Plants invisible in top view. 3D surfaces invisible in plan.

[Marshallae]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to design a garden border by a lakeside.  I need to show a top plan view of the border, as well as an isometric view.  At the moment I'm struggling to make something in VW which suits both purposes due to invisibility of items in different view modes.  Isometric view seems ok. Its the top ones which are causing issues. In order to allow me to give the soil and water a texture, I've made them 0 height extrudes; however this means that on the top plan they are now just boxes with no fill.

 

So I thought "maybe I'll just do top plan in 'top' view which means I can use a render mode, that way I'll be able to see the ground and water.".  This solves one issue, but then brings in a new issue which is that in top view the plants then disappear! Argh!

 

So question is - is there a way to either make extrudes have a fill in plan view, or is there a way to make plants appear in top view rendered?

 

Images attached to highlight issues. Far from a finished design, I just threw a few plants on a bit of soil to demonstrate the issue.

[Pat Stanford]

Rather than extrudes, try using Slabs, Roof Faces, or Floors.

 

Or stick with Extrudes and make an AutoHybrid out of them.

[Marshallae]

8 hours ago, Pat Stanford said:

Rather than extrudes, try using Slabs, Roof Faces, or Floors.

 

Or stick with Extrudes and make an AutoHybrid out of them.

 

Thanks Pat - I've used a slab and set the thickness to 1mm (seems you can't have zero thickness?).  Seems to work ok.  Before I use these more widely, is there anything worth noting about them which might be a limiting factor later on in terms of how they behave with other modes etc?

 

On a related note, the available fill on top mode seems to be a different library to the render ones. In top plan I thought I'd use an 'image' to replicate the same render as that in 3D view.  In 3D render I was using the 'landscape mulch RT' texture.  That doesn't exist as a 2D image.  Do I need to somehow replicate and import that as an image into the 2D library to be able to use it on the top plan view?

 

Also, any idea why plants don't appear on top view (in original question)?

 

Thanks again