Posts Tagged ‘EcoSystem’

I’ve just added a few little enhancements to my EcoSystem to Object script. It now asks for a few simple choices when it is run rather than needing the script to be edited. You can now choose what Vue primitive it will put at the EcoSystem instances location. You can also select to have the created objects grouped or made into a meta blob by the script.

Since this version will only work with Vue 6 and not Vue 5′s python I’ve left the old version of the script in the zip file.

Download: EcoSystem to Objects 0.1 (5KB Zip Archive)

A render using atmospheres and plants from Linda Daireaux’s Incredibly Lush Tropical Paradise. The ecosystem covering the island is a modified version of one that came in the pack. I moved the palms into a separate layer with altitude dependant distribution because they didn’t look right when they were breaking the lines of the mountains at the peaks. All done in Vue 6 Infinite with no post work.

Ecology

The playfield of disaster stories, the ecology and environment looks at changes to ecosystems, climate change, extinctions, evolution and the interconnectivity of many factors. Supernatural and mythical creatures place and effects in an ecosystem may appear here.

Politics

Like economics changing political systems is rarely the stuff of science fiction but its popular with counterfactual historians. Political changes can include changing styles of government, election, values in government, the use of power, the balance of state with citizen and many more juicy questions. Topics to consider include international, country and regional positions; laws and standards; law enforcement; political acceptability; and lobbying.

Values

Values covers a wide and varied set of concepts many of which cross over with politics and social headings. It covers changing attitudes, social mores, organisational cultures (do officials accept bribes or are other favours expected), how valued are teams and personal values. You may want to consider religions, corporate responsibility, ethics, taboos and that modern press favourite the work / life balance.

Mystical

Mystical is my addition to the system to include all those things that are inexplicable in the STEEPV system. It includes psychic powers, magic, monsters and super powers all fall into the mystical category. Religions may appear in this category if gods are active or have direct influence on the setting.

I’ve had several e-mails asking if the animations made with the Object Sequence Importer I posted yesterday can be used in EcoSystems. A few quick test revealed the following:

• Sequences can be saved as VOBs following the method for saving the scripts result explained in yesterdays article.
• Sequences saved as VOBs and then loaded into EcoSystems render very, very slowly.
• Sequences saved as VOBs and then loaded into EcoSystems render the last frame of the VOB for every frame I’ve tried rendering.

Based on this I don’t think they will work but if anyone wants to try loading one and then rendering it in this way as an animation and finds it does work please let me know what you did as I’d be really happy.

EcoSystem to CSV / CSV to EcoSystem, the last of the Vue Python scripts on the impworks site, have now been cleared as working and so I’ve added a page for it and updated the zip file.

That frees me up to concentrate on new work. First on the list will be the revamped object sequence loader because of the interest it has been generating from various visitors. Watch this space for more details soon (hopefully).

EcoSystem to Object can now be done using Vue itself has features to convert selected EcoSystem instances to objects. There may be code of interest though so I’m not going to remove it. Checked and no problems found. Documentation and script updated to reflect the check and now available.

See: Vue 6 EcoSystem to Object Python Script

After a day spent assembling a rather long questionnaire for a client’s new site I needed a break from typing. I thought I’d have a play with Vue. After half an hour of playing and 12 minutes of rendering I’d knocked the picture out of a ship running into a sheltered bay ahead of a storm. One EcoSystem, two standard terrains, one procedural terrain and a model ship from Cornucopia3D.

Tags: impworks
vue
cg
3d

I wasn’t expecting the Spray on EcoSystem python script to be such a big hit. I’ve had more e-mail’s about it than any of the other Vue script so far. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts. I’m going to take a look at everyone’s suggestions over the next few days and see what I can do to implement them.

A new python script for Vue 5 Infinite that coats the outside of an object with an EcoSystem. It won’t cover all faces because of the way it works. It will cover a sphere, cube or cone. For more information read the README file in the zip archive.

Download: ecospray.zip

I’d left Vue rendering this one today while I was at work. While it originally estimated 15 hours for the print size size image it turned out to need less than 5 in the end. I don’t normally use global radiosity but I did with this picture for a change. It made the roadside bushes look a lot more verdant. The road texture is a mixed material I made myself. The bushy foliage is an EcoSystem I made with plants from the Incredibly Lush Underbrush pack from Cornucopia3d. I’m really pleased with the plants and I’m finding more and more scenes I’m using them in. You can’t tell from the picture but I got the scaling of some of the plants in the eco wrong, the nettles ended up being really, really tiny.