halbert5150
Member
Heres the first couple of screen shots of my next tree.
another angle
another angle
Another 3d Tress WIP
- Thread starter halbert5150
- Start date
halbert5150
Member
Oh I haven't given that idea a thought. I just have a list of a bunch of trees I want to make. If I do one a different size Ill not just re-size this one but do another tree that is in the same family. Just for the sake of visual variety.
Hal
Hal
That's the way to do it so the smaller ones don't look like "clones".
Thanks,
John
Nice progress on your 3D trees....
Are the shots taken in 09 or 10?
...some of my previous 3D trees look different in each version.
May I ask the poly count on the trees?
Anyway, good luck with your trees, the community will welcome them I'm sure..
cheerio, Jan
Are the shots taken in 09 or 10?
...some of my previous 3D trees look different in each version.
May I ask the poly count on the trees?
Anyway, good luck with your trees, the community will welcome them I'm sure..
cheerio, Jan
halbert5150
Member
These shots are in 2010 the poly count is 3583. I just stumbled on something about billboarding (I didn't know about this) and so im scouring around for information on what billboarding is and how to do it. Im a little behind the times because I have used 04 up until now and then went straight into 2010.
The leaves are bigger than I want them to be to give the tree a fuller look without the poly's going through the roof. Im hopeing this billboarding thing will help solve that. Blender has a tree making script in it and this tree took about 15 minutes to make.
The script did not have trainz in mind so you have to be careful. Just for the heck of it I made a tree as realistic as I could make it, subsurf scatter, translucency, spec highlights. I baked shadows from other leaves onto the tree and trunk it was realy cool looking, but also 50k polys and blenders internal render of the tree took about 3 minutes.
The leaves are bigger than I want them to be to give the tree a fuller look without the poly's going through the roof. Im hopeing this billboarding thing will help solve that. Blender has a tree making script in it and this tree took about 15 minutes to make.
The script did not have trainz in mind so you have to be careful. Just for the heck of it I made a tree as realistic as I could make it, subsurf scatter, translucency, spec highlights. I baked shadows from other leaves onto the tree and trunk it was realy cool looking, but also 50k polys and blenders internal render of the tree took about 3 minutes.
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halbert5150
Member
Actually scratch that content manager reports 7166 polys. Perhaps the poly count jumps up when the im file is created on export. Mmmm these poly's are going to be a problem. I also found what is refered to as billboarding and basically thats the old style tree. I use them for the lowest lod.
Jan I found one of your older threads and Im learning alot just going through that. Have you ever tried normal maps on ground textures? I tried one and it looked horrible. The specular reflection on it was massive. I haven't had the time to figure out whats going on there.
Jan I found one of your older threads and Im learning alot just going through that. Have you ever tried normal maps on ground textures? I tried one and it looked horrible. The specular reflection on it was massive. I haven't had the time to figure out whats going on there.
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7k poly's are ok on new computers if you tweak it down on LOD levels. I tested out trees a while ago with 70k ...
I think I can give you a tip how to make BB leafs here:
Find an image of a branch w/leafs or take a shoot urself. Use a treegenerator to produce the trunk and bough 3D. The manually place your branches on the tree's bough's. It's some work, but you can get nice looking trees around 2-3k or even less with this method.
anyway, nice thread and good luck..:wave:
Jan
I think I can give you a tip how to make BB leafs here:
Find an image of a branch w/leafs or take a shoot urself. Use a treegenerator to produce the trunk and bough 3D. The manually place your branches on the tree's bough's. It's some work, but you can get nice looking trees around 2-3k or even less with this method.
anyway, nice thread and good luck..:wave:
Jan
halbert5150
Member
A better example
Yes Jan thats what Im finding also.
For those of you following I want to explain my technique so that others can do the same thing. Tree's are alot of fun and its rewarding. I have other projects that im working on that take more time from start to finish so a tree here and there keeps the juices flowing so to speak.
This tree is just over 4k poly's I did this by using a billboard for more of the branches. Before I was trying to model small leaf groups and that just doesn't work. So heres the billboard I used for the above tree.
This is basically more branch for only 4 polys. You put the branch on a plane and then duplicate it all over the place. Blender has a couple of scripts that make this easier. You dont have to do every branch by hand. Next I will reduce polys in the trunk and Im fairly sure I can get this tree down to less than 4k poly's which is acceptable I think. Furthermore if I take a look at the branches I think I can thin some of the ones you can hardly see anyway because there in a bunch, This will further cut down the poly's. Then theres a couple of branches that stick out up top that kinda look like they don't belong. Ill just git rid of those.
Not bad. I spent about 30 minutes getting the branch for the billboard ready. Then 5 to 10 minutes in blender getting to the point of the screenshot above. This screenshot is not from trainz but from blenders internal render and so the branches have ambient shadows on them. Im going to mimic this with my texture file. It has a light, medium, and dark version of the same branch. All I have to do is remap some of the UV's so I can replicate the shaded affect in trainz.
Once I have the technique more down pat Im thinking of creating a video tutorial for my youtube channel for everyone out there interested in learning how to do this for yourself.
Yes Jan thats what Im finding also.
For those of you following I want to explain my technique so that others can do the same thing. Tree's are alot of fun and its rewarding. I have other projects that im working on that take more time from start to finish so a tree here and there keeps the juices flowing so to speak.
This tree is just over 4k poly's I did this by using a billboard for more of the branches. Before I was trying to model small leaf groups and that just doesn't work. So heres the billboard I used for the above tree.
This is basically more branch for only 4 polys. You put the branch on a plane and then duplicate it all over the place. Blender has a couple of scripts that make this easier. You dont have to do every branch by hand. Next I will reduce polys in the trunk and Im fairly sure I can get this tree down to less than 4k poly's which is acceptable I think. Furthermore if I take a look at the branches I think I can thin some of the ones you can hardly see anyway because there in a bunch, This will further cut down the poly's. Then theres a couple of branches that stick out up top that kinda look like they don't belong. Ill just git rid of those.
Not bad. I spent about 30 minutes getting the branch for the billboard ready. Then 5 to 10 minutes in blender getting to the point of the screenshot above. This screenshot is not from trainz but from blenders internal render and so the branches have ambient shadows on them. Im going to mimic this with my texture file. It has a light, medium, and dark version of the same branch. All I have to do is remap some of the UV's so I can replicate the shaded affect in trainz.
Once I have the technique more down pat Im thinking of creating a video tutorial for my youtube channel for everyone out there interested in learning how to do this for yourself.
Very nice progress...
If you use images with white (or black) background, please be aware that the colors on the border leek to the image, so you have to use similar colors in the background to avoid this. I took the branch image here and edited it for you to see...
background with similar colors, but you should use a darker background than i have used here...
I think you should get down to approx. 1k polys with a tree like you posted here, but 4k is NO deal even if you have many of them.
Please be aware that Trainz 2010 do not 'like' billboards (they do not look as good as in Trainz 2009), but you are sticked to them to avoid killing the performance. You can also use alpha blending as they look ok in Trainz 2010 for the billboarded branches.
Speedtree use BB but have bended them so they do not look so plane. My solution is to use small billboards (they look ok) OR to use large bended billboards together with 3D trunk and bough's. Second, if you add normal mapping (did you use them here at this tree?) to all parts, the visual quality is much better.
Jan
If you use images with white (or black) background, please be aware that the colors on the border leek to the image, so you have to use similar colors in the background to avoid this. I took the branch image here and edited it for you to see...
background with similar colors, but you should use a darker background than i have used here...
I think you should get down to approx. 1k polys with a tree like you posted here, but 4k is NO deal even if you have many of them.
Please be aware that Trainz 2010 do not 'like' billboards (they do not look as good as in Trainz 2009), but you are sticked to them to avoid killing the performance. You can also use alpha blending as they look ok in Trainz 2010 for the billboarded branches.
Speedtree use BB but have bended them so they do not look so plane. My solution is to use small billboards (they look ok) OR to use large bended billboards together with 3D trunk and bough's. Second, if you add normal mapping (did you use them here at this tree?) to all parts, the visual quality is much better.
Jan
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