Question on slope grass

Raylectron (https://Raylectron.com) is a 3D rendering engine for Trimble Sketchup (https://sketchup.com)
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Support »

Good to hear from you Nick!

I see you use the ambient shadow, perhaps set it to int/ext as oppose to int only.

Or maybe you should render it using path tracing and sky only. That way, the background wouldn't be all black.

We have some good news, we're going to have vegetation (grass, trees etc) in Raylectron. You won't have to worry about using the png to fake it, it'll be real this time, and very easy to setup, on any size terrain too. Trees will be the same, unlimited trees, you can make forest with thousands of trees.

All the best
Michael
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Re: Question on slope grass

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mkorba wrote:So I am having a better time with things. My offices IT guy helped me out!!!

I have been able to update the model since I last posted. Its getting better. The grass is still sort of an issue lol. I am currently using a really dark grass texture and my boss wants it to be lighter since the grass at the site is not in the greatest shape. So I am trying to find that! Here is what the dark texture is doing. Attached is my first attempt at rendering it.

Dknight- Thanks again for the CGtextures link. I found a good wood chip texture for the random landscaped garden at the end of the creek.

Thanks again for all of the help!!!

Melissa

Looks like you're doing great Melissa. But very soon, Raylectron will have real grass, as I've explained to Nick. This should be very easy for you.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

ok so I am having crashing issues again. My offices IT Guy is wanting to know how much RAM is needed to run the program. What would you recommend?

Thank you so much!

Melissa
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Support »

It depend on the size of the model you try to render. What kind of crash are you getting? Is it while it is rendering? What does the status text (above the green bar) say (Loading,Initializing, Processing)? How many faces (in the status bar)?

We use it all the time on a machine with 8GB of RAM and have had no problems with big models!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

The size of the model is 72.5 MB. What it does is it exports the model then it almost gets done loading it in then it says out of memory. I also have another model that is 32 MB. We have 16 GB of RAM in the desktop
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Dknight »

A few things:

with 16gb of ram, you need to be running a version of windows that is 64bit.
If you are running a version of windows that is 64 bit you need to BE SURE you are using the 64 bit version of raylectron.

otherwise, all the memory is limited to 4gb.

to find out what version of windows you are on, right click the my computer icon, and pick properties. It should tell you if your on windows xp or 7 and if it is 32 or 64 bit.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

dknight - I will try that. Thanks for the help! Your renderings are great by the way!!!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

ok this question doesnt deal with grass. Ok so I was just running a render and my computer went to sleep and I ended up having issues and had to restart my computer. Is there any way to get that data back? I go to the rof file and all it does is start me at the beginning. What do I need to do?
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Re: Question on slope grass

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You need to use "Save render data as..." from the "File" menu. This allow you to save the entire work so you can re-open it later and continue the render, even on another computer.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

Awesome! Thanks you very much!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Nick1 »

Hi Michael,
That was great news. I just read your post. So when are we going to have real grass as oppose to faking it with a component? And how do we go about it? Yesterday I was trying to have grass growing amongst large size ground cover tiles, so imagine lots of 24"x24" ground cover tiles with 4" strips of grass between them. I tried using the component method and the result was not acceptable unless I increased the tile thickness to over 3". So your news is great and I hope it can work for this purpose also. So will you be posting some sort of a tutorial or a video, and when can we use this feature?
Be well,
Nick
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Support »

Hi Nick (and everyone),

We are working on the real grass part right now. But we do have something you may want, instancing of groups and components. That is, you can have a tree component that you can create instances of, of have hundreds, even thousands of them without growing the number of faces and memory usage. For example, if a tree has 100,000 faces, and you make 100 copies of it, that will be 10,000,000 faces, and Sketchup will freeze. But with the Raylectron instancing, you only get 12 faces per instances, so that's 100*12=1200 faces only. You can create forests, even instancing houses, cares, street lamps, anything.

Do you guys want to try it out? If so, let me know and I'll send the program in a PM (private message).
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Nick1 »

Well that would be great but how do we work with it? Is there an instruction included?
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Re: Question on slope grass

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Yes of course Nick. It's very simple. You simply right click on the tree component (or any other component or group) and select Raylectron / Create Instance. This will create a box the size of the tree and that's the instance. Move it anywhere you like, rotate it, duplicate it, and render. That's all there is to it.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

I would love to try out the upgrade!!!

I have another question. I have some type of weird issue with some plants in my rof file. Its extending passed where it needs to be but its not like that at all n the model itself. Has anyone ever experienced this? Is it the model that I brought in from the warehouse? It seems to do this everytime I start a new rof file. I attached everything I could.

Thanks!!

Melissa
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Re: Question on slope grass

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Can you point out where in Sketchup and Raylectron? I have the model loaded, and it looks the same in both!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

its in the bottom left area where the creek starts. You have the "landscaped area" and that is where the multiplying plant comes from. It looks like the plants are on the water. I just tried to start a new render and it is still doing that :/
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Re: Question on slope grass

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Can you please post 2 screen shots? One from Sketchup and one from Raylectron so I can see what you mean?
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Re: Question on slope grass

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ok I found it, you don't have to send in screen shots. Let ne check this out....
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Support »

The bush component grass blades are scaled and skewed, that's why it comes out this way. Until we have a fix, what you need to do is open one of them (double click it) and then press Ctrl+A to select all the grass blades, then, right click on them and Explode. Close the component and all the others will have changed as well. You're not going to say a difference, but when you export it to Raylectron, it will look proper.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

ok I will try that real quick and see what that does! Thank you very much for the help!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

couldn't get that to work :( tried it a few different times. I am just going to find some new bushes to put in there. Thanks for all of your help!!!!!
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by Support »

Here is a short video of how I did it...

Double click the bush, press Ctrl+A to select all, right click and select Explode...
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Re: Question on slope grass

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We have updated Raylectron to v2.64 which fixes the problem you have with the bushes. Now they export properly. v2.64 also have the group(s) and component(s) instancing.

For the instancing, the way it works is very simple. Say you have a tree component, right click on it and select "Raylectron / Create instance" and a box will appear, drag the box to where you want the tree it represent. You can duplicate that instance as much as you like for as many trees as you like, rotate it too, change the face color so you know what it is. Just keep it the same size, or at least, close to it. You can do this with any group and component, not just for trees, grass patches, but people, cars, house whatever you like.

Each instance only add 12 poly to your model, as oppose to thousands for a simple tree. So you can make some really big forest, cities, and whatever, which would otherwise be impossible to do in Sketchup without running out of RAM, and being slow to navigate around your model.
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Re: Question on slope grass

Post by mkorba »

Awesome!!! Thank you very much for the video!!!! I will try it out again and see what happens!!! I am also going to tryout that update!!! :)
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