Legacy plant process?

[J. Brown]

I have a bunch of plants (cacti) i need to import from AR4. I can import the plant itself but i can't figure out how to point the AR4 plant to the right material or map. I can not figured out how the old paths worked for plants. I read the other post similar to this but "tricky" processes isn’t an any help.

Where are the plant materials actually stored in AR4?

I have ar4 installed on an winxp machine, but nXt is installed on my win7 machine. They have a shared network drive that i want to point all my materials to. My first thought is to edit the plants in Ar4 and point all the materials and maps to a library on the server, and then make sure that same directory is pointed to in nXt...

Any suggestions? Any place to get good cacti and saguaro?

 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I actually don't remember.  Searching the winxp machine for *.plib and *.mlib should help.  The textures should be somewhere nearby.  I'm not crazy about network searches for these-- it can really slow things down.

[J. Brown]

Should i just move the *.plib and *.mlib localy? Will the old legacy plants still find the right material?

[J. Brown]

Is there a way to edit the legacy plants in nXt? Is there a Plant builder of nXt? the simple plants and lighting set ups were accurender's strong points, hate to see them go.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Typically, nXt needs to have three pieces to make the legacy plants work-- the plib, the mlib, and the textures.  I'd recommend having those available locally in a folder (subfolders are searched automatically)  and telling nXt about the folder using the Options items in the menu bar.

You cannot edit the legacy plants in nXt.  There is a Plant Editor for the new stuff.

[J. Brown]

I keep running into the problem that the orginal plants are using the AR4 system library! The material path works on the computer with ar4 installed because it can find the right .mlib file, but nXt doesn't have a system Library the same way so it can't find the maps or the matterials. Any suggestions? I am tempted to install the ar4 on my Win7 machine just so it will make an Acurender systerm folder.

[akinlolu olugboji]

Good way to go. (I am tempted to install the ar4 on my Win7 machine just so it will make an Acurender systerm folder.)

[akinlolu olugboji]

Cactus here if you don't mind a little work.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Did you change the nXt search path?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

This approach is unlikely to work-- Andy had the libraries installed somewhere other than the install folder-- and the registry settings will very likely end up in the 32-bit registry which 64-bit nXt doesn't use.  You need to find the appropriate libraries and add the folder to the nXt search path.

akinlolu olugboji said:

Good way to go. (I am tempted to install the ar4 on my Win7 machine just so it will make an Acurender systerm folder.)

[J. Brown]

So the results were half and half. The legacy plants found some of the materials and maps (actually pointed to an old AR3 .mlib) that i had to add to the nXT search path. Unfortunatly some of my custom old Ar4 plants were in some custome other .MLIB that i can't tract the maps and paths.... so I have moved on. I just made a new Saguaro as a Block and coppied it, with several arms styles. It would be nice to make the new Tree Editor make a saguaro like plant with thick taperd and rounded trunks, but I'll deal. Saguaro are not like other plants.

[akinlolu olugboji]

Have you tried "pack and go" in AR4. This way i believe you should all the custom maps and have nxt point to them maybe this could help. 

J. Brown said:

So the results were half and half. The legacy plants found some of the materials and maps (actually pointed to an old AR3 .mlib) that i had to add to the nXT search path. Unfortunatly some of my custom old Ar4 plants were in some custome other .MLIB that i can't tract the maps and paths.... so I have moved on. I just made a new Saguaro as a Block and coppied it, with several arms styles. It would be nice to make the new Tree Editor make a saguaro like plant with thick taperd and rounded trunks, but I'll deal. Saguaro are not like other plants.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I just did this one with the new tree ed-- needs a good texture but I think it's ok (only spent a few minutes on it.)