks Guitta and riversedge for validating my rantings. The tutorial, as it is worded in the manual, is unworkable. And Guitta, your reworded Steps 8 and 10 worked perfectly except I had to create 2 new key points when editing the filter to get what you have pictured above. And don't forget, none of this is possible unless you're working on a simple--not mixed--material. (The grass material that comes with Vue 4 is mixed.) Oh, and thanks for the link Guitta, I'll check it out now.

Yes, 2 keyponts!! :-) BTW, I have NOT created the tutorial in the book :-) Guitta