Hi folks,

Having a little fun today working on some new stuff for Anything Grows 2. Here's a little picture using the new custom start vector option to put tip objects on a landscape without them following the surface normal. Add a Marlin Studios trees and shrubs texture and the Anything Grows 2 Billboard primitive tip object and you have an instant forest! Still lots of work to do, like the face camera function, but just thought I'd spread the fun.

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Freeware and commercial 3D extensions
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Ummm, Eric, where's the picture?

Frickin' frontpage!

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Freeware and commercial 3D extensions
http://digitalcarversguild.com

My wheel's are a turnin'

Cool! Now I have been playing with tip obj in the demo and have run across a "problem" I created a sphere, added a texture and then attached an anything glows light- then I placed it as a tip object- test rendered and COOL! lots of fireflys! But they were al on the same plan, so I aded a noise shader to the length and deleted the strands and I had my speres all floting at random levels over my sewer water.. but when I rerendere the speres all had the wall texture on them and I cant get it back refreshed made new speres and attached nothing all still have the wall texture. even tried doing it with a AGr primitive and retexturing the speres and I got the glow but the anything glows was gone. Not sure if my first attempt was an aberation (ie you can't realy attach an anything glowing object) or if I am doing something wrong now... If it was a one time thing it would be great if AGr2 would support anything glows objects.

ppowellaa, Anything Glows and Grows do play nicely together. Sound like in the first part, the Default shader was your wall shader. At that point you probably could have gone to the Texture room and it would have asked you if you wanted to create a new master shader. You could say yes and then turn that shader into the fire fly glow. One the second problem, it was probably just a matter of getting an Anything Glows light attached to the Anything Grows primitive. Make sure the grows object has a unique name, and with it selected, use Edit|Add New Anything Glows. It should be all connected then. Good luck, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

Well, Now I am stuck, I decided to start over, deleted the original infinite plane and added AGR, render error when it hits the part were the Agr obj starts, just for the heck of it I added the tip obj again and it renderes fine, remove tip, render error. Hmmm Also, Now I can't get anything glows to work in the sceene. Glow chanel works in the shader but no light being emitted (tried all options of light color, obj and glow, as well as changing the box verteces..) I will start from scratch and see what happens, the sceen I am working on is in the WIP thread, not real complex, the shader for the walls is most of it, I just wanted to play with some new tech. Thanks for getting back so quickly, I will try your sugestions first.

Looks great. How about the possibility to add a "scale by elevation" feature to add some perspective? I.E., use a mixer & scale the desity of the effect in the Y axis.

You can do that today! Tip size is driven by a shader so just use elevation with a long blend setting in the tip size shader. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

"Anything Glows and Grows do play nicely together" What exactly does that mean? Does this mean that you can't use them both in the same scene? Or that you can't make something you created with Anything Grows glow with Anything Glows? Brian

Brian, It means both, attached is quick and cheesy rendition of one of my old scenes with ppowellaa's firefly idea. I created a 20 poly vertex object for the tips. Made the floor the base object for an Anything Grows primitive with 50 strands, set the Preview Mode on the Agro primitive to Full Resolution and then turned off Show base and Show strands. I used Noise Factory from Smart Pack for a length shader along with Shader Ops Stretch, to add contrast. Then because the shadows were a little freaky with plain Anything Glows, I used Anything Glows environment lighting on it's lowest quality setting on the Anything Grows object. Now because grows can quickly generate some real high poly stuff, AG environment lighting will quickly reach it's limits, but in general they will work fine together. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com

When will AG2 be avaialable?

In 2 to 3 months. Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Freeware and commercial 3D extensions http://digitalcarversguild.com