Hello all,

I have been looking at the Symmetrical Lattice.


This at first may appear strange, until time is taken to look at its possibilities. What it is, is basically a Terrain that is copied and mirrored at its base.

The first main use of this I can see, is for creating rock faces. As we know, when creating an hill/mountain, there is always a slope due to the fact we use an hight field image. This is not always realistic due to the fact we cannot easily add an overhang of rock (as we see on mountains etc).

So anyway, a quick example to see what you think.

I selected a Symmetical Latice, then went to edit terrain-> new, and then just painted around. You then move the right slide bar to determin the centre line (the mirror line) of the lattice.



After adding a texture, and rotating the lattice



Another quick example



Of course, these are only simple (2mins to create) examples. But I think there are some good possibilities from this.

Hi!

...well, it's an interesting thing to know about. It's been a long time since I was wondering how
DAZ created the rustic rocks and by looking at this, I thought that they might have used lattices
or terrains to make them too. I just went there to see and yep, they said they used terrains in the description.
it might be very useful for any rocky surfaces, rocky cliffs, rocky slopes and of course, simple rocks!
... also, I saw a tutorial somewhere of someone who modeled a tree out of them.
thanks for the info!!!

Rustic Rocks

Hello Uguel,
Yes, those "Rustic Rocks" would be easy to created with the Symmetrical Lattice.

I did have a quick attempt at creating a tree this way, but I certainly need more practice at drawing trees.

Hi Stem!

I don't know if you already saw this but in case you didn't,
you might be interested to have a look here. It's about
drawing a tree with a symmetrical lattice object.

Magical Tree

No, I have not seen that before. My attempt was similar to that. I was not too happy with the output. If you check the last image on the post you link, you will see the tree is square. I will have another try at creating a tree with this method, I think it is more a case of correct brushes (so that the front of the lattice is curved). Maybe a need to create the tree in sections.

I haven't ventured too far with the symmetrical lattice except for creating 3D text (with a black and white bmp), which works pretty good.

The magical tree tutorial looks good, I wonder if some of that can be applied to text.

You can see in this example the mirrored lattice in the text shows. Could always lower the height more but it would still be there. There is the other way for creating text with a terrain and a negative boolean but it doesn't look as good. IMO

Hi odidio,
Yes, there are some possible reasons for the mirror line showing.

When creating the text in a paint program, ensure that the "Anti-Aliased" option is off. If this is enabled then the edges of the text are smoothed, but when such an image is used in a 3D program (for 3d text) this causes a taper, which can be seen as your example. There is also a need to make sure that the image to import is also the same size as the "lattice" canvas, or again the image will be "Anti-Aliased" on import.

Following that does remove the tapers in the 3d text, but, due to the lack of Anti-Aliased in the text, there is a need to make a larger text image. (so that the 3D text is not too stepped)

Example. Symmetrical Lattice: Text image 1024*1024 (Anti-Aliased off in paint program)

right, the tree is square and looks more like a clay tree.

I think it is more a case of correct brushes (so that the front of the lattice is curved). Maybe a need to create the tree in sections.

Yes, I am sure that the kind of brush we choose matters too. If you find out more about this, just let us know.
As, you can see in the examples below, my attempts were not very successful either.
I reckon that a lot of tweaking has to be before we get something satisfactory done.
See what I got....looks like a petrified tree



this one went completely cubic!

As for creating rocks, it went a little bit better. However, I will need to experiment more to get better results.
Both made from a lattice with the default brush. Once in the terrain editor, the brush opacity was set to solid white,
the terrain resolution to 256-fine, I might try 512 -ultra-fine latter! Remember that you can find these settings by clicking on the grid
button at your left, down below the brush opacity button. Textures were made of rocks and tree trunk materials I had.

rock texture



trunk texture

Wow, these 3D letters look very good.
And the reflection mat on the ground adds to the effect too.

Your text looks good, I see what you mean about the anti-alias, where smoothing will cause the taper.

So far I've been following Peter Sharpe's tutorial. I forgot a step for those earlier ones.

Thing is if you don't anti-alias for smaller 3D text sizes you'll end up with a lot of jagged edges, right ?

Cool pic .

Yes.

It is a lot easier to just use a terrain to produce the 3d text, you can have Anti-Aliasing without the problem of a mirror line, you still use the clipping bracket to remove the back of the text(what would of been the base of the terrain), and then just set the terrain as solid.

I'd like to know more about this feature.
Are the clipping brackets in the terrain editor?
Sorry if this was already discussed explained before!

Hi Uguel,
Yes, the clipping bracket is in the terrain editor. I used this in post#1 of this thread. You have used this yourself, when you created the "Island" to clip off the bottom of the terrain mesh. odidio post#11 links to a tutorial for 3D text (peter sharpe). In that tutorial, the clipping bracket is used on the base and the top of the 3D text (the top is clipped to ensure the top of the text is flat)

okay, I know what you mean.
It went well for the island but I was not very successful with letters
that's why I downloaded Elefont.
thanks!