UltraScenery - new(er) territory [Commercial]

barbult

Artini said:

Nice image, @barbult

 

Thanks, Artini. I used some of the Biome Vol 2 water plants there, too. I built the scene up from individual biome layers I chose, rather than starting with an ecology preset.

NotAnArtist

alexhcowley said:

NotAnArtist said:

Hi. Just a question (having eye problems and can't read any more thru these threads):

Are non-UltrasceneryXT products, such as UltraScenery2 - Tree Pack 1, (which is one of the items available today under the "Daily Holidaz Deal" deal), compatible with UltrasceneryXT?

I think it may be, because I purchased several other non-UltrasceneryXT products after buying UltrasceneryXT - so I assume I had researched this back then. But this product only states that it's compatible with US2.

Thanks for your info (future-responder), and thanks Mr. Farkes for these ominous products, which I swear I will someday open up and play with!
-Ken

Ken,

This product is designed to work with US2 only.  US2 scenes, however, can be combined with USXT backgrounds to produce quite spectacular results. 

Cheers,

Alex. 

Thank you alexhcowley. That clears up my confusion over how these various products relate. I've had the impression that at least some were compatible with each other, but I didn't know it meant only using them in that particular way.

Sorry, by the way, about posting my question in this thread. I see it's not even for the same product as what I was referring to.

I was sort of mis-directed here by a link in US2-Tree Pack 1's product promo page, via the Daz Deals add-on.
Take care,
Ken

memcneil70

@barbult, very peaceful and restful for a walk. Love it. Mary

barbult

memcneil70 said:

@barbult, very peaceful and restful for a walk. Love it. Mary

Thanks Mary. I like irises and waterlilies. I was glad to get both in the Biomes vol 2 package.

MelanieL

barbult said:

This is my first render with the Beech Trees from Tree Pack 1.

Nice image!

I've not had the chance to install the new trees yet, but look forward to trying them soon. 

daveso

I just commented in another thread that I felt ultrascenery is starting to get boring to me. I feel the lack of terrain shifting, form, the need for more diversity is stream flow, as well as road and trails. They seem to all take a curve and a hill, all of them, every time. Perhaps if it we possible to create a road that is just straigh but that goes for miles. There needs to be a way to continue the roads from several areas, so it becomes one large terrain. It needs to mesh correctly so you don;t get multi-height surfaces and edges showing from one section to the next. I think we have plenty of biomes, ecologies, etc overall. Obviously its always good to have more, but I would like to see diversity in form of the terrains, etc. 

AnEye4Art

Perhaps Ultrascenery has run its course, as this thread is no longer lively with new posts. I am pivoting to blender now with gaea and worldcreator as my main terrain creators. I still use daz but not as much since ultrascenery2 has not worked for me since I bought it, and nothing seems to be in the works to fix US2 for me.

daveso

AnEye4Art said:

Perhaps Ultrascenery has run its course, as this thread is no longer lively with new posts. I am pivoting to blender now with gaea and worldcreator as my main terrain creators. I still use daz but not as much since ultrascenery2 has not worked for me since I bought it, and nothing seems to be in the works to fix US2 for me.

I grabbed Vue when it went free. Us2 is really a render dog for me.

paulawp (marahzen)

One of these days I will get brave enough to test release 4.23. It appears that Ultrascenery/US2 render performance is fine in 4.21 and earlier, and in 4.22.1.x beta. For now, I just switch to my beta Daz when I need to render complicated US/USC scenees.

memcneil70

I've been busy with setting up my new Mac Mini M4 to replace my old iMac. The installation of D|S was a challenge but is in progress with USC, USC2, & USXT products first in line to be installed after the basic products. But my first attempt to use it late one day, I hit a key and the M4 is really picky and it crashed D|S and I was just too exhausted to start again. But the program loaded just fine. 

As to usage right now by others, I think FilaToon has a lot of folks excited and focused, besides we are in the heavy holiday/vacation/flu season now. There are a lot of non-art calls on everyone's time.

daveso

paulawp (marahzen) said:

One of these days I will get brave enough to test release 4.23. It appears that Ultrascenery/US2 render performance is fine in 4.21 and earlier, and in 4.22.1.x beta. For now, I just switch to my beta Daz when I need to render complicated US/USC scenees.

I've been using 4.23 and see little difference from 4.22 in rendering us2. I get more DS crashes as well overall, not just using us2.

richardandtracy

daveso said:

I just commented in another thread that I felt ultrascenery is starting to get boring to me. I feel the lack of terrain shifting, form, the need for more diversity is stream flow, as well as road and trails. They seem to all take a curve and a hill, all of them, every time. Perhaps if it we possible to create a road that is just straigh but that goes for miles. There needs to be a way to continue the roads from several areas, so it becomes one large terrain. It needs to mesh correctly so you don;t get multi-height surfaces and edges showing from one section to the next. I think we have plenty of biomes, ecologies, etc overall. Obviously its always good to have more, but I would like to see diversity in form of the terrains, etc. 

The need for a long road & things is a limitation. I do think some more models and concepts need to be aimed at USXT. I've tried to do something with my mile long bridge freebie,

but it's just one object and as such is very limited, and no-one else has taken up the challenge to do more which is a shame. Adding models is not the ability to paint in houses, roads or alter the land height/vegetation with painting a brush over the scene. 

There are two ways of doing this:

• Get a bi-drectional link with Flowscape. Which, I fear, is highly improbable, especially as many of the models in Flowscape are probably protected  against export by licence.
• Add to Ultrascenery some Flowscape features if possible. To be honest, from my limited experience of scripting in DS, I really don't see how some of the flowscape features could be incorporated in DS, but would like them to remain on a wishlist.

So. Has the US concept run its course? 

No, it has not. It's just more difficult than it might be to make these changes but they are not impossible. It requires lots of user knowledge & input. A user can make a new roadway shape, they can create a height map and masks, all of which allow it to be customised. It can't be tweaked by hand in real time, which I think is the biggest shame, but it can be done. Totte has helped make things more flexible, but the overall complexity and detail of the US concept is both its huge benefit and the biggest problem with making it more flexible and customisable in real time.

Regards,

Richard

 

daveso

richardandtracy said:

daveso said:

I just commented in another thread that I felt ultrascenery is starting to get boring to me. I feel the lack of terrain shifting, form, the need for more diversity is stream flow, as well as road and trails. They seem to all take a curve and a hill, all of them, every time. Perhaps if it we possible to create a road that is just straigh but that goes for miles. There needs to be a way to continue the roads from several areas, so it becomes one large terrain. It needs to mesh correctly so you don;t get multi-height surfaces and edges showing from one section to the next. I think we have plenty of biomes, ecologies, etc overall. Obviously its always good to have more, but I would like to see diversity in form of the terrains, etc. 

The need for a long road & things is a limitation. I do think some more models and concepts need to be aimed at USXT. I've tried to do something with my mile long bridge freebie,

but it's just one object and as such is very limited, and no-one else has taken up the challenge to do more which is a shame. Adding models is not the ability to paint in houses, roads or alter the land height/vegetation with painting a brush over the scene. 

There are two ways of doing this:

• Get a bi-drectional link with Flowscape. Which, I fear, is highly improbable, especially as many of the models in Flowscape are probably protected  against export by licence.
• Add to Ultrascenery some Flowscape features if possible. To be honest, from my limited experience of scripting in DS, I really don't see how some of the flowscape features could be incorporated in DS, but would like them to remain on a wishlist.

So. Has the US concept run its course? 

No, it has not. It's just more difficult than it might be to make these changes but they are not impossible. It requires lots of user knowledge & input. A user can make a new roadway shape, they can create a height map and masks, all of which allow it to be customised. It can't be tweaked by hand in real time, which I think is the biggest shame, but it can be done. Totte has helped make things more flexible, but the overall complexity and detail of the US concept is both its huge benefit and the biggest problem with making it more flexible and customisable in real time.

Regards,

Richard

 

this is a spectacular scene. I need to do so much more in the learning phases of US. I'm really a beginner as far as masks, etc, and have no clue on editing JSON files. None. In Bryce, which is a totally different beast, it was possible to tile terrains, as many as you wanted, into one large unit, all of the sides matched exactly so there were no protuding edges, etc. Just that alone in US would be helpful, for sure. There might be even now a way to do it. I've put a couple together that were real close for closeup work. The one thing theat really bugs me is the overall look of the USscene, be it the original or US2, which I mentioned above. I have seen this changed a bit by adding models, which allows the eye to break the scene up a bit. 

Yes, much work to do on US. I guess we keep chugging on.  

Artini

Very nice scene, @richardandtracy

For me it would be even better if we could bridge from Unity to Daz Studio.

There is already Daz to Unity bridge, so it is only a matter to do it bidirectional.

With all the tools available in Unity, it would be a really impresive addon to UltraSceneries.

 

memcneil70

I finally had time to create a reqular render to test the Mac Mini M4 in real world timing. My first render was too dark and I added a spotlight and the times were way different.

The first took 1 hour 19 minutes and 1862 iterations. The second took 1 hour 31 minutes and 2101 iterations.

I used USC2; Kayden 8.1, Everyday 2 for G8M, Trail Running 4 G8M, dForce Shy Style Hair; Beagle; Eagle; Willow Pond for Simple Grasslands Expanse Fish; FM Easy Environments Oak View HDRI; Portrait Lights; and the extra spot light on the second render. I had to use what I had downloaded for now. The fish were shrunk to fit the stream.

Test 1

Test 2

I did this because there was interest on the Mac forum on how the Mac Mini M4 would perform. For comparison, an Ultrascenary scene on my GTX 1080 laptop might take 2 hours to complete if it even worked.

Mary

Artini

I assume that Mac Mini M4 does not have Nvidia graphics card, so it is CPU only rendering time.

How much RAM do you have on your Mac Mini M4?

 

memcneil70

You are correct, the new Mac Mini M4 is metal and absolutely does not have an Nvidia card. So all Iray renders default to CPU. But compared to my older Windows 10, GTX 1080 and GTX 1080Ti machines, it is still faster. But its speed in almost every other aspect of my work is very fast. On my newer laptop, a Windows 11, RTX 4090, I bet it would much faster than the Mac Mini M4.

memcneil70

And of course Filament and FilaToons do not work on Mac OS. Which is a major disappointment. I love having that on the Windows computers.

Artini

memcneil70 said:

You are correct, the new Mac Mini M4 is metal and absolutely does not have an Nvidia card. So all Iray renders default to CPU. But compared to my older Windows 10, GTX 1080 and GTX 1080Ti machines, it is still faster. But its speed in almost every other aspect of my work is very fast. On my newer laptop, a Windows 11, RTX 4090, I bet it would much faster than the Mac Mini M4.

Thanks for the answer. It would be great to compare a rendering time on your laptop with RTX4090, if you get a chance to test it.

 

jmucchiello

I am very confused by the UltraScenery products. 

Are US1, USXT, and/or US2 addons compatible with one another in any way? I know XT is supposed to be fore larger environments. And US2 is suppose to render faster. But would I have to rebuy all the environments for US2 if I "upgraded from US1"?

alexhcowley

jmucchiello said:

I am very confused by the UltraScenery products. 

Are US1, USXT, and/or US2 addons compatible with one another in any way? I know XT is supposed to be fore larger environments. And US2 is suppose to render faster. But would I have to rebuy all the environments for US2 if I "upgraded from US1"?

USXT is intended for low detail backgrounds, US1 and US2 are for highly detailed foregrounds.

All the landscape and ecology add ons for US1 should work in US2 but any third party scripts written for US1 will not work on US2.

I hope this clarifies things a little.

Cheers,

Alex. 

Artini

US2 can create terrains up to 256 x 256 meters while US1 has a limit up to 64 x 64 meters.

US2 is a plugin which is better, if it will run on the version of Daz Studio you run.

I am only using US2 with Daz Studio Beta (Public Build) currently 4.23.1.8.

 

Artini

Example of US2 terrain with the size 256x256 meters rendered with FilaToon materials.

There is also a Genesis 9 character and two 3DU Grumpy Santas (freebie).

One of them is at original scale and the second one is scaled up to 11000%.

memcneil70

@Artini, my first reaction was you had done a watercolor. That is so moody and open to so many thoughts on what is going on. I love it.

Artini

Thanks a lot for the comments, @memcneil70

I am trying different scenes with FilaToon to see, how well they look there.

FilaToon became my first choice, while rendering with Daz Studio.

 

tsroemi

Some thoughts as to useful new features that would keep USC going more strongly perhaps, in my personal view of course:

What would be really nice to extend the scenery into infinity: matching HDRIs to go with the USC landscapes, or even just really large backdrops, like Predatron did with the Simple Grasslands. In the latter case, they could include render settings as well, to match everything up. Most of the times, I don't do really large shots but there's always these annoying gaps in the foliage where the bland sun/sky sky shows through, and it's just tedious to fill these up one way or the other. 
That way, we could also have straight roads easily.

Second: more diverse ecologies and landscapes, there's just too much US for my needs. What about the wilds of the Transsylvanian mountains, or the majesty of the German North sea shores, or the (Irish) cliffs of Doneen ;-)? There are so many amazing places in the world where I'd love to do renders, and USC could potentiall give them all to DS. But the only non-US landscapes we have, afaik, are Australia and inland Britain. That's just not enough. 

Oh, and I'd still LOVE to see a true USC winter set-up! With frozen ponds and such. 

memcneil70

@tsroemi I have used some of Flipmode's Easy Environments sets' HDRIs which have a distant background image along with sky and light. It just depends on what foreground I used. I also use Orestes Iray HDRI Skydomes, PRO-HDR-SKIES by Com Jackson and the Skies of series by DimensionTheory which also have backgroud images. Maybe these can keep you going until a specific set for USC2 is released?

After USC being released so many years ago, we have become used to a large body of products for it and it naturally feels like USC2 is skimpy, even though the USC items can be used with it, except some of the tools, which were incorporated. It would be nice to have some other biomes. Although the Tropics, if apply to the USA, are actually only seen in the Pacific Islands and Florida or the Gulf Coast. (Not sure never been there. Too humid and bugs.) But going south, would work for parts of Central America, South America, Africa, and Asia. 

Mary

 

tsroemi

memcneil70 said:

@tsroemi I have used some of Flipmode's Easy Environments sets' HDRIs which have a distant background image along with sky and light. It just depends on what foreground I used. I also use Orestes Iray HDRI Skydomes, PRO-HDR-SKIES by Com Jackson and the Skies of series by DimensionTheory which also have backgroud images. Maybe these can keep you going until a specific set for USC2 is released?

After USC being released so many years ago, we have become used to a large body of products for it and it naturally feels like USC2 is skimpy, even though the USC items can be used with it, except some of the tools, which were incorporated. It would be nice to have some other biomes. Although the Tropics, if apply to the USA, are actually only seen in the Pacific Islands and Florida or the Gulf Coast. (Not sure never been there. Too humid and bugs.) But going south, would work for parts of Central America, South America, Africa, and Asia. 

Mary

 

Thanks for the hints, I'll try that! 

Elor

I got some older content for UltraScenery recently and they are some missing files error. They do seems normal because the path are linked to US1 and I only have US2 but will they have an impact on how the final render look ?

Here the missing files for the bridge as an example:

alexhcowley

Elor said:

I got some older content for UltraScenery recently and they are some missing files error. They do seems normal because the path are linked to US1 and I only have US2 but will they have an impact on how the final render look ?

Here the missing files for the bridge as an example:

Did you install the content using DAZ Connect?  That's the most common cause of problems like this.

If you did, you need to uninstall using Connect and then reinstall using either DIM or manual install. 

Cheers,

Alex.