All about Trees & Plants

[Neilg]

I'd love it if proxies were provided that it was just for the leaf canopy & smaller upper branches with the trunk left as a mesh and grouped (linked?). they're never particularly high poly, and sometimes you want to throw a meshsmooth & displacement on a couple in the foreground. having to bring in the original model leaves and all to do this is a pain in the ass.

[3DMK]

Opacity Leaves are not the kiss off depth

I don't necessarily agree with the comment that opacity mapped leaves are evil - at some point, 12 million poly trees become impractical, especially on a network.

I agree totally. Geometry leaves are always faster, but opacity leaves are fine when used properly. As Duke mentioned, it's not fun or fast networking 10's of millions of polygons. Sometimes it's completely impractical to have geometry leaves, especially with leaves that have a very complex outline. You would end up with a 200 million polygon tree!
Here is a quick test of the difference between Geometry & opacity leaves. It shows you that even when rendering 100,000's of overlapping leaves that opacity mapping is not so bad after all The render times also include GI calculation, as I thought it was important to show it how it performs with all render calculations.
Both leaf materials are Vray2Sided.
Just remember to turn off any filtering & make sure your alpha map is only Black & White [no grey-scale] . Also use as small a bit map as possible to speed up renders.

As a side note-- My trees & plants will have High-Poly & low poly leaves/other parts that can be turned on or off at the click of a button. That's why I am using GrowFX to produce the models. It seems most people want the ability to tweak things about the model & even for occasional users, tweaking a tree in GrowFX is very easy. Anything you want to tweak can be done so very quickly & easily. Simply turn off the alpha leaves & turn on the Geometry leaves, as most trees will have both options included. GrowFX also has very easy to use optimizing functions so can can get as many or as few polygons as you need at the click of a button.

Hope this helps
Cheers

[3DMK]

Waiting on MORE client changes so I have a chance to write some more info.

It seems that most people really need flexibility with the models they buy & use.
With clients constantly asking to change or tweak things, you need the flexibility to change things models quickly & easily. I remember when design connected started they had a proprietary file format & you couldn't change the mesh. That just didn't work for people who needed to constantly modify the models to suit the clients desires. They quickly changed it & allowed a standard mesh format that you could change as they noticed our industry demands flexibility above all. They seem to have hit the mark with quality/price & flexibility & are doing very well.

Flexibility is the main reason I am reluctant to sell a static mesh that is difficult, time consuming & sometimes impossible to change. [Not to mention the huge file sizes]
That's the reason I am choosing to keep the model as a GrowFX object. Everything & Anything can be tweaked/changed instantly, as well as the ability to react to objects in your scene, which a static mesh can NEVER do. I think that once people start to use parametric trees in daily production, they quickly discover that the versatility they offer is priceless.
Although GrowFX is parametric, you can simply create a mesh or a Vray proxy as you need it....and with the ability to tweak how many polygons you want on your display proxy.
It took me a while to move away from using proxys out of habit of using Onyx for years...it just crashed too often to trust], GrowFX is very very stable, & it's so much nicer dealing with tiny file sizes & data transfers.
It seems that everyone is asking for proxy's, but I find that using parametric software saves you from generating & networking gigabytes of unessesary mesh data. [especially if you have an animation such as wind which can 10-15 Gb for just one tree]

GrowFX objects work natively with Forest Pro so there is no need to create a proxy or mesh. By using a parametric object like GrowFX you can do without networking countless gigabyte of data, as each tree is generated by the Renderslave at rendertime [usually within a few seconds]. To send 20 different trees in GrowFX format is about a 2-3MB, as opposed to sending possibly 10GB of data as meshes. Anyone with a network & huge scenes would see a massive benifit.
You can also just open the max file and convert to a mesh or Vray proxy yourself, if you really need to work that way.You will be able to work the way you like anyway

---Naming will be done on a professional level. All trees & plants will be named by Correct family/species name as well as common names. The website will have a search engine to help find the right tree or plant quickly. Search by name, shape, colour, form, etc.
All trees/plants will have a easily understood naming convention such as Trunk, branch, twig, leaf, etc.
Materials will also be named in the same manor. All materials will also be Vray-ready with the max file containing the product renders included. LWF & vray sun & sky are used for preparing the materials.



--- The trees I will sell will have enough variation to suit ANY & all needs. Most trees will have 5 - 10 variations including young & mature versions, pruned architectural & wild as well.As the Flora will be in GrowFX format, you will also have limitless variation by simply using the unique seed button [which you can do without having to learn anything about the software.] Having the tree/plant as a parametric object also gives you the ability to change EVERYTHING! Wider-shorter-taller-bigger less or more leaves or trunk/branches....you name it & you can do it. Most people realize that clients are hard to please so quick & easy tweaking of the tree is usually necessary, and is quite easy even for the occasional user.

--- The trees & plants will be sold individually & as discounted Packs so you can save money & only get what you need

Client has called back with changes -- I'll update more info over the weekend.
Cheers
Jamie

[trixian]

Obviously I haven't read all the entries above, so this might be a dupe, but it seems there is a severe lack of Perennial plants (these are very common at least in Europe), and to a certain extent bushes/shrubberies.
I do a LOT of landcaping projects, and my biggest problem is trying to get a hold of these perennials, or even something that might look close enough.

[trixian]

Another thing, regarding trees mostly, is that most available trees come as if they have grown freely out in nature, but in the world of landscaping and architecture, you often need specific trees that have been shaped/pruned for example for street use, where lower branches are cut off during growth and the canopy might be slightly more "tidy" and neat than one that grows in the forest. The stuff I have seen are usually either 100% natural growth, or something on the opposite end of the scale, more akin to trees you'd find in a baroque garden or shaped to something stupid like in a Disney movie.

TL/DR: We need plants and trees in the middle spectrum, somewhere between jungle and Disney world.

[alexyork]

Yes there is a severe lack of shrubs/bushes/ground cover type plants. The sort of usual stuff we need to fill areas of grass along paths and around the perimeters of houses etc.

[3DMK]

Keep the info coming everyone! Thanks again

Also don't be afraid to throw some plant names at me that you need but can't seem to find. I am trying to be very specific with my trees & plants so that you can look for a particular species & find it. There will also be Generic models for sale but most will be a real-life species, as is specified for most projects these days.
It seems there is a need of more shrubs plants & ground-covers and it's certainly my experience as well that these types of flora are often up to 70-80% of the total individual species required for a project. These plants/shrubs are usually very important as they cover up areas you don't want to see through to as well as control the transition from the ground to the tree canopy.
Hopefully I can produce the most-needed models first if I get some names of the species most often required by everyone.
Thanks again for all your time.
Jamie

[squintnic]

eucalyptus / gum trees please...the giant ones
and full scale mature plane trees

[voltron7]

Keep the info coming everyone! Thanks again

Also don't be afraid to throw some plant names at me that you need but can't seem to find. I am trying to be very specific with my trees & plants so that you can look for a particular species & find it. There will also be Generic models for sale but most will be a real-life species, as is specified for most projects these days.
It seems there is a need of more shrubs plants & ground-covers and it's certainly my experience as well that these types of flora are often up to 70-80% of the total individual species required for a project. These plants/shrubs are usually very important as they cover up areas you don't want to see through to as well as control the transition from the ground to the tree canopy.
Hopefully I can produce the most-needed models first if I get some names of the species most often required by everyone.
Thanks again for all your time.
Jamie

Here are usual needs
iris siberica
acer ginnala
cornus kousa
juniperus chinensis
malus (Donal Wyman)
pieris "brouwer's beauty" andromeda
ulmus americana
yucca filamentosa
hemerocallis fulva "stella d' oro"
pachysandra

and also here is an attached plant list from a project...

[alexyork]

Acers (red, purple, green etc.)
Acacias (need variety of sizes, wind directions etc.)

[meanadam]

Another thing, regarding trees mostly, is that most available trees come as if they have grown freely out in nature, but in the world of landscaping and architecture, you often need specific trees that have been shaped/pruned for example for street use, where lower branches are cut off during growth and the canopy might be slightly more "tidy" and neat than one that grows in the forest. The stuff I have seen are usually either 100% natural growth, or something on the opposite end of the scale, more akin to trees you'd find in a baroque garden or shaped to something stupid like in a Disney movie.

TL/DR: We need plants and trees in the middle spectrum, somewhere between jungle and Disney world.

Yes! We spend a lot of time modifying and simplifying trees. Usually the trunks / branches the most. There is always way too much turns and twists in branches and roots working up the trunks.

[cheerioboy]

Fiddle Leaf Fig Tree, it's used as a large floor plant in many interior spaces. Doesn't appear to be any 3d model of this popular plant.

[leo.surrealismo]

Albizia carbonaria

[Jason Stewart]

I really love your plan so far. I use grow fx already but I find it sort of hard to make good plants because I am not a plant expert. I can say that having them in grow fx will be really great for me because as you have pointed out you can edit them all different ways and get them to react with the scene.

I would love different packs based on region. Again I find it hard to buy some other companies packs because I don't know if some of the stuff will be useful to me because I am not a landscape expert. Having a pack for the western united states would be superb.

For anyone who has not used grow fx before, it is a really great plugin. Although it is quite hard to create a really great tree yourself it would be very easy for most if not all of you to work wth what 3DMK has proposed. You can make infinite variations of the same plant by clicking one button, you can have trees avoid a building or another object, you can change the amount of leaves (seems a lot of people want this), the options are unlimited.

3DMK, I think the newer feature of tracking the distance between the growFX object and another object could be a great way to automatically create LODs in the scene without the need to manually create them. Not sure the best implementation as it would be great not to have to link each one individually. It might be wise to talk with the growfx team about a similar feature that would automatically reference the active camera, they have been very responsive in my experience.

[Neilg]

Do you have any plans to use photo sourced trunks, like this? - http://i.imgur.com/7ntOPaJ.jpg
trunks of premade trees are always shit but they take forever to remodel.