Automatic Forester

[Coyotemax]

Ok, so I'm testing the latest version of Ramah's out. It won't let me load a mask file.
To be more precise, it pulls up the requester, but then appears to ignore the fact I'm trying to load a mask to use, and sits there. When I first open the program it either sits there with a full layer of trees and the option bar across the top is missing, or if I'm lucky it IS there and it has a full square page of trees. Is there a specific order I should use for changing things around? Changing the numbers (fill, and density) changes the appearance, and shadow/shading works fine, I'm assuming mask works fine though it's hard to tell

I've tried it with a variety of filesizes, all the way down to 800px square, and I still get nothing but a single full square of trees.

I'm using XP with sp2 if that helps, and I do have the latest java installed.

[Ramah]

Hmm, no idea why that is. I haven't had a mask refuse to load before. Before tonight that is. I was having some out of heap memory errors while trying to load a mask that was bigger than 1024 x 1024. :S I have no idea how to fix that. It's very likely that it is because I have a zillion memory leaks in the program but... meh. The mask was only that big because I was trying to see what happened if I used one double size and then scaled it in PS. I think most forests should be able to fit in an image smaller than that. Anyway... sorry CM, no idea why that is happening.
I'll post the latest version in a few minutes once I've zipped it etc. and see if that helps. It's still not completly feature complete but it's nearly there.

[Ramah]

Ok, here's the latest version.
It should all be self-explanatory but there are a few things to watch.

The image now resizes itself to the frame window (except for when a mask is loaded). If you then increase the scale/density it will grow beyond the window and will slow down as it does more calculations. If you press generate it resizes itself to the window again so if you really need to have big trees etc. then use generate to speed up the process.
You can change the brushes from the file menu. Just select the directory where the brushes are that you want. You may need to press Generate once they've changed though as there may be some graphical glitch. There's some residual variable left over from the previous set that I haven't nailed down yet. Generate clears it. Or probably any of the other buttons/menu items will clear it too.
As I said in the last post, there seems to be a limit of 1024 x 1024 on the masks you can load. Bummer.
Shade and Shadow brushes work with all trees. So if you have different size or shaped trees then shading will be bad. As in, you may get a nice round shading file placed over a tall, thin tree etc. Shadows will probably be ok.
There are some naming conventions if you want to use your own brushes (saved as png files). All the trees need to begin with "Tree" (not case sensitive). You can have anything after that name as long as it begins with Tree. They will need some masks. The masks need to be the same shape as the tree and their filename needs to start with "Alpha". Again, you can have whatever you like after the word Alpha but be aware that if you have odd words or numbers after the tree and alpha names then they may load in the wrong order so a wrong mask will be loaded for a tree. Just call them the same name to be sure.
You can also have "Shade" files and "Shadow" files. Again, you can have whatever you like after those two names but unlike the masks it makes no difference what order they are loaded in so call them whatever you like as long as they start with Shade and Shadow.
Also, tree images should try to be kept at roughly the same width and height. It's ok to have a little variation but the program works on the widest and the tallest and not individually, so if you have a tree that is a lot smaller or fatter than others you may get bad placements.
Just take a look in the image directory's included with the zip to see how it needs to be done.
Umm... that's about it I think.

Hope this version works for you CM. Let me know how you get on.

[Coyotemax]

Seems to work fine as long as I use small files.
I tried making a mask for the forest layer and cut it to 1000px squares, but stitching them together is going to take a lot of effort, plus they don't seem to match up evenly - they seem to be not as square as they were when i put them in.

I think I'll finish the current map off with my current method (I used your tree layer again, why reinvent the wheel yet another time, hah) and then experiment on something that's not client critical

Btw don't take my comments as negative towards what you and fluesopp are doing - this is a wonderful program, and I fully expect to figure out a way to use it at some point

[Ramah]

You cut i down to 1000 px? How big are your damn forests? :s

Are you trying to put every single forest from the map in at once? Can't you do a forest or two at a time? I really doubt that a single forest is going to be bigger than that.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

[Coyotemax]

You're right, smaller ones at once is a better way to go *d'oh*

But there are a few forests larger than 1000, yes. The full map is 4800x6600, and there's at least three forests that need to be chopped apart. Woo!

But yeah, I'm gonna retry - stitching together 3 forests will be easier than all of them

[Coyotemax]

Ok, feedback time! The jitter is making it interesting to work with the masks. With no jitter, you can trust the forest to show up mostly withing the mask. Once you add the jitter, some of the trees (or large portions of them) end up outside the masked areas. I'm assuming they overlap the mask edges at that point. I did have all the jitter options turned on though. I also had the brush size set for 10 and x/y set for 3 each. I did end up having to go through and do a fair amount of erasing/masking along edges. I'm thinking if I decreased the mask size that might work (contract the selection by 5 or 10 perhaps) to reduce that happening. I really like the jitter effect - it really does make it look better. While working on the map, I had 15 forest masks set up for creation - it was actually quite easy to run them all through. If someone wanted to go nuts, they could make a batch image processing function to process all the images in a dir as alpha maps and save them with a modified filename No idea how hard that would be to set up though (i mention, because i see myself working at this filesize often in the future.. 4800x6600). If it's not worth the effort to implement, i'm not worried, this wasn't all that painful, the only tedious part was the saving under a new filename I still think this is one of the coolest things I've seen hit the forum. Yay!

[Ramah]

That batch file certainly soundslike an interesting idea. That might be one for Fluesopp to implement though.
I have an idea that might make jittered trees stay in the alpha mask area more. It shouldn't be too hard to implement either. It might slow the program down even more though but meh. Waiting a few more seconds is still a LOT faster than spending hours on a single forest.
Btw, it will be the accumalative jitter that is making the most change to the trees going over your mask area I would guess. The other jitters just move the trees a small amount relative to the size of the tree. The accumalative one moves them relative to the size of the density and has a knock-on effect with the trees in the same row/column. It's meant for forests where the density is turned down so you get lots of randomness there.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you thought the generated forests were not coming out as square as they should be. Or I guess the same as the aplhamask? Is this still the case? Or is it this jitter that is making them appear out do you think? I ask because the statement has been bothering me and although the shapes seem ok to me, there is obviously something wrong when you use taller trees. The shape seems ok still but you need to leave quite a large blank area at the top of your mask or trees seem to get cut off. I'm guessing there's a problem with the scaling somewhere but I'll need to think on it.

[Coyotemax]

Yeah, it was the accumulative jitter that's killing me. I'll turn that off and try the next round with the correctly shaded brushes Incidentally, here's the brushes arranged by lightsource direction as requested (took longer to rename the folders than it did to batch process them, woot)

[Coyotemax]

Yeah, it was the accumulative jitter that's killing me. I'll turn that off and try the next round with the correctly shaded brushes Incidentally, here's the brushes arranged by lightsource direction as requested (took longer to rename the folders than it did to batch process them, woot)

Interesting. I cannot edit my posts. Well, i can edit, but then I cannot save. *note to self - mention to Arcana* Anyhow, Ramah - Interesting behaviour discovered - without a folder titled "Default Brushes" exactly as spelled, it won't allow me to open a new brush directory - won't allow a requester of any kind. Oops.