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:
Replies
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
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=132980
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
Very interesting project BTW , and you have big challenge here
And here are some other variations I made:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I will redo those ones. Thank you.
Hope this helps
Still need to tweak the lighting so those rays aren't so strong and distracting
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.
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.
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.
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.
The diffuse is split into 2 files because they are shared over different models:
Thank you for all the help, Mr. Significant and everyone else, I really appreciate it.
Otherwise it looks good.