Foliage and Landscaping

shannon_clark_90

Hi, I am a recent 3D graduate focusing on Environments. Oddly, one thing I never really learned was Plants and groundwork(anything but the actual hard surface models) for animation. For Game art we learned, but not the techniques used in animation environments.

Does anyone have any tips or links to some good sources/references regarding this?

I know the general low poly techniques, but they do not always look good for an animation.

Steppenwolf

In modern engines foliage is usualy vertex animated. That means you don't have to animate via key frames. The animation is created proceduraly in the engine.
But you have to study what method exactly is used in the engine you use.
For example in Cryengine you have to vertex paint your model inside your 3d package to indicate where it is stiffer then the rest of it (the tree trunk for example).
Also some scripting might be necessary (for example in the material vmt's if you use Source engine).

shannon_clark_90

Sorry should have clarified that. I am not talking about animating the plants and foliage, but the modeling it for an animation (ie quality)not animating itself.

Noors

Plants and foliage is kind of generic. There are several methods. It could be sprites always facing the camera, or intersecting planes...Could be manually placed or generated with specific softwares, mix of both. Then it could be skinned to bones, static, or deformed by the engine...
Take a look at this https://www.3dmotive.com/f102101
and some speedtree samples. I'm not sure you talk about real time or movies, but basically it's the same thing, except movies can go to a model for each leaf, which would be very consuming for games.

timotronprime

shannon_clark_90 wrote: »

Sorry should have clarified that. I am not talking about animating the plants and foliage, but the modeling it for an animation (ie quality)not animating itself.

The term people are more familiar with is online or offline rendering, which you mean the latter.