I believe that one of Podium's greatest weakness's is in thenexterior vegetation. Mainly in the quality of the tree's provided in the browser and limited number of 2.5 degree grass available for use.
The best current alternative that I have found is to photoshop 3d grass / trees into the final renders.
Is it possible to provide proxy grass / trees / vegetation similar to that of 3ds Max?
Will these instance's be embedded in the model and will it require less total polygons for trees / vegetation?
I am imagining a symbol that is inserted into a Sketchup model that represents an actual 3d model from the podium browser. That way the actual polygonal count will not be recognized by Sketchup and will be embedded in the browser.
2.5 grass is difficult around the perimeter of objects. Is there a way to have them trim to fit a perimeter? Thanks.
We don't know right now. The render engine supports instancing, but it makes sense to have a placeholder object in Podium.
It depends how we implement instancing.
One possibly simple way which I am in favor for would be to have a 2D rendering of a tree as a sprite that would show in SU and 3D version on a hidden layer. That way the whole model would be contained and saved in single SU file. If the instances were external it would be difficult to host these components in Browser.
The 'sprite' would allow a nice visual preview prior to rendering. Possibly when placing multiple sprite there is a script that automatically scales / rotates them to provide a more natural look.
I started working on self-randomising 3d plants for the browser. It worked, but results were unpredictable when applied to different models. Then there was the question of how much customisation to allow.
For example if you make them self-randomising for scale and rotation, it means that you limit the opportunities to scale the components in absolute terms. For shrubs that's not important, because shrubs have less variation in their size for the same species, compared with trees.
I started looking at allowing users to scale trees by using the DC options, but things started getting horribly complicated, and extremely time-consuming.
I might re-look at this because it's a really neat idea.
Instancing will be coming in the next major version of Podium - Podium 3.
Proxy support is not likely to be part of it, but this is supported by other applications like Skatter.
Skatter's "Render only" feature is currently supported by Thea, V-Ray, Corona, Twilight, Raylectron, Indigo, Kerkythea and Octane.
To use Skatter with all the other render engines, you'll need to uncheck "Render only". If you want your favourite render engine to support Skatter, please go ahead an submit this request with the engine's developers. It has to happen on their side as Skatter has no control over this.
I agree with you all. Skatter seems to be the best train to hop on. I've tried it and it works pretty cool, and better than everything else so far. It will unleash all the great 3D trees and grasses available in both Skatter and the Podium Browser. For outdoor renderings it is a must for me, because I don't like (and am not capable of) all the Photoshop postproduction workflows that is necessary to create realistic outdoor vegetation. And atmospherics? Well, that's another story. I was a great fan of Vue, but every new release the program is getting worse. Still on top when it comes to atmospherics though.
Any idea when V3 will be released?
I can't give you much information I'm afraid.
Minimum of 6 months - but even that is as vague as it can be.
Is the release still on target for July/Aug?