Uberren's Foliage Practice

Uberren

Hi all. I've never really done anything with foliage or trees, so my brother gave me a challenge to finish modeling this scene within the month.


Here is my blockout so far:



Since this is my first time tackling foliage, any advice anyone may have would be greatly appreciated.


Latest:

Joost

I'm just guessing here, but to me it looks like there's a river between the foreground and background in the concept.
This is a pretty good tutorial for grass: http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=315&t=100319 But it could be applied to other foliage as well.

Oh and check out the wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentFoliage

Joltya

Some one else was doing a scene with some foliage as well. He even posted up a nice bush tutorial. I'm not sure how much use you can get out of it, but you might want to check it out.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132980

Uberren

@komaokc
My brother was saying the same thing, but I don't see a river at all, just looks like a ditch to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
I will take a look at those tutorials, thank you

@JoltZero
Thanks, didn't notice that thread. That bush creation method was interesting, I'm not sure if I can incorporate that into my scene somehow. Perhaps for the canopy.


Currently redoing my blockout in UDK, since I was having trouble with heightmaps and whatnot.

DWalker

I think the curves in your hills are too extreme, especially around the two main trees.

.Wiki

Uberren wrote: »

@komaokc
Maybe I'm wrong.

Just make it awesome, there´s no need to follow the concept exactly

Uberren

@DWalker
I thought so too on second look.

@.Wiki
Simple advice I always seem to forget, lol


So I redid the blockout in UDK. Since I've had no experience with the program, I had to do a bit of studying first. I think it came out looking better than my initial one in Maya, but let me know what you think. I see some artifacts on the right side of the hill in the centre. I will have to figure out how to fix that, but for now I am going to start working on some trees.



Editting post since it isn't really worth a bump atm.
Gathered some references to use while making the plants.


And here is my first attempt at one, un-textured as of right now:

Uberren

Was running into some problems with importing my mesh into UDK, but I eventually fixed it. My first mesh into UDK:


The colours were really dull and boring so I tried playing around with the material editor and also tweaking my diffuse map and I think it looks much better now:

DWalker

I'd lose the black crack in the ground texture; it's distracting and doesn't really fit the environment.

This is a very wet environment - whether the ground fog in the concept indicates a stream or not, it does reinforce the idea that there's a lot of water in the air. I really wouldn't expect as much yellowing as you have in the plant's texture.

Artaekos_inactive

Man you are seriously in for a challenge here...

Uberren

@DWalker
Yeah, I forgot to mention the ground texture is just a placeholder at the moment. I'm planning on trying to make my own later.

Joost

Might just be the lighting, but it doesn't feel green enough. Compare it to your reference.

Also be wary of using photographs shot with a polarizing filter for reference.Good for basing your diffuse colors on but not the material. They take away a lot of the reflections.

Uberren

@Komaokc
Thanks, I'll try and be more wary of that going forward with my references.
I tried saturating the diffuse more and changing the specular material a bit.
I think the lighting is also having an effect on how dull the colour seems to be coming out.
How does this look now?

Joost

I think you'll need to use some HDRis or a full level to accurately judge the material. It looks like the material is too glossy compared to your reference, but again it could just be the lighting.

Overlay your reference image on top of the screenshot. I think that will help spot the difference in shading.

This is just a random idea, but maybe try picking a few colors from the concept and making a color palette for your plants?

Uberren

I think it may have something to do with the lighting. I toned down the specularity in this screenshot.


I also decided to try and stick to shades of greens with a bit of yellow from my reference images, but maybe I shouldn't use so much yellow going forward.

Mr Significant

the lightning is pretty basic. You can stay with it now, make more asset's, or make from this 3 leaves a complete fern, then look how it's looks. Can you show us the diffuse?

Very interesting project BTW , and you have big challenge here

Uberren

Here's the diffuse for those plants, it's 256x256:


And here are some other variations I made:

Mr Significant

Diffuse is very noisy. Also you dont need so much space for this diffuse: you can go 256x128. You need to redo your diffuse.

Uberren

@Mr Significant
Thanks, I wasn't sure if UDK could use non-square textures so I just went with that. I will remake my diffuses.

What I have atm.


Edit
Doesn't really warrant a bump, but spent all day playing around with modeling trees. What I have to show for it:

Uberren

Okay, so I tried texturing the tree and I'm planning on adding ground level leaves and moss around the trunk after adding a canopy to it. I just want to know if there is anything glaringly wrong with it as of right now.
I see a bit of texture stretching in some places but I'm thinking the addition of leaves will make them basically invisible.

I'm not sure if I should add a bit of variation to the diffuse or if I should leave that to the addition of polygonal moss and leaves along the trunk.





**Edit:
After posting, I suddenly realised how badly sized my diffuse is in terms of the details on the branch in relation to the trunk. I will fix them now.

Edit2:
I think the transition from trunk to branch isn't as harsh anymore.

Nosslak

You could optimize your plants by baking them down to much simpler models and use alpha mapping to cut out the leaves. If you were to do this you could probably use less than 50 polygons for each plant. It would also make it possible to paint in unique details on the leaves to make them more interesting.

I'd add moss with some vertex painting. It won't look as good as if you added it manually in Photoshop but it would be a lot easier to re-use the texture for other trees if you were to do that. You could try to bake in some AO into the vertex colors as well.

Other than that it looks like a pretty good start.

Uberren

Thanks for the vertex painting link. For the moss, I was thinking of using this technique here:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=130038&highlight=rock+moss
But I will play around with both methods to see which one I prefer

I will also try to use alpha maps more moving forward.

Uberren

Added leaves to the branches.

Uberren

Testing out how they look in UDK. Gonna start working on moss and leaves for the trunks now.

Uberren

Added moss to the tree. I'm quite pleased with how it looks.


Now to add some vines and leaves.


Edit
I somehow broke my moss and had to spend a while fixing it. I managed to get it back to the way it was previously by splitting the moss from the tree and creating a prefab out of the two meshes instead. I guess it didn't like the vines I added to the tree.

Uberren

Added new trees and changed the lighting a little bit.
Tomorrow I will work more on getting the lighting to look good, god rays too strong right now.

I'm also planning on redoing all the plant textures as they are extremely flat and boring at the moment.

Vertrucio

A huge problem with the plants that have a long stem and many leaves perpendicular to the stem is that, in your reference, none of the plants you show have their leaves at perfectly perpendicular angles to the stem. They all sweep forward ever so slightly.

Uberren

Oh yeah, you're right...I'm not sure why I thought I saw some with perpendicular leaves.
I will redo those ones. Thank you.

YoBung

Hey interesting project here, i've worked a lot with foliage. Only thing i noticed is the tree leaves color are wrong, it should be more green. And the other small foliages have pretty much same color, i suggest you give some variation from darker to brighter green, it will help define the silhouette you can also probably bake AO HP>LP for now i agree the textures look kinda flat and boring.

Hope this helps

Uberren

Thanks YoBung. I changed the colour of the leaves because, yes, they seemed rather blue before. I also redid all the ground plants in the scene and tried to add more variation to their diffuse.
Still need to tweak the lighting so those rays aren't so strong and distracting

Mr Significant

Mr Significant

Make this:

YoBung

There's still something wrong, maybe the leaves are too big or not well grouped. I suggest you make the leafs smaller and see if it's any better

Uberren

@Mr Significant
If I'm understanding you right, I should create a cluster of plants in Maya first and then bring them in to UDK?
What I was doing up until now was making a single plant and then positioning them together in UDK.

@YoBung
Okay, I will redo the leaf textures and not pack them so tightly together.

Thank you both.

Mr Significant

Uberen: that's excaclty what you have to do!

Uberren

I really appreciate the help.

Here is my progress as of now.
I want to start making the flowers and more unique looking plants now and also work on adding vines to the canopy next.

Lighting still needs a lot of work.

Mr Significant

Better!

Uberren

I'm thinking of calling it done, but I would really appreciate some criticism before I completely move on to something new.

Uberren

Tweaked lighting a little bit and added some more vines and grass around.

Mr Significant

Looks good. Lightning can be even more stronger. To build contrast.

Also Less dense of leaves on trees, they almost do not let the lightning to fall on foliage on the ground. Like on the front of camera. This is looking nice.

About colors: I leave it to you. Its very saturated for me.

Whats good: you dont used too much bloom, if any.

Moss on trees: looks bad. It's loks like carpet on trunk. Its need variation on shape. Its too dense.

Overall looks good.

Uberren

Thanks again

The leaves on the trees are actually not as dense as they appear to be. The reason there isn't much light coming through them is because I placed the sun closer to the horizon because that's where I felt a majority of the light in the concept I was working off of was coming from.

I will work on the moss some more to try and make it not look like a cheap blanket wrapped around my trees.

Mr Significant

That what I was talking about. ^^ And can you post your diffuse texture and just one tree, so we can see it shape, etc ?

Uberren

Here is one of my trees in Maya:


The diffuse is split into 2 files because they are shared over different models:

Uberren

Well, I quite like the way it looks now so I will be calling this finished.
Thank you for all the help, Mr. Significant and everyone else, I really appreciate it.

Mr Significant

Yep, looks better. But diffuse for bark is destroyed. You already made this tileable, where you can go with tiling in editor - in shader.

Otherwise it looks good.