skatter altering geometry within components - green wall tutorial fail

Skatter Bug reports
1

SketchUp version : 2018pro
Skatter version (Skatter dialog > Options > About) : 1.4.7
OS : Windows
Description of the issue :

I have been following the skatter tutorial on how to build a green wall and purchased the plant pack used, whilst I can replicate the steps of the tutorial using the exact plant model there are some strange issues when other plants models from the same pack are used. In some cases the instances of the plant created by skatter seem to alter the relationship of the geometry within the component, in other elements of geometry go missing. All in all it makes creating a green wall far from simple! as yet I cant get beyond one plant without incurring issues. any help would be appreciated.

Are you able to reproduce the issue every time? (If yes, how?) :
Error in Ruby Console? (Window > Ruby Console) :

1 Like
2

Hi @boundary,

Sorry for the delay, we’ve been very busy and out of the office.

Can you tell us specifically which plant models have issues?
You can send any additional information to [email protected]

3

Thanks for the response, I have forwarded an Email with a scene example of the problem I am having. Let me know if you need anything else.

T

4

We received your email @boundary.
We’ll take a look soon and let you know!

5

I can add some further detail to this, carrying out more tests it seems the geometry only gets altered when It is in ‘render only mode’ Below are 2 images from teh same model one with ‘render only’ checked and the other not. You can see in render only version that it loses the ability to understand how the parts of the model relate in space. Nothing is changed in the model between each render.

a
a.png800×450 509 KB
render%20only
render only.png800×450 486 KB

6

hi merwan - I have added some more detail to this thread to help you - I am really trying to get resolved as soon as possible. Thanks,
T

7

Hi @boundary, thanks for the additional info. I’ll continue investigating.

8

Are you using V-Ray? If so, which version?

9

Hi Thomas,

I am using Vray Next however I have just downloaded the hot fix and will see is that may have solved the issue?

T

10

Hi having downloaded the hotfix sadly it has not worked and still some models alter when geometry when placed into render only mode. This is kind of critical - I purchased the planting pack from your tutorial in order to try and overcome this issue but at present we are unable to use skatter to create a green wall. Interestingly if you open up the green wall demo file included with the planting pack and render it the issue is fairly obvious. I am guess this is already using your own skatter set up?

T

12

This was an issue in a previous V-Ray version, which was fixed. But it seems to be back.
This is an issue in V-Ray itself, in how it handles “Render only” instances. There is nothing we can do about it unfortunately. Can you report the issue directly to Chaos Group?

In the meantime, as a workaround, you can explode everything in the components. So that you only have raw geometry in the components.