[UDK] Organics & Foliage Study

shabba

I felt I hadn't really challenged myself enough and I had been creating things without regard to particular reference. So this mini diorama is aimed at creating a lot of different organic and foliage objects from reference, with the goal of realism in mind.

So here is my attempt at realistic organics. I would appreciate any C&C I can get on this. Thank you for looking!
UDK:

CryEngine:


Here are some close ups of individual pieces.

stickadtroja

looks really good! i like the last plant the most!

but if you going for full realism, there is some work left to be done.
the biggest thing that strikes me is that most of the things seem kind of randomly put together... do you have any refs? i don't really get what kind of forest this is, like what biome it is in? maybe thinking about that and getting refs from that kind of forest/nature would help.

also maybe to put some dead leaves on the ground around the tree would be cool.

but very impressing anyways! nice work!

fantom

Wonderful props. Can you show us texture for this tree. Just curious Cheers!

Gannon

I think some subtle vertex coloring on some of the leaves would be good to give a little more color variance. There's also that whole normal bending/transfer(can't find a link atm. I'll add it if I do though) thing you could look into as well.

Looking good otherwise.

Zepic

Gannon wrote: »

I think some subtle vertex coloring on some of the leaves would be good to give a little more color variance. There's also that whole normal bending/transfer(can't find a link atm. I'll add it if I do though) thing you could look into as well.

Looking good otherwise.

I think you're talking about normal thief?

BTW, looking good :thumbup:

foredea

wow... sooo coool! What awesome plants.

Chase

Hey Gannon I was curious if you had any tips on vertex painting. Like for the leaves, would it be best to take variations of the same texture or just use constants, multiply, etc. New to this vertex painting so any tips would be great

davidosterlind

Would love to see this, image links seem broken

Fenyce

I'd love to see some flats
The plants and shrooms look awesome!

davidosterlind

Nice work! Love the scene as a whole, the tree works well as an obvious focal point. And the tree is very well done. I have some issues with the shading on the ferns, they look a bit plastic to me. Might be a combination of the specular being a bit flat and that the diffuse is so monotone, I would throw in some color variation. You could also tweak the hue of individual ferns to separate them a bit from each other.

TheDerpyChicken

Looks awesome!

Erafic

Looks quite awesome! I've been studying foliage as well lately and would love to see a further breakdown on your tree there actually.

shabba

Thanks everyone for the kind words and great advices! Sorry about how late this response is. Been busy lately.

@stickadtroja: Good suggestion as I really had no reference for the forest floor.

@Gannon: I have changed the tree crown and edited the vertex normals so it shades right.
@Zepic: I ended up using the Slide Tools plugin for vert normal ripping, ty

@Chase: Although I didn't include (haven't learned how in CryEngine) I would assume just colour tinting the original would be suitable for the type of variation he was talking about?

@davidosterlind: Thanks! Good advices, How do you like my new fern texture?


So I went and tried out CryEngine with a bunch of my things and wanted to see how the foliage would turn out. The results are very different. One thing that helped alot was editing the vertex normals. I also adjusted diffuse textures.

Here are my texture flats as a couple of you had asked for!


Here is the latest render in CryEngine:


Too saturated?

iniside

Yes to saturated. Try to use desaturated leafs texture and change backlight from bright green to something more gray.
Also try to make texture darker (around 100 mean on histogram in PS), and set diffuse color in material to 187,187,187.
CryEngine in general doesn't like saturated colors on textures.

Do it on all textures as they look to bright IMO and lose their definition.

shabba

Ok, I have to go to work, but I wanted to up this. Did all the changes you said. (To the tree so far)

Feedback when comparing the two? Preferred one?

iniside

The right one looks better imo. It's not to bright and overcolored. If you want to achieve birght and saturated color in CryEngine you do it by tweaking ToD.
I would make backlight bit brighter.
But if you really want to improve tree you should:
1. Change leaf clusters. I see you try approach similiar to SpeedTree with with Tri-folded geometry with bunch of random leafs scattered around texture. It just to dense. Although it look good, there is very little sun going trouch branches.
2. You should model branches. Use orographic view to it and don't botther with depth. It will be flat on texture. And then use them to make tree.
3. There is good tutorial on 3d motive. If you don't want to watch no problem. Best thing to do is look at branch textures from Crysis 1/2.

Cordell Felix

great work man! foliage is some tough stuff