Impostor material/texture problem

[david.norlin]

We are having some good success getting clutter placed using landcover data using meshes, although we're running into some strange impostor behavior where it seems unable to import a material.  We are trying to use the method listed on the documentation page (link) but it seems that the impostor creator does not actually create what we need and we cannot add the material to the grass clutter object.  It only wants to keep the inherited grass material.  When we attach the texture to the clutter, we don't get a true impostor - just a billboard of the four-sided texture.  I've attached a picture. 

How does one fix this?  Also, where is the grabber tool? 

[morbid]

Hi David,

please check the following:

• create ObjectGrass for impostors
• inherit grass_impostor_base material
• assign textures, created by Impostor grabber to this new material

After that, you'll get ObjectGrass that works as low-detailed LOD for your trees. 

I'm sorry, but what do the red lines mean on your screenshot? Are these objects misplaced?

7 hours ago, david.norlin said:

It only wants to keep the inherited grass material

I'm not sure what's happening here. Are there some issues in reassigning material for ObjectGrass?

7 hours ago, david.norlin said:

Also, where is the grabber tool? 

You can find tools in the Main menu -> Tools. Impostor Grabber and Video Grabber are placed here :)

Thanks!

[david.norlin]

Morbid,

Thank you for the information.  I believe I was misunderstanding how impostors worked.  I am going to experiment with some of the samples in the demo.  I think I realize where the mistake was. 

Thanks.

Edited May 30, 2018 by david.norlin

[morbid]

You are welcome, David.

Feel free to contact us!

[fmaslofski]

We've been able to make some very basic impostor grass, as you can see in the last screenshots, but we can't seem to get it to work properly and retain the full impostor quality (second screenshot) or even get them to remotely utilize the different angles of the impostor.

 

Looking at your adler demo it seems you where using a different system for these, making these ineffective for emulation, since we've basically straight up remade the adler tree values in the new one, trying out various settings that don't match to see if it made a difference, the biggest being billboard grass vs default. 

In addition, your adler trees use a 8x4 impostor texture, which we could not use for our grass impostor, as it allowed a maximum of 4xn to be used, otherwhise we wound up having 2 trees per grass plane. 

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How would we go about using the impostors properly?

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Furthermore, we have noticed that when we do have impostors placed, there is a significant fade-in gap between mesh and the impostors themselves, even when fade distances are set to overlap in the parameters.  Is this an issue with the editor camera, or is there a better way to smooth the transition?

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(original fbx)

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(impostor (impostor textures attached))

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(grass with billboards)

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(default grass)

ss_alb.tga

ss_n.tga

[morbid]

Hello,

Quote

How would we go about using the impostors properly?

It looks like that you've used grass_base material with impostor textures + billboard option. Am I right? If so, please switch to grass_impostor_base:

• don't forget to set Num Textures to 1 in ObjectGrass parameters
• set UV according to your texture atlas
• usually baked final image looks better than albedo
• big amount of sprites even in 2k texture will lead to image quality drop

On 03.06.2018 at 4:07 AM, fmaslofski said:

there is a significant fade-in gap between mesh and the impostors themselves, even when fade distances are set to overlap in the parameters

You need to combine Clutter Fade with object fade. For instance:

1. Set Vis Distance AND Fade distance in MeshClutter to 160
2. Set Min\Max Visibility for clutter surfaces to 40\80 and Min\Max Fade to 10\30
3. In ObjectGrass surfaces min\max visibility to 80\400, min\max fade to 30\800

In every case, you'll need to experiment with these settings depending on terrain size and a number of vegetation objects. In general it is better to show geometry only at very close range. Sometimes it even better no to use clutters with trees.

By the way, I think that on both of your pictures with trees real geometry. Please check.

Thanks!