Making Foliage

ChromaWitch

I'm working on my portfolio and exploring areas I'm unfamiliar with. I work in 3DS Max and render in Unreal Engine. I'm hoping to get into the game industry soon, and my dream job is to work at Naughty Dog, which is why knowing this is important to me.

How do you go about making foliage? Do you make it in 3D Software, or in the engine? I want to make foliage for a piece in my portfolio but don't know how to go about doing it. I have googled but, I'm not sure if some of the methods in those videos are UE4 friendly. I'm just looking for a nudge in the right direction. 

Synaesthesia

You'll need to do it in your 3D package of choice. You can build it in a variety of ways - the most common being a tool like GrowFX. There are also free foliage generators like tree[d] that you can use to build a base mesh to work from.

You might also find this useful while we're on the subject of foliage and Unreal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzoY062kY1s

sprunghunt

I highly recommend you learn how to build a tree or bush by hand before you use any of the foliage generators. 

There's plenty of tutorials on the wiki: 
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage#Foliage_Tutorials

If you rely on the generators you will not learn the problems with the geometry they create. I've never actually seen a tree generator that makes a completely clean mesh which has no problems. On many of the projects I've been on we've had to get someone to optimize the tree meshes because they've been created by generators. 

Larry

In a quick answer, when you make foliage you basically create and sculpt the base and the branches, and your leaves are bended planes that have a leaf picture, and an opacity mask that makes the non-leaf texture invisible.