We're here at the golden gates of autumn. Ready for 2025's final slog.
Over the weekend, I created the base meshes for the second stretch of the service road for the film project. I need to get proxy scatters in place. I should get this handed over in the next couple of days, then jump onto the third section, which is a bigger piece of work.
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"The Tunnel" |
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Meet the anti-climax monster. |
More time with Nature Generator
I've spent a bit more time learning some of the ins and outs of Nature Generator. I've been getting system hangs on start-up and after baking objects from the Geonode systems. It could be bugs with the addon, or it might be a coincidence.
We experienced a very brief power cut on Friday, which caused my systems to shut down. I feared that I'd spend many hours getting my older system back up and running, but it only took a couple of minutes... phew!
Nature Generator Stuff
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Nature Gen ground scatter on my existing test scene. |
The Nature Gen ground scatters come with a ground layer which interferes with the scene's terrain. I think I managed to suppress it by manually tweaking the material's alpha channel.
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Still great for baking procedural rock assets |
I experienced crashes while creating multiple rocks and then baking them (applying the geonode tree).
Log message> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
> WARNING: Context is restricted!
> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
> WARNING: Context is restricted!
> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
> Info: Deleted 1 object(s)
Later crash log
>🧹 Removed asset library (4.0): Nature Generator Assets
>✅ Registered asset library: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Roaming\Blender
> Foundation\Blender\4.5\scripts\addons\The_Nature_Generator\asset_library
> register_class(...):
> Warning: 'TOT_MatB_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix
> register_class(...):
> Warning: 'TOT_ImageResizer_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix
> addon_utils.disable: ui_translate not loaded
> addon_utils.disable: viewport_vr_preview not loaded
> Error : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION
> Address : 0x00007FF6763FA082
> Module : blender.exe
> Thread : 00001ef0
> Writing: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Temp\blender.crash.txt

Nature Gen is great for creating quick background terrains. To be fair, True Terrain is a lot more flexible, but I have a well-established workflow where I design my heightmaps and then work from there, rather than using True Terrain's terrain sculpting tools. Still, it's nice to have a set of parameters that are specifically tuned to terrain deformation rather than having to work out how different noise systems can mimic erosion, etc.
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Two Nature Gen desert terrains with True Sky (3 minutes work) |