first you need to place an ivy-root into your scene, but
where to find this thing ?
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go to "Create" panel -
choose "Geometry" -
select "Guruware" from the list -
check "AutoGrid" -
select the "gwIvy" object -
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add the object somewhere in your scene, the ground
is a good place for an Ivy-Root,
but you can put it anywhere you want, only make sure its not below a
face (it won't grow through backside of faces)
you can move an exiting ivy in your scene, rotate and scale won't work
(as designed)
if it should grow up, you need to place it near a wall, or it will
mostly creep around on the ground (if there is one)
if you have a real-world scaled scene, you don't have to change any
parameters in the "Grow-Params" Rollout
this bunch of spinners are only for fine-tuning the grow-process -
should be obvious what they do...
if your scene is not scaled correct (real-world), you will have a hard
time figuring out working values
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- max. grow-size per iteration
- amount of growing up
- amount of last grow-direction
- random influence
- gravity influence - usually down:)
- adhesion strength (attraction to mesh)
- max. distance to mesh where adhension will influence growth
- branching probability
- max. floating length of a branch before it will die
- variation of max. length
- max. number of parents (0 = just one branch without child-branches)
- some seed for the randomizers
- number of threads to use when growing - up to cpu's/cores of your
system
- start/stop grow process
- age of grown ivy (used iterations), the one and only aniamteable
parameter
- stop grow at specified age (when enabled), so you can go for a coffee
while it grows
- live branches of ivy, only live branches are growing
- nice to see how long it took...
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now hit the "Grow" button and watch magic at work
while it's growing you can still navigate in your viewport (as long as
you don't deselect the growing ivy),
or setup your materials, or whatever...
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after growing you might want to adjust some mesh parameters to give it
the look you want
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size of an ivy branch (radius) -
random seed - (for leaf distribution/orientation)
size of leaves -
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- number of branch-sides
- aspect for crossection
- distance of crossections (to reduce face-count)
- add some chaos to the leaf-orientation
- density of leaves on a branch
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here you set visibility of ivy-branches and leaves for viewport AND
rendering
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- Main Branch: the first branch having no parents
- Old Branches: branches with parent- and child-branches
- Young Branches: branches with parent-branches only
- smooth branch-mesh
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when you create an ivy a Multi/Sub-Object Material is already assigned
to it
gwIvy01 has material IvyMaterial01 asigned, gwIvy02 has material
IvyMaterial02, etc...
open the material-editor and pick the material from the ivy using the
eye-dropper
ivy-textures can be found at Thomas Luft's Ivy Generator page
the used images for such leaves are "pointing down", most textures for
leaves are pointing up
for me leaves are hanging down from plants... and Z is up - but that's
another story :)
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you get a material with one slot for the branches and 12 slots for
leaves (you don't need to use all of them)
each leaf-material got a RGB Multiply map, with the diffuse leaf
texture and a Vertex Color map
on creation of an ivy 2 maps are generated for you (_ivy_d.tga and
_ivy_o.tga)
this textures are put into the first foud map directory (usually
maxRoot/maps), they will be your standard textures
for each new created ivy
this 2 maps are not overwritten when they are already available, so
you can exchange them with your own
default leaf textures
in the ivy's texture-rollout you set how to apply the branch texture,
number of the leaf-materials,
the amount of each leaf-material to use, and vertex colors for each
leaf material
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- usage of vertexcolors on/off
- defines the height of the used texture, tiled along a branch
- rotation of branchtexture (in degrees)
- number of texture-twists along a branch
- random seed for leaf-material distribution
- number of leaf-materials to use
- amount of leaf-material #1 and vertex colors
- amount of leaf-material #2 and vertex colors
- amount of leaf-material #3 (last used leaf-material is calculated)
and vertex colors
- amounts for old branches and vertex colors
- amounts for young branches and vertex colors
- update leaves after adjustments
uncheck auto-update below if you have a heavy ivy-mesh and things get
slow
- auto-update leaves when adjusting spinners
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you can copy vertex color settings between leaf materials by drag/drop
from one vertex-color button to another
or swap settings by holding down CTRL while doing this drag/drop
(without an annoying dialog asking you what to do)
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this dialog appears when clicking on one of the vertex-color buttons
next to the ammount spinners
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- tells you which leaf-material you are working on
- Color variation (different for each color below)
- Color space where variation takes place (RGB or HSV)
- R or H - variation
- G or S - variation
- B or V - variation
- Color setting by leaf-age, again... leaf-age, NOT ivy age !!!
this way you can have the leaves change color while the ivy grows
older
the possibilities are...
... not endless, but there are some :)
- on: tuns usage of this color setting on/off
- age: the leaf-age when this color is to be used
the color is interpolated between the prev. color and this one
- color: well... the color
- pL: use this color per leaf
when off, each vertex of a leaf will get a different color
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some notes on usage:
to make this work, turn on "Use Vertex Colors" in Texture-Rollout
open material-editor and disable all maps in viewport (can be found in
mat-edits menu)
now you should see the colors change on the leaf quads
if you want to see you leaf with opacity in viewports, you have to
uncheck the corresponding diffuse-map
in material-editor - a "global-diffuse-off-switch" in texture-roolout
would turn off all diffuse-maps in your scene,
that's why there is no such switch in the ivy-rollouts
variations and colorspace for each color can be different (except for
Hue)
try to avoid using Hue-variations when animating
when turning off the pL-switch for a vertex color, do this for all
used colors
make sure "Redraw Scene On Window Expose" is ON, or you get no
viewport-response when changing colors
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here it is, the highly demanded custom leaf geometry... happy now ?
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- on/off using this geometry (if not, internal leafquad is used again)
- pick-button to pick your custom leaf geometry
- on/off transform override - double-click opens "transform dialog"
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pick any geometry object or helper in your scene to use as leaves
(including linked children), nurbs also if you wish...
the current ivy-material is updated, including all used map-channels
on references
this references can be animated, eq. you can add growing bananas onto
your ivy, or bipeds...
or add some animated noise to a leaf geometry to simulate wind...
leaf-size in mesh-rollout will have no effect on leaf-references, also
vertexcolors from texture-rollout are not used,
vertexcolors have to be set on the used reference (if needed)
you can copy transform settings between references by drag/drop from
one transform button to another
or swap settings by holding down CTRL while doing this drag/drop
(without an annoying dialog asking you what to do)
take care what you do... using a 10.000 poly mesh as a leaf for
50.000 leaves on the ivy is not working so good :)
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this dialog appears when double-clicking on one of the tranform
buttons in LeafMeshes rollout
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- tells you which leaf-reference you are working on
- tanslation and variations for a reference
- use local leaf-space or word space
- rotation and variations for a reference
- relative or absolute rotation
- scale and variations for a reference
- use local leaf-space or word space
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should be obvious what this one does...
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- Load and Save of Presets
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each and every value is stored in such a preset, including vertexcolor
settings and transform overrides
http://hotfile.com/dl/33033645/6c6a483/gwIvy_v0.93b-max-guruware.rar.html
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