Will something like this choke V-Ray?
I like this statement.
"Since the first 3D tree models were created, there has always been a tradeoff in placing trees in a 3D environment . . . either lots of lollipop-looking, low polygon trees or a few very high poly trees. Now you can have quantity and quality . . . plus the photorealism required in today’s 3D graphics. "
I have used Marlin textures before and was not that impressed with them, so I am automatically skeptical of claims they make. Though I would be curious to hear how people like them.
They have some samples
Marlin
I actually tried it after I posted. One tree with default v-ray settings takes over an hour and 1/2hr when I remove it from GI. It looks good though.
They still look pretty awful, whats wrong with a proxy and full 3d trees? Their claim only works if you take into account proxies not existing.
These probably take even longer to render too, if theyre using alphas.
edit: Yeah, they also expect you to use sub surface scattering… haha.
With a full 3d tree, up the refraction slightly on the leaf and turn on ‘affect shadows’, does the job fine for that effect.
Proxy
I’ll try… I do have Onyx, but I haven’t gotten good at it yet. When I create a large tree the poly count get outrageous. Little trees work fine.
Thats the thing though - poly count is irrelevant if you use proxies.
I’m currently working on a job with over 7000 trees running about half a million polys each. With the entire site on a full HD frame (1920x1080) it renders fine, and thats just under 4 billion polys.
Trees
I’ll try to work some more with Onyx trees, I am sure it is me.
If you don’t mind, what kind of render times were you getting? Animation quality? Just wanting to kinda guage one of our recent projects. We had ~3k high poly trees, at a noiseless/flickerless 640x480 we were getting between 30min and 1hr per frame.
Back on the topic, if you aren’t opposed to making your own alphas…
