Thanks.. that is definely related to it.. I am curious what are rules about using nested materials.. I move everything to Object Parametric and my trees disappear in ecosystem. I think I got it now, my scale was off on one my main materials also. Thanks..

Basically what I am desiring is river basin though a wood country side which I alreay have. But I will alter it to also include a stone path though the wooded area which crosses the river basin. Add a good bridge and maybe some people. Stone path would be created with image which I draw on displacement maps using my wacom tablet. That is what my plan is currently for it, of course later scenes I hope to get even more complex. Just got start small and continue experimenting and learning. Stewart

I'll be on to my next task - multiple ecosystem in same terrain - instead of one path, multiple different types of path. But first I have to give Empire Earth 2 (game) a spin. Especially its terrain editor :) It probably one of best terrain editors around ( in my opinion - atleast for the first game ).

For me getting ideas is not a problem, just turning the ideas into something that looks good is different story. My current scene lead me down a path of issues with ecosystem - including a reported issue to e-on. But I learn alot though the journey, so I believe it was worth it. I still got some more work on scene, I tend to have a problem with detail - more like lack of it. On the subject, I personally use artist sketch books and photographic books to get impiration for my scenes.

Just to ley you know, I got the following response back from e-on on this issue. "I did not check the thread on renderosity, but got your file. Indeed, a few cherry trees appear on the black line where they should not. I guess this is a precision problem with the way the density function is evaluated. I tried increasing the tree density to 100%, and reduced the scaling to 0.2, and the trees were placed everywhere on the terrain, except on the black line. If you replace the trees with stones, it also works fine." I am not sure if this means that the problem will be fix or that we have to live with the work around. Stewart

My theory on ecosystems, is that if you notice in the plant editor there are parameters for change the look of a tree. I believe that ecosystem has a single instance of the object which is procedural object and for each variation of tree, it applys a slight different variation. Also rotates the object on the surface. If you read the manual, you notice that if you save an rock as vue object and include it ecosystem, it will also have different variations. If you decided to export an rock to another format, then you would likely only get scaling and rotation on the object. Very similar to XFrog or Poser objects in an ecosystem.

But if you using Vue Plants ( not XFrog ), when it replicating the objects, I believe ecosystem should make different variants of the trees The scene I currently working on, has a forests of trees done with ecosystem and also in the forground, I plan to include some XFrog trees close up. One thing I found out that was real nice last night. I created a terrain in terrain editor with desired river basin area. Exported it has image and in photoshop on seperate layer - black out the area of river basin, applied blur to it and use this image as my distribution map. I did have to flip the image 180 degrees to make it work correct. I am desiring to mix anonther ecosystem in the middle of this with its on distribution maps for the scene. I think the combination of ecosystems and image map distribution has a lot more potential.

Mark, Actually you can still use an ecosystem for what I was trying to do.. just most of objects are outside of camera view.. It is all a matter of how you view it. The good news is that there is a work around on the problem. My big concern in my test, I was pretty much using all the defaults and it happens.. To a new user this could be an issue. Stewart

Bug veus Limitation ( in my opinon ) Basically a limitation would be something that the software could not handle without significant designed changes. It may be weight that these changes would be worst than side effects of the issue. IE for example to fix this issue, the code would have to be change so that it would increase the rendering time signficantly. It may be something that was over look and one of e-ons developer will run it though a program called a debugger and find something wrong and change the code so that the problem doesn't happen. Not saying this is the problem: But one possibility is that there is calculation some where inside the calculations for ecosystem there is calculation that divides the size of object by size of surface and maybe that value gets too small and that could explain why its off. My next step that I was planning on doing after running into this problem, was to make sub sections with in other sections. I have recently learn that the best way to learn this stuff is to experiment and I finding that advice has help me out more than anything else. My initial post in this thread was base on isolated experiment based on the documention provided. Stewart Stewart

I just check it out and I also came up conclusion that this is problem is related to scale. I took my same project and reduce the scale of tree to .900 and it appears to work. I also increase the terrain box side in window and when I this the trees got smaller and did not have the problem. I then increase the scale of the trees and once they got to a certain value, I had the problem. As a developer myself professionally, I believe this is a bug.. but it maybe limitation that we must work around. I believe with knowledge that I learn in last 2 or so days that I can work work around it. It would be nice to know the limits of what is involve. Good news.. I don't have to worry about that part.. and I can continue on with what I was planning... Stewart

Bad news... The stupid thing is still doing it, I made the terrain 1024 by the terrain editor as stated. Then press clear and populated the image and still puts the trees in to black area. I had enough with this, e-on is getting a bug report. DigReal, are you sure you are not running the beta.. because it still doesn't work. Dig you change the overall density or scalling of my scene. I have seen some cases it is ok at different density, the main issues is that it does not work as I enter and I believe its correct. Stewart

I have a question, does the gausian blur help out with distribution map ( I completely understand about its benifits on material map ). If the ecosystem logic is work, I would think you want a more exact map unless you want less frequent occurances in some of areas. Part of differences between my images and both of your images is that I am looking for a more close up image of the trail/road instead of an overhead image. Does this play into this.? I would assume I need larger textures..

DigReal, Also interesting, I think I try a larger terrain size ( I know at one time it was even 1024 ) I still believe e-on has a problem in Infinite, maybe the new release will help and hope developers at e-on will take a look at message. Wouldn't you agree, my scene should have work? But atleast I know ( thanks to you ) how to work around the problem. Stewart

DigReal, Thanks, I will do more experimenting with it tonight. So I assume that you talking about the bitmap of distribution map. it should be 1024x1024. That is interesting because I thought I used an higher resolution. did you have any problem if you change the texture to blend 2 textures using same distribution map. That was what was orginally causing me problems. By the way, I mention this problem on e-ons forum. Stewart