Need ideas for lots of trees

[sjmoir]

I've had lots of fun with Vray proxies and Onyx, but now I have a *really* big project for animation. Does anyone have a definitive method for bill-boarding trees? I understood vray doesn't like opacity maps, is this correct, if so is there an efficient work around? Any help greatly appreciated.

[tct70]

They look great.........!

[mikeh]

the best thing (in my humble opinion) for billboarding trees is forest (its free) from itoosoft.com...but forst pro is worth every penny you pay for it....and you are right, vray does not like alpha channels...but i use a combination of 3d and bilboard plants on every exterior i do...Forest pro is invaluable for the billboard stuff....and the combination of 2d and 3d in the same scene with vray is no major problem.
mh

[studioDIM]

Don't billboard, go proxy and save yourself the hassle.
Especially if no closeup is needed, i believe the performance gain it's going to be massive compared to tracing all those billboards, not to mention final quality...

That's an oldish studioDIM job rendered with a 1gb of ram pc. Notice the many (17!) types of tree, all polys, no opacity maps.


Lele

[RErender]

His second image shows he knows how to use proxies, I think sjmoir is talking about a looooooooooot of trees.

We have had some success in taking the Onyx trees and optimizing as much as we can and the use them as proxies, for the typical deciduous tree we boolean the middles out just leaving the outer shel of leaves works well for an aerial shot.

If your set on using billboards I've had some success with tracing around the tree with a spline and making a poly out of it, even with a pretty detailed outline it is a lot less geometry than a Onyx tree.

[sjmoir]

Thanks for replies. Yes, there is supposed to be a looooooooot of trees (I’ve just finished 19,000 buildings)! I wondered if billboards would be better… Perhaps I should try to make a really low poly palm tree for proxying. I’m fishing for as many suggestions as possible, I’m a little daunted by the task. I remember davemcd used proxies for his team’s awesome Al Raha animation last year (I flinched when my boss mentioned that project) and I got acceptable rendertimes for the lakeside flyover above. Just this project is…bigger.

[RErender]

heh, that's a loooooot of buildings too

Well, how about rendering them out in a few different passes?

[studioDIM]

Err, yes indeed, he does know.
What i wanted to show was 17 half a million poly trees rendered with GI in one GB of ram.
He seems to be using one or two types at most, and what i meant was to stress the point: proxy and live happily

Lele

[CCS]

I think I'll need Lele and sjmoir to post their trees for my evaluation.

[dlparisi]

No idea how to do a looooooooot of trees, but I've got to ask about those water jets in the second image. Are those for real? They're like 500' tall !

[paulison]

we use some proxies created from onyxtree but find that you can't use the really detailed high poly ones. I think if you limit the number of types used and keep the poly count for each tree resonable then it shouldnt be an issue.

Personally though I havnt worked on anything close to the scale you are talking about, but if this was my job I would try to keep it simple and use nothing but proxies - billboarding would be a last resort for me if it is for an animation. Can you do a test scene with a similar amount of proxy trees and geometry to that of what you will be using?

I have a feeling that rendering just proxies without billboards will be faster than mixing the two methods. Would be great to see the results and your conclusions on the best methods afterwards

Good luck !

[mcphep]

yeah man, definately proxy. you will likely want some animated too for when you get real close right Try and see if you can get away with some (very) low poly trees for the distance using bump/dispacement. And if you can do some separate layers go for it. A bit more time consuming to set up initially but great when you are rendering - faster frames and less crashes (and for when you need to do the inevitable re-render). Try and get a few different seeds going from Onyx though so things are not too repetitive - scale, rotate etc. Multi-res and Onxy trees works pretty well I have found when needing to reduce the poly count. And if you are feeling really adventurous, how about Vue?

[sjmoir]

And if you are feeling really adventurous, how about Vue?

My thoughts on Vue:
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/22550-...-import-2.html

Shame.

[mcphep]

yeah, its a shame really as the landscaping you can create there is pretty nice. I was thinking you might be able to get some background stuff but perhaps not

[t3dm]

what about a scanline/mental ray billboard 'tree' pass then comp'd in post?

we are having a similar headache with marram grass on a golfcourse and needing to render for HD too! trying to billboard some of the clumped grasses in the far distance, then up near the camera replace with geometry.

looked at vue, but the scaling probs put us off..