TreeThing

[Ramah]

looks really great - just make sure you have "tool tips" for the buttons so people know what they do

Hehe. Already sorted that bit so no worries there.

[tilt]

maybe I should try using it for my Cartographia map... can I use my own images?

[Ramah]

If you mean can you use your own images to make your tree brushes then yes you can. It's not the simplest thing in the world to wrap your head around how to make the brushes I guess but if you can make maps digitally then you can make a few trees, masks, shades etc. and name them correctly.

The version I am working on now is stable and mostly debugged. With just a few more fixes and the perspective code, such as it is, disabled then it will be up to update standards. If you are serious about trying it then I'd recommend you hang on for the updated version first.

[Slylok]

Cant wait!

[Ramah]

Ok, so just updated the original post in the thread with a new version of the program. I'll just copy and paste here what I wrote in the new features thingy...

Latest version - 0.9

1) UI update. Tried to make it a little more user-friendly by making most of the common functions more apparent. Most of the important features should be tooltipped - detailed tooltips are on by default but once you know the functions you can turn them to basic tooltips or off altogether in the options menu.
2) Added an option to randomly add some light shades of grey to the mask layer. This can be useful in post imaging by using the masks as a multiply layer to add variation. On by default.
3) Added a Link Brushes option in the options menu (or CTRL+L) to hold the current ratio between Brush 1 and Brush 2. Can save valuable seconds when resizing.
4) Added a Viewport Padding variable in the bottom menu (in Advanced) to adjust the free space surrounding a forest. This has no effect when a template is loaded.
5) Added the option to view your loaded template. Located in the View menu.
6) Various bug fixes and improvements.


A few extra things I'll add here...

The default item in the bottom menu is View Angle now. This actualy does very little at the moment - it appears to change the Y density of the forest from spaced out nicely at 90 to a single line of forest at zero, with everything in between. It is hard-coded to lower the amount of rows it draw at lower values to prevent massive overdraw so that may appear odd. Basically, it is there for a future version when I change the way all the trees are placed. It can be ignored unless you want a really tightly placed forest.

Likewise, feel free to ignore the maxBrush parameters in the advanced menu.

I forgot to remove the View Control Panel option in the View menu. The plan was to have all the new controls removable but as Java seems to suck at resizing frames via code I've decided to drop this idea. You can remove the right Jitter panel with it if you like but it has little use other than that.

There are a few other commands I have disabled such as the Faux Perspective and the allignment option as they are still in development or broken in some way.

Umm, think that's about it for now.

If you have any feedback about the program then let me know here.

Cheers.

[Sapiento]

Hi Ramah. I tried to test the new version, but it doesn't work for some reason. It opens, but if I click a command in the menu, nothing happens. It seems to freeze, because I also cannot close it regularly.

[Ramah]

Hmm, ok, thanks for letting me know, Sap. I wonder if the other people who downloaded it also had the same problem? I'll try looking into it today.

[ravells]

Wow, I hadn't realised that there had been an update. I will get on and play with it forthwith and report my findings! I remember that from the last version of tree thing I couldn't get the density mask to work...but it's been awhile and I'll have another play with the new version!

Thanks a million for offering this to the community Ramah. You should really put a 'donate' button somewhere so I can make a contribution!

[Ramah]

Sapiento: I just took a quick look and I cannot find any problem with it. Using the downloaded version works fine for me. :S The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that maybe you installed it in the same directory as your previous version? If so you may have a curent settings files left over from the previous version that the program may be stumbling over trying to read. If that is the case then delete it or rename it and try again.
If not... not sure right now. Is it just a menu command that freezes it? Can you add jitters with the buttons? Does it appear to have loaded correctly looks wise?


Ravs: Cheers.

I doubt that the mask opacity density will work this time if it was broken last time. I've totally neglected that to get other things working and as I was moving more towards greyscale templates anyway I was going to phase out anything that used template opacity as they don't really go well together - low opacity white becomes grey for instance and then it screws up the ability to decide where trees will go...

Is there a way to extrapolate what colour something would be if it's alpha was ramped up to 100%?

Anyway... if you do use that command then I'll be sure to take a look at it and see what's occurring with it.

By the way - please let me know if it works for you.

[ravells]

I've just downloaded it and tried it. It works a treat but the 'faux perspective view' seems disabled.

Te template utilities work after a fashion now, yay! I have a sneaky suspicion that it didn't work the last time because I was using a black to white rather than a black to alpha gradient fill.

I'm not sure what the 'approximate elevation relative to opacity' option does - for me it seems to shift the trees a little bit.

The main use I'd have for the template opacity option would be to weight the brushes so I could determine where to put coniferous trees and deciduous trees. I'm sure that in the last version there was a way to do this (which I couldn't get to work) but I can't find it now!

Best

Ravs

::edit:: ah! I've found the viewing angle setting which gives me the faux perspective!