Rendering Trees

[pailhead]

I need to ask this question directly. How do you achieve a look like this:



I'm beginning to think that it's impossible with the increased gamma that i'm using. From looking at various photos of greenery, it seems like there is a lot of black in there, as in, high contrast. I find this very hard to achieve in my renderings, and sometimes i try even masking trees and than adjusting them in post. My trees look more like the willow on far right, than all the rest really good looking stuff in this rendering.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

This question is way away from what I usually help with but well... the quickest answer is ambient oclusion in GI section set to high... but I wouldn't do it this way... either way GL.

[plastic_]

If those tree models come washed out then your light setup is probably off.

I drop evermotion trees in, I never change their settings. There is only a linear gamma problem with stock models when they use diffuse colors instead of maps.

[JeffG2]

Check off "Don't affect Colors" and in the VFB view the image with the SRGB button on. You will get your blacks back.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

it depends on various things...i usually find evermotion stuff overly saturated

[pailhead]

Can anyone post an example of a realistic tree that they've rendered?

[pailhead]

I find that my conifers always look decent, while broad leaf suck

[glorybound]

If those tree models come washed out then your light setup is probably off.

I drop evermotion trees in, I never change their settings. There is only a linear gamma problem with stock models when they use diffuse colors instead of maps.

I love your work BTW

[joconnell]

A huge amount of it is also down to the amount of leaves you've got in your trees. For example the default density in onxy is too low to get solid shadows, you need to make it 4 or 5 times the amount. It's pretty much a case of getting enough density in the leaves so that all of the direct light of your sun gets blocked, so that the only light the underneath of the tree gets is the bounce from the sky. You want the leaves to build up until it's almost a solid object.

[snivlem]

I have these trees albeit I had to translate them over to Maya. don't enable Fresnel, put reflection up to .5 or higher with glossiness of around 6 or 7. I think in 3DS Max a lot of these trees did not have 2 sided material but I added them in for my own library.

The main thing is to get your indirect light really detailed otherwise those trees will look like wax. I think if you look at trees in real life they are reflective but it in cg terms is more of a highlight than a real glossy reflection which seems to be prevalent in a lot of trees so try and disable reflections.

if you want reflections make it reflection glossiness very low You can enable reflection glossiness but unlock highlight and reflection glossiness.

[pailhead]

could you please post an example of how you rendered these? I remember being VERY impressed with how dva kub, later icube did their trees. I too came to the conclusion that they take onyx trees and make them super dense, but still, i wasn't able to achieve their results.

[chriserskine]

you can try using the vray2sidedmtl for the leaves. I've had some good results with that.

also if you want to speed it up you can use glossy reflections with "trace reflections" turned off. and then pick your highlight colour in the reflection slot.

[snivlem]

could you please post an example of how you rendered these?

Sure, this is a WIP but the trees are pretty much final. A few of their bush models are also in this.



Not saying I'm any sort of authority on this, but this is how they originally are in 3ds max when you purchase the pack. I tweaked the leaf colour in Maya (dropped their diffuse map) but thats about all.

[pailhead]

I see the same problems that i'm getting here, especially on the tree in the far back. I try to add different ids to leaves and some variation, but i still can achieve contrast.

[simmsimaging]

Just curious: why not give it a tweak in post? I don't see it as being a problematic change, and it would be way faster than messing around with the leaves/maps/materials in most cases. Unless you are doing animation maybe... dunno about that.

/b