KT2008 Garden...
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These look good, no doubt about it. But ... how about KT's interface? Has it become even more, errr, "whoa, I must've stepped into a cockpit"?
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These look fantastic. The house looks good, but it is the rest of the image which impresses me more.
When I see these good renders of external shots I realise how much I am really missing out on improving/presenting my 3d models. I can model beautiful looking houses if required, but I have not aquired the skills for presenting them like this.I must get started rendering!
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@unknownuser said:
But ... how about KT's interface? Has it become even more, errr, "whoa, I must've stepped into a cockpit"?
Well... Previous you might have had a feeling that you stepped into a simple cockpit, but we've upgraded things a bit... Now you step into a much nicer cockpit...No... To be honest... The new material editor GUI have been completely re-designed and should be much easier to navigate...
(At least that's how I feel...)
But in reality you don't need to fiddle much with material settings...
In SU you can apply standard SU materials and for special materials like glass etc. you can import these direct into SU using the SU2KT plug-in, export your model and start your render... It shouldn't be necessary to make things more difficult for yourself...Besides, we have prepared many video- and pdf- tutorials, which will guide you through the process...
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Some have asked for a sneak preview of the new material editor in KT2008, and since we're so close to release, we decided that it will be OK to post a screen-dump...
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Thats looks great, a lot easier to understand and nicely laid out.
A lot of thought has been put into it, I cannot wait to try it out.(but first I will need to watch the tutorials, which I believe are included with Echo release...right?)
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@solo said:
but first I will need to watch the tutorials, which I believe are included with Echo release...right?
We have prepared many video- and pdf- tutorials, which will guide you through the new release, the functions etc...
They will be available in our repository, and we actually plan to release these one of the following days (before the release of the application itself), in order to let users get familiar with the new interface and the new features...
Some of the tutorials will be available in both English, Espanol and Francais already from day 1, but we plan to translate all within the first month...
This will help users who already knows KT, but also new users...
Believe me... It's really not that difficult, and you can set-up all materials directly in SU before you export... -
That material editor GUI looks much better than the previous...
The instancing for trees as shown in the images also looks promising. -
@unknownuser said:
And I can confirm that these will be made available, free of charge and ready for use with compliments from Xfrog...
Kim are you saying the trees and shrubs will be in the new Kerk 2008 so can be placed before rendering pretty much like the images posted above?
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I'm saying that we've been allowed to make KT model libraries of the Xfrog Public Plants and likewise the Xfrog Sweet Birch will be available... These will be free of charge, all with compliments from Xfrog...
We already have 6 DVD's from the Xfrog 3D trees, and if a user can show that he/she have purchased one of these DVD's, we can share the KT model libraries of that particular DVD...
In addition to the Xfrog models, Frolfer12 have made some various grass model libraries, which also will be available for download, and likewise we have some other 3D plants, flowers and scrub that will be available free of charge...
After import of a model, the user can easily insert a tree, scrub, grass or another model from the KT libraries by using the Insert > Models menu in KT...
And with the instancing brush the user can populate as many copies of these in the scene and then hit the render button...
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Sounds fantastic, hence the larger polygon support as it is added in KT and not SU.
What if I have my own 2d and 3d tree library and want to instance them within the KT GUI, is there a conversion or a simple select and drop?
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@solo said:
Sounds fantastic, hence the larger polygon support as it is added in KT and not SU.
Exactly... If you would place a single Xfrog tree in SU, it would be almost be impossible to orbit the model in SU...
So instead you create your model with camera positions etc in SU... Then you export it using the SU2KT or as an OBJ-file and then open it in KT, where you can place the 3D trees as shown above...@solo said:
What if I have my own 2d and 3d tree library and want to instance them within the KT GUI, is there a conversion or a simple select and drop?
I assume that you already have placed them in SU - right..??
If so, you just export the model and then you can select whatever part you like and use the instancing brush to populate more copies in KT...It's really simple once you learn the KT GUI...
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Thanks for those answers, just one more...
Lets say I have Onyx trees that I use in Vue that are already in .obj format but have never been imported into SU as they are way too big (80MB) can I use them in KT or do I need to import into Su?
If it's to make them .skp, I can use deep exploration to convert from .obj to .skp, will that work? -
I'm not familiar with Onyx trees myself, but you can import the .obj-format directly into KT...
You can even make your own KT model libraries with these... That will save you time because you only need to assign material settings when you create the libraries...You don't need to import to SU... That will only make your SU model impossible to orbit...
SU is IMHO the best application for making the buildings etc... (Non organic modelling)
One of the beauties of having 3D trees is that it - apart from making your renders look more realistic - enables you to create photo realistic animations...
Or just single images from different angles, where you don't see the trees from the same angle in each image...
(that came out all wrong, but I hope you understand any way...) -
I understand, I can pose a tree in say...Vue and render from different views, then save the diffuse and alpha maps so as to create different 'clipmaps' of the same tree so that when they are massed they do not pattern right?
What about my hundreds of fully textured and posed high poly Poser figures? can they be also instanced?
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Not sure I get your Vue explanation...
But any way... You can instance anything you like in KT...
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As it seems to be 'question hour'
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Does KT also has an export geometry function (to .obj, .3ds)? -
No...
KT has never been able to export to obj- and 3ds...
Files will be saved as .xml- or .kzx-format... (kzx = KT Zip Xml) -
I hope you do not mind all the questions, i would ask them in the KT forum but I figured here would be better as many other folk may want to know more.
In the images on first page I see a physical sky, is that a dome or does KT have atmospheres? (domes would slow the render times down considerably)
Is displacement mapping available?
If you can add components within the KT gui by way of instancing can one also position that mesh accurately, eg. Ivy is normally impossible in SU, but if one can import into KT can you position it onto the face that it was generated to fit?
Can you blend materials with the editor?
Is SSS qavailable?
Mapping textures in KT, does it wrap textures on all axis? or is it the same as SU?
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@solo said:
I hope you do not mind all the questions, i would ask them in the KT forum but I figured here would be better as many other folk may want to know more.
I don't mind at all...
@solo said:
In the images on first page I see a physical sky, is that a dome or does KT have atmospheres? (domes would slow the render times down considerably)
It's a spherical sky image, and render times are actually better than using a physic sky...
I've attached a very quick test, where I placed a sphere and made the material as a mirror... Note the render time... 11 sec on a slow single core laptop...
I suggest you download the Getting Started tutorial... Although only the KT2007 tutorial is currently available, the principles still remain...
Check pages 20 and 21...In addition KT has physic sky, which you already know from Podium...
@solo said:
Is displacement mapping available?
Unfortunately not in the release getting out on Wednesday, but it's on the list...
It might be worth mentioning that we aim to have more updates than one per year... So in theory we could get displacement in a couple of month...@solo said:
If you can add components within the KT gui by way of instancing can one also position that mesh accurately, eg. Ivy is normally impossible in SU, but if one can import into KT can you position it onto the face that it was generated to fit?
Actually you don't add the components by instancing...
You import the components and then you can use the instancing brush to populate your component (or parts of it) as many times as you want to... The instances can be identical to to origin or it can be rotated and/or scaled...It's really difficult to explain here, without going too much in details...
Once you see one of the video tutorials, I'm sure you get the picture...@solo said:
Can you blend materials with the editor?
Ooohhh yes...
Check out the A glimpse of things coming... thread...
But again, it will be really difficult to explain here, without going too much in details...@solo said:
Is SSS qavailable?
It's already available in KT2007...
I suggest you make a search in the KT Forum... Here's one example... Some SSS materials@solo said:
Mapping textures in KT, does it wrap textures on all axis? or is it the same as SU?
KT wrap on all axis, but you can make it work like in SU...
That's all about UV mapping...Hope this clarified some of your questions...
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Great work....!!!
I have used SU for a couple of years but I am a new KT user....the questions and information in this thread have been brilliant.
Cheers,
Gareth
(greetings from Australia)
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