Attached Link: http://freespace.virgin.net/david.markwick/VueTut1.html

OK, so now I realise that Renderosity won't allow large images :D never mind, here's a link to the tutorial. The warning is still valid, lots of large images. Maybe next time I'll find out what images are acceptable before making a tutorial. This is in response to someone asking about a tutorial on the use of filters, in this tutorial I make a garden terrain using only one tree and one image. A very efficient method to save resources.

Please be forgiving about the web page, I made it with Notepad :D

Message edited on: 04/18/2005 20:50

My browser timed out and couldn't find the server. :-(

Great tutorial, not only for the effect but for showing how to navigate through all of that functionality.

Excellent stuff you got here. This is what we that don't understand functions and nodes have been looking for. It presented in a simple way that even I can understand. Great work and Thanks for this tutorial. :o)

Great inspiring tutorial. Thanks

Sweet tutorial! This is going to be BIG FUN! Thanks so much :o)

Oh cool, ~pulls up her sleeves and sits down to hopefully finally figure this all out.~ Thank you very much!

It is a well-written tutorial. I found it very informative and helpful.

Thanks for the tutorial!

Thank you very much DMM!

Thank god! Only had a moment to look thru the tut - but it appears excellent, can't wait to have time to go and really work it. Thanks ever so.

That was awesome! Between this tut on ecosystems and Jeff's for procedural terrains, I'm actually beginning to believe the possibilities are 'infinite'. Heck, I'm even starting to understand nodes. :) Many thanks, DMM.

Excellent work - thanks!

Thanks to the good tutorial, was able to produce a little eco-neighborhood in about 1 hour.

Needs some fine tuning to differentiate the tree areas a bit more, but a good start. Will probably add 1 more tree variety and rework the grayscale base image in Photoshop for softer road edges, rounded corners and such touches. Then it will be ready for a plane or tiny terrain for the building site, a building model, textures for the planted street divider, a pavement texture and a few vehicles.

Big thanks to DMM :o)

Hmm, looking at your terrain JC I'm wondering if its possible to drive the distribution of a seperate plant species using a colour, say red for the orchard. The orchard trees could then have the Force Regular Alignment Of Instances box checked, to make them line up. Good effort, twiddle those filters :D Hmmm... :D

Interesting idea DMM, will give it a try. Would be great if hues work, as well as values. Will also try dark gray between orchard rows to give more separation than the light gray i used.

Message edited on: 04/19/2005 14:19

XLT work!

Using a colour image to drive three separate outputs is actually very straight forward. 1) Add texture map node (and associated UV input) 2) Add Conversion -> RGB to vector node 3) Add Vector operations -> Decomposer 3 node. 4) Wire them together. 5) Now the X, Y, Z outputs of the decomposer are greyscale renditions of the RGB components of the source image. Each of the components is a faded grey, but that can be fixed with a simple filter to restore strong black/white contrast. (e.g. Transparency above) -- Mark

Thanks Mark! Had gotten as far as the RGB to Vector, but not the Decomposer. What filter is that you use to up the contrast? What i'm wondering is how many channels of control are possible in a 24 bit image? Color seems to be good for at least 3, and the same image can have monochrome values (like DMM did) for another 4 channels or so. Maybe one can get to 8 channels? Maybe the math nodes can also do bandpass filtering to get even more? Lot of power here!

"What filter is that you use to up the contrast?" Basic filter with a threshold function (70% I think) The more layers of information you try to put into the image, the more complex editing it becomes. If you want greyscale outputs then you're limited to the three colour channels and it would be dificult to combine these with completely independent on/off monochrome maps. (It could be done by limiting the greyscale components to use 7bit (or even 6bit) grey values with the top bit reserved for an on/off channel, and then adding filters to split the two maps apart - the top bit map is a simple threshold, the other I'd need to think about!) Since many of these control maps are fairly rough/low detail and so can be low resolution, I'm not sure there's much benefit in trying to cram too many of them together in a single image. -- Mark

Yes, good points. And for my test image 1 or 2 more channels would be plenty.

However, if there was a good reason to have more channels of ecosystem control with this method, couldn't you coordinate and inspect your combined image in Adobe Photoshop as layers, yet apply only some of these separate layers to different sets of functions?

Some layers/sets could use RGB and others monochrome, depending on your needs. Perhaps with these sets of functions being applied to different ecosystem materials which need different handlings.

Maybe these methods appeal to me because i'm better at visual tasks then mathematical ones :o)

Thanks Mark - interesting stuff!

I think the memory overhead of a PSD file with many channels would counter the resource saving methods here. A couple of low res JPG files will be better, smaller & work just as well. I wish there were some nodes with easily identifiable names, like "blur" or "contrast" etc.

I second your wish, DMM. It'd be great to have some idea what that stuff is really for ahead of time. Wonder if anyone is into making a chart of some sort.

Right DMM, i didn't mean to use the raw .PSD file for the actual texture map images.

The function editor has so many different uses that i don't see how they could use very specific labels.

Hope some technical writer is going to do a "Vue 5i Functions Cookbook". Anyone want a good topic for an eBook? I'd pay $20 for a good one. Limited audience, but growing. And/or a kit of useful functions.

Message edited on: 04/20/2005 14:04

Attached Link: http://panthersxchange.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=171

A somewhat more friendly version of the same tutorial (in that it's on a "proper" website & not just a dislocated page)