VR content creation question: Forest from scratch: Model, Unwrap, texture WITHOUT paint effects

gabefm

Hi everyone, I'm a complete beginner in Maya trying to find a good tutorial on modeling forest assets. I've torn google apart trying to find a set-by-step from scratch. I can't use fancy paintfx tools because they end up way too high poly for import into Unity for VR gaming. I'm getting to the point where I'd pay someone by the hour to help me get started and understand this process. Any advice you have would be greatly, greatly appreciated!!!

Cheers,
Gabe 

Shyralon

Take a look at this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4j5tzAIflU

In general you will most likely have to model some highpoly leaves/branches and bake them onto planes using transparency, then arange them smartly in order to hide the fact that they are simple planes.

breakneck

Be very cautious about the platform you are making this content for. Transparencies are very expensive to render and may become a big problem if you are making a forest in VR.
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Platforms/VR/ContentSetup/index.html#vrcontentconsiderations

Also knowing what type of visual style you are hoping to achieve will influence the pipeline suggestions.

That being said, search for foliage tutorials. 
http://3dmotive.com/series/creating-foliage-for-udk.html

low odor

The biggest problem with VR foliage at the moment is that you can't really make anything  convincing with cards at close/medium range....you really need geometry to make it not look like a flat mess when someone pokes their head close..one way to hanfle it is to keep players on a path, have the close foliage modeled..and then the  far  cards...another way would be to use and LOD between  far and close that swaps up on  proximity...

Eric Chadwick

MOAR
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage