Automatic impostors for landscape vegetation

[Amerio.Stephane]

Hello,

Currently, after generating a landscape with vegetation, I must manually create the impostors for the trees, and then attach them in the scene.

Could this be automated somewhat?

Thank you

[morbid]

Hi,

you've generated Clutters only, right? If so you can create ObjectGrass with impostor material and synchronize it with clutter object. Object Grass, in this case, will be functioning as a low-detailed LOD for geometry. After you've created 2 .node files (Clutter and Grass) you can generate trees via Landscape tool. Just use the same mask for both nodes.

The whole process is described here: https://developer.unigine.com/en/docs/2.6.1/content/tutorials/impostors/

The article contains old screenshots, but the required parameters haven't changed. We'll update the pictures.

But autogeneration of impostors sounds like a nice feature, I'll post your request.

[demostenes]

Agree. Whole process should be automatical. For example having button in clutter "create grass billboard LOD" and everything is created automatically, user will just adjust various settings.

Edited April 25, 2018 by demostenes

[Amerio.Stephane]

Hi morbid, 

Exactly, I followed the section of the documentation you are referring to. While the process is acceptable if you have only one or two clutter, it becomes quickly unsustainable if you have a very large terrain with a *lot* of grass, trees, and other clutter, and if you want an iterative process where you update your terrain with Landscape editor and need to regenerate you landcover clutters. Hence the requirement for some way to automate the creation and linking of impostors with the Landscape tool.

Side question: would it be efficient to use WorldClutter with a node consisting of 3 LOD and one billboard ? Or should I stick with a Grass node ?

[morbid]

Please, let me ask a couple of questions, just to make sure we're speaking about one thing :)

1. Have you configured required node references with grass and clutter?
2. Have you saved landscape project with desired vegetation settings (+ node files for trees etc.)?

I guess it shouldn't be that time consuming when you keep all vegetation settings (clutters + grass) in one project. Terrain iteration requires in this case pushing one button. I'm a little confused with you statement that this workflow is acceptable only when you have one or two clutters. Do I miss your point?

17 minutes ago, Amerio.Stephane said:

Side question: would it be efficient to use WorldClutter with a node consisting of 3 LOD and one billboard ? Or should I stick with a Grass node ?

Our tech artists suppose that such combination should be slower than MeshClutter + Grass. A proper answer requires some tests.

[demostenes]

34 minutes ago, Amerio.Stephane said:

Hi morbid, 

Side question: would it be efficient to use WorldClutter with a node consisting of 3 LOD and one billboard ? Or should I stick with a Grass node ?

I was testing that some time ago and for bigger number of trees grass node is far more effecient, than billboard LOD4.

Edited April 25, 2018 by demostenes

[Amerio.Stephane]

@morbid Okay, I missed a crucial point before, that is that I can put both the mesh clutter node AND the grass node in the Landscape editor ! I was actually thinking one needs to create a a grass for each and every tile, after the generation. Duh. Me dumb. Forgive me.

One small question, though, regarding Grass. It doesn't actually show billboards that face the camera, but rather simply vertical quads with a random rotation. While it's perfect for real grass, I think real "camera facing quads" would be better for trees. Is it possible as-is or can it be an improvement for the future?

Again, thanks a lot for the support !

@demostenes Thanks for the hint, pal !