I know there have been a million posts about “what’s the best way to make trees”. I don’t want to go there again. Had an idea though. For anyone who uses any of the various tree programs, post your best picture containing trees. (I’m looking for 3D or 2.5D. No billboards please.)
With the post tell us which tree program was used, whether you used standard or modified trees, and what the render time was. Probably good to include version of VRay as well, for comparison.
Thanks!
(I’m considering adding Onyx or EasyNAT, so I’ll be especially interested in seeing those. Maybe this thread will help me and others pick what is best for each individual.)
I use OnyxTree to start my trees but modify them in Max to get the right polygon balance. I find OnyxTree not to be optimized well, so I only use the trunk and boughs and maybe the first branch level. For the leaves I use the OnyxTree leaves as a “point cloud” to scatter a single polygon across. That way I have control over how many and how large the leaves are.
In this example the trunk, boughs and branches come in at 9,000 polys. After an optimize modifier is applied I can get it down to 3,000 polys.
Then I scatter a poly for the leaves. 1000 leaves.
3,000 leaves.
6,000 leaves.
8,000 leaves scaled down 75%.
My main point with this method is that I have direct control over the polygon count. If I only want to spend 3,000 on a single tree I can do it. I can have each of leaves be a single leaf or make a map with a cluster of leaves. Once I get the tree the way I want, then I collapse it to a single object and export it as a VRay object.
The leaves from an exported OnyxTree have way too many polys for practical purposes. I’ved wasted many an hour trying to get the right export settings in OnyxTree. So instead I just export the whole 250,000 polygon cluster of leaves.
After I import the 3ds file into MAX, I detatch the leaves from the imported model. I create a single polygon for my new leaf. Then I create a scatter object with the leaf and select the detached leaves as the distribution object. That way the leaf will be scattered in a way that conforms to the same volume as the original leaves.
One thing that I don’t like about the structure of an OnyxTree model is the way the boughs and branches are just stuck to each other. There is no smoth transition between the trunk and the bough, which makes them look very computer generated. I wish there was a “blend” option in OnyxTree, even if it added a few million more polys. I’m really liking the optimize modifier these days.
But i am also searching still for good trees, because its allways the tree or the flower , you have, that doesnt fit well to the thought of your architect.
so do you know 3d flowers ? somewhere a libary maybe ?
heres an example of some trees, we often use. Rendertimes are acceptable thnking of the quality. but with more but 10 trees, you have to use proxies. also here we use displacement floor, and real 3d (how are they called up there on the roof ? ).
We use NatFX. The real 3d is nice for close up frames. The ability to chage that same 3D tree in to a hybrid (many billboards arranged in 3d space) or billboard (you control number of panels) is an awesome tool when trying control poly count.
I convert to Vray materials. I have tweeked the standard chaos supplied vrayutils.ms to adjust bitmap imports from NatFX in two ways:
1. Up the image output multipler a little.
2. Convert opacity maps to vray opacity maps This helps a lot with the billboards not important to 3d trees. This script addition may help speedtree users with opacity problems.
Why do you have to make vray proxys with more then 10 trees, i have been able to put in hundreds of trees with more than a million faces per tree using instanced trees. Just make sure they are dislpayed as a box.
I once made a scene with over 200 million polys and it renderd fine.
THis is still in the old vray version, is the new version not capable of doing this ?
For tom,
About 3d flowers, there is plant studio.It’s free and is not so bad at all.
You make any flower/plant you want and convert them in 3ds.
Here is the link:
It’s seems a bit old fashionned but it is a very good program.
About my trees, I had to build my own script, and is not so bad too.
I’ll show my new version with the use of Vray fur.
Bye
Gael
Well i use one or two type of trees and scale and rotate them to make them look different. But i have also had succes with 6 or 7 different type of trees. Usually there is also a lot of displacment in my scenes to make grass, most of the time i fill the horizon with grass wich can be a few hundred meters of displaced grass. I never used 10 unique trees, i quess that could make the big difference. Memory usage is most of the time around 2,3 or 2,4 gig.
Mabye you can try using less different trees and scale and rotate them to make them look different.
Nope haven’t tried that yet, the first time i used a new build i got all kinds of memory problems with 2d displacement. This was 1.45.70, since then i am just following progress on the new build, i don’t use it for production.
