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Thread: Automatic Forester

  1. #41
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Sure. I'll post the source later when I have more time - I'm in a rush to go out at the moment.
    I'm not sure how useful it will be to you though. They may be improvements to the utility of the program but they're not particularly well programmed. All global variables etc.

    I also have a few more ideas of how it can be improved, some of which I lack the knowledge to implement but I'm sure you could have a crack at them.
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  2. #42
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    I'm not going to use them straight out of the box. It was just the idea of how to position them properly. And as you have much more experience than me in that field..
    And I'd like to know which ideas you have.

  3. #43
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Ok. Well I'm not sure experience has too much to do with it. I just think that if one tree is being drawn over the top of another one then in certain places it just doesn't look good.
    I think strictly speaking, if one tree is overlapping another then it's trunk needs to be lower than the one behind to give the illusion that it is closer to the viewer. It also can't be too close to covering the whole tree, unless the whole forest is like that so it appears that the viewing angle is lower.

    The way I have done it so far (and it is by no means perfect yet) is basically your own way of doing it modified to allow a little random tree movement. This is fine on the X-axis using the current method as you can easily find out where the last tree was positioned. It's not too clever with jitter on the Y-axis though as it doesn't know where the tree above is. This is perfectly ok when the trees are spaced a little but the more compact they are the harder it is to make them appear randomly placed as the Y jitter is restrained too much because of bad tree placement. And that's what I was trying to work towards - a really compact forest that follows the rules of overlapping but without too many obvious rows or columns.

    So I believe the best way to go from here, which is what I hope you are doing, is rewriting it to populate an array that holds every tree position.
    My own next move with the version I have would be to just hold the previous row of trees in an array to see if that can solve the Y jitter problem.

    Anyway... here's the source of what I have so far. I managed to get about half an hour on it this morning so I may have broken it a little. I was playing around with allowing Y-jitter when there is a slight overlap but I didn't have time to see it through to completion so it may behave oddly there.

    I'm looking forward to seeing your new version. How long do you think it will take you?
    I'll make a post with the few new features I've been considering later.
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  4. #44
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    I thought I'd have a crack at changing the way the trees are placed to use mathematical equations and see if I could deform the forest for a different effect.
    Here are the results I have at the moment...

    Click image for larger version. 

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    This image started out as a square forest.

    And to be honest, I'm baking my noodle trying to sort out x's and y's and pluses and minuses. :s
    This is just using simple right-angled triangle math to tie a tree position to the two above it. I'm pretty sure that to get it to work how I would want to I need to start using trig and not be tied down to a fixed size array but... gah... the thought of tackling such a thing leaves me depressed. So for now I think I'll close this avenue of experimenting. If anyone feels they would like to have a crack at solving it then I'll post the source code. It ain't pretty though. Hehe.

    Edit: Oh, and any progress on the new version Fluesopp?
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  5. #45
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Hmm, even though it isn't working as it needs to yet, it still can kick out a decently placed small forest...

    Click image for larger version. 

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    The bigger the forest the worse it would look though as it stands.
    Ah well.
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  6. #46
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    Some progress, yes, but I just got Vue 8 and a Dragon model for Daz, so I spend my time right now rendering images...

    But I've had to remake the way I draw the trees to enable a more 'plug-and-play' kind of workflow. And I had some problems with the drawings taking about ten times as long as the previous versions, which took some time to fix. And it now supports larger images.
    And I think I can implement a couple of different generation algorithms, and giving the user the option to choose between them.

  7. #47
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Sounds cool. Looking forward to trying it.

    I have a few ideas you can implement in it if you are of a mind to. But I won't post them just yet as I don't want you to get sidetracked from doing the main thing.
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  8. #48
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Another quick forest generated tonight. All in all this image took me about 2 minutes to create....

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    The tree outlines, shading and masks are now all on separate layers and so can all be manipulated individually. The density of the forest isn't set at maxiumum in this forest.
    I've altered the order in which it paints the trees now so there should be no more trees overlapping another when its trunk is higher. There may, however, still be trees that break my own personal rules about how close it is allowed to get to another but this is a problem with the jittering. I doubt with the current way it is done it can ever be perfect on that score but I wait Fluesopp's next version with great anticipation.

    Next up for this version I will have it generate shadows as well which will be simple to add to the program as the bulk of the work was already completed by modifying it for shading. It may be a little more awkward with brushes though. I think it will just be easier to redraw my brushes to allow the shadows to fit in their overall size and then adjust the program to suit, rather than try to attach an oddly shaped shadow image to the ones already in.

    As soon as I've got the shadows working I'll upload the program and the source.
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  9. #49
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    Looks pretty good to me. The line patterning around the edges (trees follow the line of the image) I can just erase out.
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  10. #50
    Guild Expert Ramah's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ascension View Post
    Looks pretty good to me. The line patterning around the edges (trees follow the line of the image) I can just erase out.
    That line patterning is there simply because this was an unmasked generation so it just fills in the square pane. For a usable forest you would simply load a .png file like Fluesopp describes in his opening posts.
    I think with how the jitter is currently working (I broke it a little while trying to get maximum density forest looking better) the forest would look better packed in tighter or spaced out more. The more it is spaced the greater the tree jitter but at the current density on that image it isn't wide enough to benefit from either the larger jitters or the smaller jiters that show up more when trees are closer. If you follow that stream of consciousness typing. Hehe.
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