Phantom Scatter [1.12.2] Export and press CTRL+V in Octane! Tweet

[face_off]

face_off, I am working of the tilting but these matrices are far more complex than I imagined. Big respect for the Octane dev team for having to deal with that all throughout Octane. I'm not a fan of FBX though, I prefer to stick to OBJ. Or are there any tools that don't export OBJ? If that's the case, maybe I could add support for FBX later on. Just maybe.

The code for following the normal of the face is not too bad. Simply calculate the quaternion between the up vector and the face normal, convert that quaternion to a rotation matrix and multiply to scatter transform by that rotation matrix. Refer to the Ogre3d library for the code to do each of these steps.

Regarding OBJ, apps like Revit will not easily export to OBJ (unless users purchase an OBJ exporter), so FBX is the preferred format for it.

[Phantom107]

Update

Alright, update time. So I figured out how to deal with matrices.

It's now possible to make the instance be perpendicular with the face as long as the face is pointing upward. The tool is meant for vegetation so that should work perfectly.



There's 1669 trees in this render. The complete computation sequence (so OBJ loading/OBJ analysis/instance generation/file exporting) took 333 ms. I told the trees to be perpendicular with the faces for this test. This property can be defined for every scatter object. (so grass could be perpendicular with your faces while the trees point up)

Next up I will work on integration with Phantom Scatter Library so everything works together nicely.

[resmas]

Great work mate, count on me. It looks great and simple to the kind of work i do so i will be waiting for news.

cheers

[Phantom107]

Update

I've done additional work and thought on the interface.

So instead of defining the scale of the scatter area to be 1 m² = 100%, I've now programmed everything towards 100 m² = 100%. This makes a lot more sense when finetuning scatter objects because a 10 x 10 m area is more inline with the rest of your (architectural) model than a tiny 1 x 1 m area.

What I've also done is made these little text bubbles that pop-up when you hover over the interface buttons so it tells you immediately what a button is for. You can see this in the screenshot links below.

The preview window has also gotten a little update. I made the wireframe grid scale along with the preview scale so that every square on the wireframe always resembles 1 m². This comes in handy when finetuning scatter objects in relation to real life scale.

1x1 m preview: http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/2088/meag.png
5x5 m preview: http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/1314/pjkj.png
10x10 m preview: http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/7758/n43p.png
25x25 m preview: http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7735/vom1.png

I'm also working on some stuff under the hood but that's of no importance to you as a consumer. Just some stuff I have to do to get it all to work. Stay tuned!

[resmas]

Looks really good.
Do you have an ideia of how much will cost your software?
Cheers

[necko77]

im tuned

[Elvissuperstar007]

add WebMoney donations

[Phantom107]

Update

Update time. I put work in a bunch of stuff:

- All of the functions in the 'Placement' catergory are now functional in the library as well as the compute exe.
- Phantom Scatter Compute now reads all scatter data from the files in the library and applies them correctly.
- I've put optimization in the library files: a scatter object is now 449 kB. So even with 20 scatter objects it will only cost 10 MB. Note: these are not the output *.CSV files!
- To save extra time during workflow, I've made a system that batches up scatter objects of the same type into 1 CSV file. Example: let's assume there are 3 different materials that use the scatter object 'grass'. Phantom Scatter Compute will detect this and put all the scatter data of scatter object 'grass' in 1 CSV file. Very handy and prevents clutter.

Support (!)

Right now the OBJ import of Phantom Scatter Compute is designed for the OBJs that were exported from TIG's SketchUp exporter. If you're interested in the program and not using SketchUp, please send me a PM with a simple OBJ model exported by your modeler of choice. I can then work on supporting those OBJs too. Please make sure the OBJ is triangulated.

Pricing

One license is €20,- and will grant 1 full year of usage.


Some results during my testing:

4 scatter objects


1 scatter object



Elvissuperstar007, I don't have a WebMoney account. Unfortunately I'm in the process of changing phone numbers so I can't register just yet. I'll do so once they put my existing number onto this new SIM so I can receive texts again.

[Zay]

Please make sure the OBJ is triangulated.

What? My exporter doesn't triangulate. So you're saying "normal" objs doesn't work with this program?

[Phantom107]

Currently only triangulated models are supported.

- What exporter are you using?
- Does it work with quads? n-gons?

Please upload a simple OBJ so I can have a look.