Ground Fills: Basic Use (Updated November 2014) Thank you for purchasing GroundFills by MortemVetus. We hope you enjoy using this product as much as we've enjoyed creating it. (And using it along the way *laughs*). This guide is intended to show the basics of how to use GroundFills, and then the sky's the limit! Please note, this product and this User Guide have been updated. This is to facilitate using this product with other modular sets by us. For the purposes of this guide, we'll be using PoserPro2010. For best results, we recommend using Poser 8/PoserPro2010 or higher. So lets get started. The first thing is to make sure we're using the right units setting, which must be metric (metres), as shown in the first image below. This ensures movement of objects is the simplest possible. The GroundFill object is slightly reduced in version 2, at 9 metres square, down from 10 metres square. This now makes it consistent with our SceneScapes range of products.

So the next thing is to get a GroundFill loaded. You'll find it in Figures > MortemVetus > Scenery. Upon loading, the GroundFill figure is at absolute zero. We always keep one in that position, as this gives an absolute referance point to spread out additional instances and create larger ground areas. For the moment though, we'll stick with just one. Under BodyParts on the figure, you'll find two 'body parts', Ground and WaterPlane. Click on Ground. Movement and rotation can either be done here or on the Body. Morphing however is just on the Ground and WaterPlane bodyparts, and that's what we'll take a look at now.

Lets start with the morphs dials on Ground. Originally, this figure only had the body part Ground, in the update, we've added a WaterPlane, which we'll take a look at after we've gone over the Ground morphs. There are three group nodes to choose from; Transform, Edge Morphs and Shape And Terrain. Shape and Terrain is where we're going to start. A lot of these morphs work independantly allowing you to use just one GroundFill for smaller scenes. Try dialling a few of these up a bit and see what happens. *NOTE: using multiple dials at 1.000 is likely to create texture distortion. It's better to use multiple dials at lower values to avoid this, and create an infinite number of variations. Some of our dials in this section create slopes. Slope dials have corresponding dials to match adjoining instances of GroundFill to the slope that has been dialed in. But we'll deal with these a little further down when we talk about using multiple GroundFills. For the moment, just play around with individual dials and combinations of dials to get an idea of what each morph does on its own, and when used in conjunction with other dials.

Ok, next up, we're going to use a second GroundFill and position it behind the first one. Load the second one in the same way as the first, then in the Transform group node, enter -9 on the zTran dial. This places the second piece to the North of the first piece. NOTE: directions are worked out as follows...A default figure, such as M4 or V4, is facing south, their left arms point East, Right arms point West, leaving North behind them. Now, if we apply some terrain morphs to our Northern section, then turn the camera up to look more down on the scene, we see a problem. Between the sections, everything is flat, which looks kind of unnatural. However we have a solution for this, the Edge Morphs group node. If we expand this group node, we see a collection of morphs, with two morphs for each number, and a compass direction suffix. So Edge1 has an East variant and a West variant. Edge2 has North and South variants. and so on through all the morphs in this section. This is important, because these are paired morphs, and the compass referance denotes which edge the morph will affect. So, since it's near the top, we'll use Edge2-north and south. On our first GroundFill we need to affect the North edge, so dial that to 1.000, then select the second GroundFill, and dial the Edge2-south morph to 1.000 as well. All the edge morphs need to have matching values on each side, to ensure they fit perfectly.

The Slope dials move the terrain upwards, requiring movement on the yTran dial of surrounding GroundFill figures. Lets put two unmorphed GroundFills in and create a slope. On the one in zero position, we'll apply GentleSlope set to 1.000. As we can see in the image below, this raises the North edge quite a way up from the second GroundFill. To match them back up, we need to select the northern GroundFill and enter 2.000 on the yTran dial. If on the other hand, you use SteepSlope set to 1.000 on the first GroundFill, then you need to enter 4.000 on the yTran dial. For partial movements, such as GentleSlope set to 0.500, you'll need to move the corresponding GroundFill to a height of 1.000 on the yTran dial of the second GroundFill. TIP: for Gentle Slope the yTran entry is double the amount of morph set. So if you set the morph to 0.200, you need to raise the corresponding piece by 0.400. For SteepSlope, multiply the morph value by 4, so setting a value on the morph of 0.700 needs a yTran entry of 2.800 on the yTran dial of the corresponding piece.

Also included are morphs to taper off slopes. In the image below, we have 4 instances of Ground Fill set out in an upside down 'T' shape. The one in zero position has GentleSlope set to 1.000. The one to the left has GentleSlope-Left set to 1.000 as shown in the image. The surrounding pieces are all set as shown to create a seamless slope.

So that's the Ground. Now as we said earlier, we've updated this pack, and the most notable thing is that it now has a second layer, called WaterPlane. This was added so that we could include puddles, streams, small rivers....that sort of thing. So if we select the body part, and take a look at the group nodes, we see we only have one morph node, called Level. So to take a look at this, we've loaded a single GroundFill2, and on the Ground body part, we've dialled Crater to 0.7. We can see our water showing now, but we don't want it right to the brim, so we've dialled LowerWater to 0.1, on the WaterPlane body part. And now we have a small pond. NOTE: Some of the Terrain morphs cause the ground to dip, which will allow the water to show through. If you don't require water visible, use the LowerWater morph to lower it until it is out of sight. Because we've added the extra WaterPlane, we've also added some specific morphs for creating streams. These are in their own group node, called Streams. There are 5 stream morphs, 3 end morphs and 3 morphs to change direction. When using these morphs across multiple sections, they need to be dialled to the same amount, in the same way as the edge morphs. This ensures a seamless transition across pieces, like the edge morphs. In the second image below, we've lined up several GroundFills, and dialled in some streams, all to the same depth. NOTE: If you use the LowerWater morph, this also needs to be dialled to the same value on every piece where the water is visible.

To further customise our terrain, we can also use combinations of morphs from the 'Edges' and 'Shape And Terrain' groups. To show this, we've added a few more instances of Ground Fills, and in the left hand image below, we've dialled in some Shape And Terrain morphs. In the right hand image, we've also added some Edges morphs. LIMITATION NOTE: If you turn your Ground Fill -to turn the streams around corners for example- The Edge morphs will no longer work properly. For example, if you start with one Ground Fill, and apply one of the StreamTurn morphs, the piece to the south will need to turn -90 degrees for the stream to line up. This means the west edge on the second piece is now on the north edge. So the south edge of the first piece is now edged against the west edge of the second piece, so the edge morphs no longer correspond. Shape And Terrain morphs are not affected as these don't go right to the edges.

To get you started, we've included 9 pz3 scenes, with various arrangements of GroundFills and differing textures. Use these as a starting point to create a scene...obviously, you'll need to add characters and props, and you may wish to change the lighting. The included lighting in these scenes is our standard default lighting that we actually use for a lot of our own renders. We hope you have fun using GroundFills, and if you have any questions, please feel free to message us. Have fun and happy Rendering Andrew and Tracey (MortemVetus)