Stylized tree workflow from blender

modimist

So I've been looking around at a ton of articles and threads involving this, and after grabbing info and methods I'm still struggling to get a decent result on my leaf cards. A main problem is that most of them are for Max or some other 3D suite so trying to translate that info to Blender is tough, but nonetheless here's my issue:

So far I have:
Used the normal editor in Blender, selecting a sphere and a half sphere to project normals to, neither really worked. 
Having the Auto smooth option selected, and then again with Double Sided option selected as well (while using the normal editor)
Turning off 2 Sided in my leaf material in unreal, which looked awful.
I import into unreal with Normals and Tangents, while exporting from Blender with Smooth Faces and Tangent Space selected. Tried these turned off as well.

As for the leaves I initially had them as 4 planes, each with the same texture and completely flat, but read that having not completely flat would make a difference but no such luck. Unless they're still to flat? I'm also not sure if my leaf placement is correct. I'm going off this (https://youtu.be/_Br6Xq4LZcI) tutorial, but I'm not trying to achieve that exact style so more problems arise, but even if I do the exact same as him I don't get the same results .

 I read on one of the threads that because the 2 sided material messes up the vert normals, I would need to duplicate the faces and edit the normals, but I'm thinking clicking the "Double sided" option next to "Auto Smooth" does that? If it doesn't I'm not sure how I would go about that in blender as the faces would be overlapping I would think? Here are the leaves with normal editor and a half sphere(Round Cube), I triangulated them in hopes of making them less flat with as little added geo as possible:

I'm still pretty new(like really really new) to unreal and this style of leaves in general so any help is greatly appreciated. And sorry this post is kinda long! Thank you for reading

Mink

Okay. First of all. Look at that video you posted. Now look at your model. Your model has a bunch of tiny bundles of like...4 leaf cards. What do you think that looks like? You should have very large, heavily populated bulbous masses of leaf cards connected to your trunk by twigs. Your leaves are just directly applied to your trunk. Of course it looks awful, that makes no sense. Look how volumetric and large his leaf clouds are and look and how lethargic yours are. Start there. Then worry about your textures, because those are awful to.

modimist

Okay, first of all, you didn't watch the video. The trunk is irrelevant. My question is about the leaves. The trunk is just a place holder as I knew I didn't know how to do the leaves so wanted to get that out of the way first. I'll try making them more "bulbous", and adding more as you said. Also, could you be more specific about the awful textures? Maybe you missed the "stylized" part in the title. No need to be a dick.

Mink

Your texture is bad becuase it makes absolutely no sense from an artistic standpoint. At all. Like why is a tiny circular plane of leaves emitting from,the edge of the trunk? Why? How would that look good? And stylized means almost nothing in this context, the only thing it really means that instead of photorealistic texturws you're using cartoon ones, you should still be abiding by standard tree creation tactics, and tiny leaf circle square plane things don't really look good. Thetes no right way to do this. But that one single texture is,most certainly the wrong one.

modimist

Well thanks for not getting the message across in the rudest way possible. I’m here asking questions because I don’t know how to do this. “There’s no right way to do this”.... guy, I’m going off a a tutorial, of a person who used a single leaf texture more simple than mine. That’s a way to do it which I tried and it didn’t work, hence why I’m asking for help, not criticism. 

Alanandrade92

Hi modimist!

I think that  Mink is trying to say is that your leaves feels "unnatural". There is no trees that has this pattern of leaves and it gives this feel that is looking bad. I think that a simpler solution may be configuring your alpha texture so that it looks like the leaves are coming out of a branchlet and adjust the UV of the plane so that this branchlet is coming out of the "master branch". 

I found this texture on CGTexture.com as reference so maybe you understand better what I'm trying to say.



I think that it should help you...
Kind regards,

modimist

Hey, thanks for the reply Alanandrade92! Yeah upon further searching I realized that tutorial was kind of a one off and getting a similar result just wasn't going to happen. Still think it was a normal issue however. Ended up settling for a method i found here (https://simonschreibt.de/gat/airborn-trees/) which pretty much uses the way you're suggesting. Still really stylized but uses the branches coming off individually which looks loads better. Thanks again for the reply!

Alanandrade92

Great link that you've found, modimist. I've already seen Romain Durand's tutorial once, but I think I'll keep the link that you sent because I'll need it soon enough... hehe.

Post your result here when you're done