Resource for finding foliage? What the heck is this plant?

joshmtyler

I'm working on a scene with plenty of foliage but I have no idea how to find out what the plants are. My knowledge is essentially, bush, leaves, grass, tree. How do I know that this plant is a Monocotyledon or a Bromeliaceae aside from just becoming a Botanist?

I understand that learning the most I can is key, however sometimes we do not have that time. Your environment needs to be done yesterday. I need to find out what this particular plant is now so I can learn the most about this plant.

What is your method of finding this information?

Edit:
Resources I have found by asking friends:

Websites:
http://www.gardenology.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://dendro.cnre.vt.edu/dendrology/idit.htm (Personal favorite so far) hosted by Virginia Tech

Books:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=botany+reference+audobon&rh=i:aps,k:botany+reference+audobon

Modelling:
http://www.agisoft.com/ (models from photoscans)

musashidan

Study some basic  botany. like modeling, sculpting, animation, you have to study your subject to recreate it.

joshmtyler

@musashidan Yes, of course. My apologies, I may not have worded this appropriately. I am looking for places to get started so I'm not immediately overwhelmed by searching through a million Google links. I imagine many other game artists have gone through the same thing and sometimes I find that discussing it with like minded people and gaining their perspectives can really help. I am absolutely not looking for anyone to do the work for me.  

Kevin Albers

If your reference has something specific about it, such as a location, that can help.   e.g. If it's the area around a temple in India, and it includes a bunch of flowers, do an image search for 'flowers in (such-and-such) region of India', and see if any of the images match any of the plants in your reference.

If you have very general reference, e.g. a generic fantasy forest that looks sort of European, you can work the other direction. Search for lists of ground cover plants in German forests, so that you know the names of plants as soon as you come across the images of them.

Another option- somthing like TaskRabbit. See if anyone on the service knows enough to be able to cheaply list a bunch of the plants in your reference collection. You will probably either fail totally or get info for cheap.

Also:  date a botanist!


I'm planning to do a fair amount of foliage in the near future, and I just ordered a visual dictionary of plants, and I'll study that a bit to learn more botany.

throttlekitty

Yeah that's great but you still have to study your subject to recreate it.  

So you'll need to narrow your search in the same way you might look for "metal" then "rusted metal" to get more specific. Learning the vocabulary for the basics would be helpful. There are a ton of sites for identifying a plant or to list plants by region, which is a great way to narrow down what you want to use as a palette. I think we all have notions of what a northwest american treescape might look like, but knowing what lives there is better. Another thing you could do is look at galleries from someone's hike, pull pictures that you like and use a plant ID site to get a name for pulling up more reference.

joshmtyler

@Kevin Albers All wonderful suggestions and appreciate that you didn't just say "Google" and move along.

Now, I can't really date a botanist. I don't think my girlfriend would like that.

I think you'll appreciate some of the links I've been coming across. I want this to be a resource for people asking the question in the future as well.

knacki

Some less academic approaches:
Although they are not that perfect so far, there are apps for smartphones out there, which try to identify by picture or by items. Sunbird has a set I.e.
Some others have a quiz, which makes learning easier.
Some, like tree ID take you through the definition process, via the item you've found.
I used to use those apps for learning birds species. Haha, bird voice recognition is far from being good, but fun.
Some nature organisations are offering apps too.
In Germany, Nabu apps helps identify birds, and plants. Can't tell you if these are available in English, but you could check out the organisation from the place you want to recreate.

Google inverted picture search could help, if you have a picture of a specific leaf i.e.
once you have the name you'll feel no plenty of pics.

Can't tell you if this link will help but could be a good place to start.
http://identifythatplant.com/plant-id-resources/plant-id-websites/

I even found a German page about bugs who's enthusiastic owner identify the bug for you, if you send him picture.