Onyxtree (Treestorm)+Vray workflow

[VrayBoii]

Hi folks!
My first post here! Gotta say this is an amazing forum.
After using it for a while my skills have really increased. Thanks!

Hope some Treewizards can help me with this:
I have started working with onyxtrees recently and I think I am starting to get the hang of it, but I have a couple of questions:

1.How do I put displacement on the trunk and branches in a easy way?Can I do it directly within the tree material or should I use Vraydisplacementmod?

2.I am always using the trees as vrayproxies, but should I also turn the trees into editable meshes before exporting to vraymesh? (Thought I read it somewhere, but don't understand why.)


Here's a parkrender I did: http://www.onyxtree.com/gall-lunder1.html

: Helge Lunder
Architect, Norway

[studioDIM]

Hello and welcome, Helge

Trees and vray proxies go hand in hand, your intuition is right

I would not attempt a displacement on the trunks at all, if i were you.
Crank up the bump to something like 300 or so, and that should be more than enough for most shots, but the closest closeups.

Besides, you couldn't displace a vrayproxy, even if you wanted to, so it's either vrayproxies or displacing the trunk.

I would suggest you to stick to proxies and bump, also because in that case you can push the polycount to insane levels (way over 2M polys per tree here, with some thick, mean pines), hence taking away the eye from the trunk, and having it concentrate on the leaves (normally way too few in standard renderings).

As to the mesh conversion, i wouldn't know: i export from onyx objs, open those in max, and convert to proxies.
In any case, if the rightmouse button on the selected object prompts you with a "Save VRay Proxy" or similar, it can be done.

Have fun!!!

Lele

[VrayBoii]

Thanx Lele.
It works quite nice with a high bumpmap.


Helge

[Clifton Santiago]

Nice tree renderings...

As for this question:

2.I am always using the trees as vrayproxies, but should I also turn the trees into editable meshes before exporting to vraymesh? (Thought I read it somewhere, but don't understand why.)

I don't think there is a difference in whether or not you collapse your treestorm tree to a mesh before exporting as vray mesh. I think the process of exporting automatically collapses it to a mesh. You may run into problems though if you create multiple sub-object leaves though.