First time making Foliage

Spazzme

Hey guys, started making some foliage the other day, it's very funny and i want to get better at it!
I hope u like what you see!





Regards
Daniel

MDGM

These look really good man did you follow a tutorial or just did it from prior knowledge i really like the white flowers

Jessica Dinh

Ooo, I quite like your flowers and bushes ^_^ just the grass is looking a little spidery, I would increase the density of the strands toward the bottom so it looks more full.

Ehsan Gamer

Like !

Goeddy

i would recommend you replace the current flowerheads with just one quad each.
usually you will have a lot of foliage on screen, so this little tweaks help increase the performance way more then the extra polis would benefit the look of the asset.

the bushes are clearly my favorite, but the others look realy nice too.
good job

Spazzme

MDGM: Thanks! No tutorial just tried to look at work ppl had done and made them from that.

Jessica Dinh: Hehe well, the grass is not my favorite part, as you say it looks weird, but thanks for the kind words on the rest. Maybe i will update the grass ^^

Ehsan Gamer: Thanks!

Goeddy: Ya for production that would prob be the best idea, the reason i have a vertex in the middle is for more "volume" in the flower. But as you say, performance would easily out way the very small extra detail.

I love to make bushes so i'm going to make more of tho's, maybe even a tree or two, and thanks for the great feedback!


I will keep to post the foliage i make here, if ppl are interested to see it
Regards
Daniel

Spazzme

I made another one, not as happy with this one, but i only had one leaf to work with so under the circumstantial i guess it turned out OK ^^

Adij

Better then OK ;-)

Fozwroth

looks sweet I would round of the harsh angle where the leaf connects to the stems, it breaks the illusion a little. wouldnt worry about spending those extra polygons, in a game situation this would rely on LOD quite heavily for performance and overdraw is usualy the bad guy anyways. keep em comming!

Spazzme

Adij: Hehe well i guess, thanks ^^

Fozwroth: Ya you are right, i didn't think of that, haven't got any clue how LOD works, i know what it is, but that's it ^^
Thanks for the nice feedback tho, and as you wished, i will keep them coming ^^

Spazzme

My first ever tree ^^


A few things to work on, but over all pretty good ^^
Love making trees tho, so much fun!

wirrexx

care to make a tutorial on tree making = )

imperator_dk

Goeddy wrote: »

i would recommend you replace the current flowerheads with just one quad each.
usually you will have a lot of foliage on screen, so this little tweaks help increase the performance way more then the extra polis would benefit the look of the asset.

the bushes are clearly my favorite, but the others look realy nice too.
good job

This would be false on most platforms and engines, reducing the polycount in favor of more overdraw will rarely yield higher performance. A discarded alpha pixel still has a render cost after all. At greater distances when the quad efficiency of the triangles drop, then it might be advisable to go with a lower polycount, but for the close up model this is probably the better topology.

RexM

For foliage, overdraw is far more performance demanding than adding polygons. By all means, add polygons if you can reduce the empty areas on a polygon where there is no vegetation texture being drawn.

Overlapping planes with alpha'd textures also increases overdraw, so keep that in consideration as well.

Spazzme

wirrexx:
Sure, when things slow down in school i could make something

imperator_dk and RexM:
Thanks i will keep that in minde!

Fozwroth

indeed, reducing overdraw is far more important than polycount when it comes to vegetation, overdraw is a bitch for performance. so some extra verts to minimize empty space is the way to go, keep the flowers as they are.

looking sweet for the first tree! I think it is too dense though, leave some air in between branches- looks more accurate and is better for overdraw and more interesting light and shadows can be created so its really a win-win its nice to model in some more branches with mesh( like a real life tree) since the solid polygons wont be your biggest issue, just use common sense with the polgons.

Spazzme

Fozwroth:
Ya i rly need to work on the look of the tree, want to make it look less bland and boring and ad more details to. That will prob be in the near future, making more and better trees. I wan't to work on making some rly kick ass grass to

Spazzme

Did some River Grass:


I'm kind of satisfied ^^

Snader

I would also say, keep the 'highpoly' flowers - though I suggest making them all conical like the blue ones. You've got a weird flipped edge in the orange one.

I do, however, feel you have got quite a lot of empty space in your grass sheets.

In regards to overdraw, this might be useful:

Snader wrote: »

I had a go at whipping up a scene in unity with two simple grass meshes. One made from quads, one made with a tent-shaped planes. The tent-shaped one is based on the quad with the top 2 corners clipped off to make the whole surface exactly 25% smaller.

On my Nexus 7, these were the results:

One Block (normal mapped)
tents: landscape 25.00-25.15 portrait 23.70-22.85
quads: landscape 23.65-23.80 portrait 22.20-22.30

Six Blocks (normal mapped)
tents: landscape 5.50-5.55 portrait 5.10-5.15
quads: landscape 5.75-5.80 portrait 5.05-5.10

Six Blocks (simple shader)
tents: landscape 6.45-6.50 portrait 5.85-5.95
quads: landscape 6.20-6.25 portrait 5.45-5.50

Three Blocks(simple shader)
tents: landscape 12.50-12.60 portrait 11.70-11.80
quads: landscape 11.95-12.05 portrait 11.05-11.10

And here are some *.apk files
1 block, normals, Tent
1 block, normals, Quads
6 blocks, normals, Tent
6 blocks, normals, Quads

So I'd say that cutting out alpha by adding more polygons is still useful, although it's not nearly as important anymore. What's particularly peculiar is that using quads seems to be a bit more stable if you change screen orientation.

blooddiamonds

This is looking amazing. Great work.

Spazzme

Snader:
Ya the grass need some tuning, but the "grass" looks so bad, so i'm going to change it all

blooddiamonds:
Thanks man!

Here is one more, going over to not using any kind of photo source:

Tobbo

Why are your colors so dark?

sybrix

I agree with Tobbo, your renders come off very dark. They all seem very dim except for the two bright green ones, making it hard to make out some details.

For your grass, try populating them around at various angles to get a better feel for how they would really look and function in an actual environment. It might be a good idea to make your grass planes visible from each angle (so that they don't "disappear" from the side and top view), which is easy to achieve by slightly bending them.

Really love your foliage by the way, these are great so far, just wish they weren't so dark.

Ryno

That's a hell of a first try, and looks quite nice. One thing to watch out for is the angle of view that you'll be seeing things at. For the tree, we're seeing the polys at the edge at an extreme angle, and your poly planes are becoming a little obvious. Sometimes just intersecting a few at a different angle can help to hide this a bit. I tend to use loosely chaotic X-ish clumps to disguise polys being seen at-edge.

Another thing to consider is doing some vertex shading at the core and undersides of denser bushes and trees where they will be occluding. It's tough for most game engines to get this right. (Or really to light trees properly at all.) Getting this darkening in the interior really aids in establishing that sense of volume that you get from a leaf canopy.

All in all, really nice work though.

Spazzme

Tobbo:
They are for a "dark spooky forest"

sybrix:
The grass is only a plain render to show of the texture
Thanks alot! The new grass isn't so dark....i hope xP

Ryno:
Thanks alot!
I will work more on getting the trees in shape ^^


New Texture:

Spazzme

Working on our schools third gameproject, and started of by making some handpainted ice foliage.

silver_hoodlum

Mate would be really nice if u make a tutorial of the grass foliage, looks really nice.