Outdoor Scene Renders

[mike_w]

[b]I am using Rhino 3.0 to create what you CG people might call non-organics, you know ships, planes and such. I use GeoControl to model the terrain. It's very good at this. You can make streams, rivers; just about everything you need to make some realistic terrain.

I animate these objects, fore instance a freighter passing an island. I have a wake, smoke emitter, a skybox using a ramp shader, clouds from "Creating Clouds in Maya using Particle Clouds" by Daniele Tosti (Maya's cloud sheets will lock up your computer when rendering). I have all I need except trees on the island.

The terrain exported by GeoControl is polygon, Maya's trees only snap to a nurbs surface. Also, Maya trees are done with paint strokes. When you go to move them the snap point is at 0,0,0 not at the base of the tree. Besides they won't snap to a polygon surface anyway. In addition just a few trees will lock up the whole scene and forget about the grass. I have to use Software Render because the ocean vanishes in Hardware Render. By the way, Maya's ocean is top notch. Please no one sugest I convert the trees to polygons at "25,000 per tree"!
Any ideas? Should I forget about outdoor rendering in Maya and use Vue 6 or something else?

Link to pictures:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/mike\_w123/pic-4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v713/mike\_w123/pic-2.jpg

Mike_W[/b]

[user_deleted]

hi mike sounds like a headache of a project with all these programs!

The terrain exported by GeoControl is polygon, Maya's trees only snap to a nurbs surface.
Not true, change to the rendering menu set then go paint effects-make paintable with your poly surface selected.

When you go to move them the snap point is at 0,0,0 not at the base of the tree.
Ok, use modify-center pivot

Please no one sugest I convert the trees to polygons at "25,000 per tree"!
yeh that is a bit ridiculous, do you have to have such high detail trees? there are some very resource-cheap planar models in the visor that would do at range, especially if you used focus on your ship. otherwise, it's going to have to have be seperate renders and compositing. sorry i don't know much about pfx trees as i have xfrog!

I have to use Software Render because the ocean vanishes in Hardware Render
haha ok.. what's wrong with that?!

hope that helps a bit,

sam

[mike_w]

Thanks Vexfilm, for all of your suggestions. About preferring Hardware Renders. Well HR renders my animation clips within seconds. Software renders takes about 3 to 4 hours. Thanks again.