Trees like Rime and The Witness?
Hey guys, i've been trying to get trees like Rime and The Witness. 
Anybody know how these might have been done? I'm thinking vertex normals, but i'm not sure how to do that in speedtree! Also, I know Rime uses Unreal engine, but i'm not sure how they might have implemented the trees... any help appreciated!
Anybody know how these might have been done? I'm thinking vertex normals, but i'm not sure how to do that in speedtree! Also, I know Rime uses Unreal engine, but i'm not sure how they might have implemented the trees... any help appreciated!
Replies
Could be its a rough geometric shape for the canopy and leaf planes with explicit normals pasted to its surface.
A good breakdown of this can be found on Simon Schreibt's great blog, courtesy of katzeimsack and Neox: http://simonschreibt.de/gat/airborn-trees/
Main difference here is they'reusing flat colored trees.
Edit: The witness is clearly using trees made of planes, but the same applies, they're still using explicit vertex normals to round out the shading.
Dunno what rime is doing but it's probably the same
I'm not sure what sort of options SpeedTree has for placing planes and controlling shading but it's pretty much a given that you'll have a lot more control in a modeling application so you may need to model it yourself.
If you're using 3DS Max you'll need normal thief to transfer vertex normals from a simplified mesh to your tree, if you're using Blender then it has a built in feature called Data Transfer:
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Maya and Modo probably have similar functionality.
just had to keep playing with the lighting options in speedtree.