I’ve tried Onyx, Bionatics, SpeedTree, OnSite Trees… you name it. I have found that depending on the situation, none of them worked. Different type of rendering, different tree solution. SpeedTree and Bionatics says they have tested it with VRay, but I did not have as much luck in a production oriented setting, the kind without much time for tweaking or too many passes.
I used to use SpeedTree, but the shadow issue was a hassle (not using SpeedShadow created those thin shadows mentioned before). I have tried the method for shadowing that uses a second hidden tree for the shadow pass that has it’s leaves facing the light, but found it seriously degraded render times when I had to duplicate so many trees. Not to mention the amount of set-up time it took. The entire concept of “speedshadow” is just dumb; I am not going to re-work my entire rendering and lighting workflow because they had to create a special shadow type just to make their trees cast shadows properly.
So… we need a tree solution that looks realistic up close, can be downsampled for polygon count when in a forest setting, is varied in terms of random seeds, does not overly complicate or modify our current rendering and lighting workflow, and behaves properly in a GI engine. Too much to ask?
Any chance the new “combined efforts” of ArchVision (RPC) and Bionatics is going to tackle this? Or are we to expect the same crap for a few more years.
Maybe we should make our own? Anyone know programming?
Any chance the new “combined efforts” of ArchVision (RPC) and Bionatics is going to tackle this? Or are we to expect the same crap for a few more years.
Doubtful, as far as I can tell their 3.5 D is just geometry that requires a plugin to use/see …
Can anyone confirm that a relatively complex Onyx tree will render faster than an opacity mapped Xfrog tree of similar size? What kind of render times are we looking at for each (can you include a screenshot)? As Onyx doesn’t have a demo it makes it a little hard to do a comparison. Thanks.
Does anyone have an onyx tree they can share for testing purposes? I’m interested in the program as well, but I have never tried to use even a single tree of theirs.
bionatics works well on vray? hehehe …but first you need some luck because they have a lot of problems when it runs on 3dsmax…every two or three changes on the tree…error…error…error…It´s horrible…I have NATFX and the workflow is very tedius and most of their seeds make horribles plants…
one month ago They call me to use the “new natfx demo”…and I can see that their sotfware have a lot of bugs, when you pressCTRL-Z , MAX said GOODBYE…and long nights i was thinking for the reason of this…Finally I uninstall natfx and no problem again…I mail to support team of bionatic and they told me…-We knew that…try this new version now…and i thought for myself"you know that? and you didn’t tell me?..bad person…and bad policity"…they dont have forums…why?..too many bugs, too many work for the moderator…hehehehe.
I’ve found Onyx trees work best in most situations. I’ll still use Itoosoft Forest for backgrounds.
The trick with Onyx is to learn their tree modeler well enough to get the results you want.
Once you get an Onyx tree into Max, you need to enable the UV coords so you can map/color the branches and leaves as desired.
If you need many trees, just use 2 or 3 random seeds and instance them around. You could proxy them as well, or instead.
To provide enough variation in the instances, rotate and scale the trees differently.
When you get hundreds of instances, you will need to display as box to save your graphics card. As long as they are instanced, you shouldn’t get high-polygon memory errors.
The default leaves are geometry. In the tree modeler you can choose from about 9 different shapes. But if you start by modifying a particular type of tree, say a Tilia Cordata (lime/linden tree), it will already have the leaf geometry most resembling the actual leaf by default.
Then, when you insert the tree into Max, you can either keep that leaf geometry, or you can choose to assign a leaf and opacity map, in which case it will switch to a “plate” for mapping purposes.
Quite helpful reading these posts…I’ve been considering Speed tree after trying a demo quite a few months back…but now having VRay I want to make sure I have something that is quite compatible. I checked out the Onyx site, but did not understand what you must purchase. There is Tree Storm and separate tree type libraries. Can you make trees from scrap from Tree Storm, or must you have a library to start with. The separate libraries seem to be stand alone applications which you then export out to Max, correct? So, is Tree Storm just the plug in to be able to use the libraries directly in Max? Thanks for any possible clarifications.
Well, I have bee working with TreeStorm (no max, though) and Speedtrees and this is what I noticed:
Tree Storm is very powerful, but basically is 100% geometry. It does give you UV mapping option, but you need to manually map trunk and leaves…No good. Otherwise, leave the per vertices colors, and for medium distance to background works fine. Close ups? no way, you need to map it.
Wind animation is superb. Because the tree is fully modeled and phisically accurate (or “botanically” accurate?) you get great animations.
But Again, I have not tried it with V-ray, since I got Speedtrees for MAX.
Speedtrees seemed not working well, in the beginning, because of slow rendering times in v-ray. After some tweaking, I am now capable of rendering a couple dozen hybrid trees with decent rendering times.
Setting the v-ray ray bias to 0.001 and taking the tree object out of the GI calculation (but receiving GI) does the trick. To adjust the brightness of the tree I simply adjust its “receive GI” amount.
Also, the tree editor is very powerfull, and well integrated into MAX. You can add as many leaves maps as you wish, to add randomnes, and increase the trunk resolution to avoid the smooth problem.
Next I want to test some full resolution Onyx trees (full geometry) and see how v-ray behaves…
You want to buy the OnyxGARDEN SuperBundle Max. TreeStorm is the plug-in for Max that comes in this bundle as well as separately. There is a modeller for each type of tree. Eg.: Conifer for conifers, flowers for flowers, broadleaf for broadleafs, etc. You model the tree/flower in the modeller then save that model as a file that you then access through the TreeStorm plug-in from within Max. I bought Onyx after others on this forum suggested it to me. Have a look at this work done with Onyx and Vray: http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12768
Really excellent stuff!
You can buy TreeStorm by itself, but for $100 more you get updated modellers for each kind of tree and the flower modeller so I think it is worth the $100. Of course it depends on your budget!
So, U R saying Onyx Garden actually texture-maps the model when U import it to MAX? Leaves and trunk? Like Speedtrees does?
Also, I do have the separate modellers (broadleaves, palm, bamboo, and conifer) maybe they have a good price for the MAX plugin alone…Although I think I asled awhile ago and it was still quite pricey (like, few hundreds, the plugin alone)…Since TreeStorm cost me already $600+ plus the updates, I was hoping for a better break for MAX plugin…
If you have Tree Storm 5.6 Max then that is the plug-in for Max. Look on their upgrade page to see if you need to upgrade: Checking your browser...
I’m not quite sure what you have but it sounds like you have everything you need if you have Tree Storm and the modellers.
As far texture mapping the trees you can use what is parametrically applied from the modellers or you can texture map them yourself, in Max, for up close shots that require more detail.
rpc,
thank you for the info,
I have Tree Storm PRO 6, which means I can get Garden boundle with MAX plugin for $300…
About materials, to be accurate, Tree Storm trees will come into MAX with only vertex colors (as far as I can tell, form Tree Storm Electricimage and from the Onyx site docs). That is, you will see a solid (or gradient) color applied to the geometry, trunk and leaves. I find this a bit limited, because even for mid ground vegetation, a flat brown trunk is just that.
I am wondering, if I need to place 10 or 20 trees along a boulevard for a drive-by, do I need to manually map them individually in MAX? That is, apply a map for the trunk and one or more for the leaves…Times 20 trees? That would be a drag.
