Larch Tree Charlie Brown?

EJtheArtist

When I look at my larch tree I feel like this:

lol Do you Agree/Disagree? Either way, I have to redo the topology/mesh for this tree because its too many polys. I'm sort of dreading it and looking forward to the challenge at the same time. Any ideas for improvement? Here's more photos of polys, details, etc. 

Steppenwolf

The texture looks pretty good ingame. Fluffy! But you're right it's too many polies perhaps if you plan to place a whole bunch of these treess. I would just bake the mesh from the second picture into a texture and use this for a way more low poly leaf mesh.

What else i notice is that your tree doesn't look like a happy little tree with its upper branches hanging down. When i search for refs i find a lot of larches where the upper branches actualy point upwards.

throttlekitty

Have you considered making a few branch sets and duplicating them around? Soft select or bones from there to shape each branch from there, no need to retop the entire thing.

EJtheArtist

@steppenwolf I did neglect to refer to my reference after building the branches.  < So great point there! Here's some of the reference I was looking at. Though, looking at these again, the one i need to make is less wild growing, and more kept like in a town. 


@Steppenwolf Also, if I bake the mesh and texture detail, i'll need to make a lower topo mesh and re-place the objects. That sounds easy enough, I'd probably use maya transfer maps, xnormal or substance, but I've never actually done that for a diffuse map. Do you have any ideas for steps I might take to proceed? it sounds like you're saying bake the hp model into a flat texture to put on a poly plane or another lower poly mesh, yes?   

@throttlekitty I like your thinking. If this was a mesh that I intended to keep the current topology, that totally sounds like a fun way to fix it! Though, maybe when I get the new lower topo on the top of the tree, i'll certainly try that out for variation! Thanks!

Steppenwolf

I don't know how the best way would be to do this in Maya. If nothing else works what you could do is make one render with green background (roughly the kind of green that the leafs have) that serves as your texture and another render with a white background. Then you go into photoshop, desaturate the one with the white background (turn into greyscale basicly) and in the next step you adjust the levels to get something that works as your alpha map (might have to invert it).
Perhaps ther's a way in Maya to make a render with the normal map applied so you get that aswell.

edit: picture added

hmm_rock

EJtheArtist said:

I'd probably use maya transfer maps, xnormal or substance, but I've never actually done that for a diffuse map. Do you have any ideas for steps I might take to proceed? it sounds like you're saying bake the hp model into a flat texture to put on a poly plane or another lower poly mesh, yes?   

You should be able to preserve/ transfer a texture map from a highpoly and apply it to the low with xNormal. There is an option under "High definition meshes" called "Base texture to bake." You may have to play around with unchecking "Ignore per-vertex-color" to get it to work. I believe substance has that ability now too, though I havent used it yet.

In regards to poly count: It's hard to tell from the in-game wireframe, but the branches at the top don't need as much geometry/ intersecting planes. For the planes that are eye level, I'd consider doing 2 or 3 planes down the center branch instead of the many separate square. So a long x shape intersecting that primary branch. Towards the tip of the branch, if you have the polys to spare, you can add back in more of a cone shape or circular cap. Just some ideas! Hope it helps

throttlekitty

If that's Paint Effects, you can easily render out color and opacity.

EJtheArtist

Got a little discouraged today. My arm started to hurt from using the mouse. Does this happen to anyone else? I wish I could make this tree in like smart tree (can't because of unity 4), or a maya plugin that makes tree creation more fun. Guess im still getting a hang of the basics.

Anyway, here's where i'm at so far. I projected the diffuse of the HP branch to some LowPoly topo using @hmm_rock's method. I then repeated the object a few times around the tree. Still feels... ick in some places and like it needs more work. Annnd its till some 98k polies. O.O I also attached reference of a larch tree by my house. 

EJtheArtist

It was still too HP with the HP branches at the bottom. And still doesn't look good as a LP anyway. I found this awesome tutorial by steve oberman, but starting over from scratch might be too costly. But this tree isn't fluffy enough, and I don't think I can make something fluffy using new cards with the current texture in order to make it fluffy. I'm so lost in needles! Help! 



Current texture:


end goal reference (freashly taken today!):


What do you think? Start over? make new and better bakes (with actual branches)? or work with what I got?