Pine Tree Creation
polycounter lvl 9
This may sound pretty silly, but its there any decent tutorials and/or resources out there for creating pine trees? I've watched the 3d motive tutorial on foilage and have made some pretty nice trees that way and took some time over the week to create some pine trees using similar methods:
But I'm not getting the results I wanted at all really. In max they look alright, but in any ingame engine the canopy just looks really bad. Is there any advice or tips to go about these?
But I'm not getting the results I wanted at all really. In max they look alright, but in any ingame engine the canopy just looks really bad. Is there any advice or tips to go about these?
Replies
like this.
can just keep lofting between deformed nurbs circles to make the trees geo.
Branches are prolly just intersecting cylenders
What does it look like in game, and what do you think you need to change to fix it? I really don't know what's wrong or how to fix it...
Do you want a denser canopy? Less dense?
Do you need branches that stick out farther than the base?
Do the planes light weird because they are single sided?
Are you making the right kind of trees for the environment?
Are you mixing up fir and pine trees?
After this, I tried some small tests to enlarge the canopy needles to get it more dense.
This last result looks a bit better (would need polishing), but im not exactly happy with it still, something with the canopy and branches. I'm wondering if you guys could give a small critique as to what looks wrong to you?
Those questions are also good above and I'll have to keep them in mind and perhaps do more research next time, but the general idea is evergreen pines. I think part of the problem is the canopy isn't very realistic and needs to bend more at the edges and bend more vertically the taller it gets too?
Bent normals would help
http://wiki.polycount.net/VertexNormal#Foliage_Shading
More resources
http://wiki.polycount.net/CategoryEnvironmentFoliage
1. Ditch the big roots, if you look at pinetrees most of them are pretty much straight from bottom to top. Some small roots would look nice though.
2. Have more leaves on top, otherwise it looks kind of stupid. One or two leaves pointing straight up on top of the tree usually looks better.
3. Not every branch points dawnwards. Try to get some variation (some point dawnwards, some a bit upwards).
4. Your trunk - canopy size ratio is off. Increase the size of the leaves or make the trunk smaller.
5. Dead branches or branches without anything on the towards the bottom of the tree.
6. More leaves!!
Finally, looking at real refferences is often key to get them right
EDIT, another thing you can do to give your branches more volume, is to use vertex mode in 3Ds Max (assuming that is what you are using), and make some vertex point point up, and some down.
Left one is the method above, right one is the one which has simply been bowed.
This method does require some extra polygons on the leaf though, so depending on your polycount limit it might not be for you.
You dont need as much as in the picture, i just did a quick one
@grimsonfart, thanks for all the tips and picture. I am actually using a similar method but much many less polygons for the branches, but the rest of the tips are really solid and help alot, thanks.
Thanks for the links, I'll make sure to look at both.
Here is my current texture for the branches (I have another variation for one without needles):
Here's a bunch of references
http://www.christmas-tree-world.com/images/PE_PVC-branch.jpg
http://www.lnt.com/photos/product/standard/6906370S303332/sprays-branches-and-picks/pack-of-6-dark-green-artificial-christmas-pine-branch-sprays-37.jpg
http://www.earthflora.com/0809new/chld_Page_142.jpg
http://www.lnt.com/photos/product/standard/6906370S3033/sprays-branches-and-picks/club-pack-of-24-imperial-pine-artificial-christmas-sprays-18.jpg