Lots of trees on huge scene (alpha channel instead of proxy)

[leorobleto]

I know theres no proxy on VFR, however, I am currently rendering a massive scene for a landscape project of a huge metropolitan park. We have to render hundreds of trees but we want to avoid the billions of polygons each individual tree would have.
I have a lot of high-res images of trees that are TIFF's with a black background which I am sure is it's alpha channel.

I want to proliferate the planes all over the site, with each plane having the image of the tree as its material/diffuse map. Is there a way to render a lot of these planes on VFR WITHOUT having the black background appearing on every plane and casting a shadow?
Thanks!

Leo

[andreas]

Re: Lots of trees on huge scene (alpha channel instead of proxy)

Hello,

actually all you have to do is to put an simple black and white image e.g. as a jpeg in the transparency slot of the diffuse layer. In the bitmap dialogue you define which colour (black or white) is interpreted as transparent by using the invert button.
As for the Bitmap, make sure you use tuecolour pic not a grayscale one which can as far as I remember lead to problems...

best regards

Andy