Trimmed Hedge

[Morne]

ok pflow for the leaves and ivy gen for the branches.
why did you use 2 pflows?

very nice leaves and material by the way John

[rivoli]

Hmm thanks for the tip, didnt think of that. I think I'll try making a mesh 400mm X 400mm wide and 500mm high and use this as my "base" mesh then distribute it over my ground with forestlite. If my hedge runs along 400 wide and makes a "U" shape if viewed from top, how would I go about letting it follow the U? The "U" as an example is about 10m X 10m wide. The hedge will run in the outline of the U. The outline is as thick as the hedge 400mm. Hope you understand what I mean. (the hedge doesnt just form a straight line, but actually goes straigh, turn right, go straigh, turn right, then go styarigh again to form the u

if you can't achieve a straight line of hedges along a turning spline, not sure that can be precisely done with forest, you can try with the spacing tool. this way you should be able to specify the distance between hedges, count and so on. I guess it's worth giving it a try..

ps
good one john, cleaver to use ivy for the branches..

[joconnell]

I used one pflow for the leaves on the actual branches themselves but it left it looking a bit "thin" in the middle so I had a second pflow that filled a mesh volume with more leaves so it'd have enough density to receive quite a solid amount of shading!

[Morne]

if you can't achieve a straight line of hedges along a turning spline, not sure that can be precisely done with forest, you can try with the spacing tool. this way you should be able to specify the distance between hedges, count and so on. I guess it's worth giving it a try..

huh?
no no no
its a continious hedge, but its not just a straight line (not like an l), it is curved (like in the shape of a U) as in the hedge goes around my building, except for the front, hence a u, or a square with on side chopped off

[rivoli]

eh, no I guess I got what you mean. by straight line along a spline I meant to say that with forest, even though you can scatter objects on a spline other than a closed area, you'll probably end up with a cluster of overlapping hedges roughly scattered along such path. so you may be hard pressed to get a precise outline. the spacing tool, on the other hand, will, I guess, place the hedges along a given path in the way you're after.

[Morne]

yes a picture paints a thousand words. Yes now I understand what you mean. I think. What you saying is that the spacing tool will give nicer "uniform" result. Forest will give more "rough" and possibly overlapping result. I'm geussing however that Forest will use less memory and be easier to manage (although it may not look as "neat" as the spacing tool in this example)

Is that correct? Am I understanding you correctly?

[JohnVK]

Forest can do precise alignment as well. Maybe even better than any built-in Max tool ever could Below is an example. I used the FULL distribution map and played with the width of the spline and the density settings. By adjusting the spline width you can get a single row of boxes, two rows, whatever you want. No trouble to set up at all And the fun part is that you can use your own distribution maps as well. So the possibilities are virtually endless.

[rivoli]

Is that correct? Am I understanding you correctly?

yep, that's what I meant. I also thought a picture could help
as memory goes, I'm not sure. forest is an excellent tool so it may perform better, but at the end of the day you'll end up with a bunch of instances just as well.. vray should be handling them just fine even if scatter them around with the spacing tool..

[Morne]

Forest can do precise alignment as well. Maybe even better than any built-in Max tool ever could Below is an example. I used the FULL distribution map and played with the width of the spline and the density settings. By adjusting the spline width you can get a single row of boxes, two rows, whatever you want. No trouble to set up at all And the fun part is that you can use your own distribution maps as well. So the possibilities are virtually endless.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6585[/ATTACH]

When you say spline and the thickness, you mean it just a spline and in max you set the viewport thickness of the spline? Or you mean it is a closed spline and you move the vertices of the spline to make it thicker or thinner?
Also isnt the spacing tool only in the Pro version of Forest?

[JohnVK]

The 3ds Max Spline is just a Spline, without any of the Rendering options enabled. In my case it was a rectangle with one segment deleted to create the "U" shape.

What I'm referring to is the Forest object settings in the AREA rollout > Following Path options. In there you can set the width for the spline with which you can influence the area in which the object is scattered. The value you need to enter depends on the size of the scattered object. In my case the scattered box is 3cm, so if I enter a value of 3cm I will get a single row of boxes. If I enter 6cm I will get two rows, 9cm three rows, etc.

See image below:

[JohnVK]

Also isnt the spacing tool only in the Pro version of Forest?

I'm not sure about that to be honest. I have never used the Lite version. But you could be right.

[Morne]

@John: Nice leaves texture. For the transulency in your 2Sided setup, is the translucent texture a black and white leaf or just a copy of the diffuse leaf?

[joconnell]

It's a colour corrected version of the diffuse - ideally I'd have painted a vein map with the thicker veins being black and the thinner leaf parts being more white with the cell pattern being grey but this was just for a quick and dirty demo.

[Morne]

OK I have my hedge using pflow. But now, how do I convert the whole lot to a mesh WITHOUT LOOSING TEXTURES and UVs. I tried the "Mesher" compound object but that looses texture and UVs. I tried the "Snapshot" tool but that doesnt do anything.

Any ideas please?

[joconnell]

Snapshot worked fine for me - it'll break the material assignment but that's usual to stick back on. With any of the leaves I had, they were collapsed planes that had mapping coordinates to start and in the shape instance op I think I ticked on acquire mapping - didn't need anything more than that!