Photogammetry Tree creation

roxmate

Hello there folks, getting started on photogammetry and creating assets for games and was wondering what would be the best approach for creating a complete game ready tree using photogammetry?
Speedtree has the option to merge a photoscanned trunk with the rest of the tree that was procedural generated, but that option is not available for subscription based licenses so it's out of question for me,
I also heard the same can be done with growfx and 3dsmax, but it seems quite an expensive plugin.

Any tips or workflow techniques would be appreciated.

srsface

I worked on some trees recently, ended up scanning

1) the tree base with roots and ground etc.

2) tiling bark material

3) detail texture (if you need it in the shader for viewing up close)

then combining the two scans on a mesh that I basically extruded upwards from the scanned, retopo'd base model. The shader blends the most of the trunk to use the tiling texture after the base. I used vertex colors but you can probably make it seamless already in the textures.

Essentially the same I believe as SpeedTree would help you do, but by hand. I also couldn't afford any plugins so it was a lot of hard manual labour. Leaves and branches I also did by hand but used some simple free plugins I could find to help with scattering.

It was a useful learning experience to do it by hand, but definitely not the optimal way for fast production. My results for the branches I'm also not that happy with, but what matters most in my game is the tree base which looks realistic due to the scan turning out well.

If you can get GrowFX it'll help you a lot, I believe Unity devs used that for the trees in their Book of the Dead demo.

Benjammin

Tree It might help you. Its limited in some ways, but it has procedural generation tools for branch/leaf placement. You would have to manually merge your photogrammetry mesh, however.