Forest

Eric Chadwick

Well I got it my problem sorted out.


Here's the result in the engine. The edited normals really help the shading of the non-light-facing branch-planes.

Here's an example of non-edited (left) vs. edited normals (right).


And here's what the normals look like in 3ds Max.

I rotated most of the normals to point out and up, but where the planes meet the trunk, I made those normals point straight out, so they would match the trunk's own normals, and so those verts get the same lighting direction as the trunk. Neat huh?

This is the first time I've had the chance to use this feature, and I'm really digging it.

So, I'm fishing for feedback... any ideas what I could do to improve these? I'm thinking about making the trunks more gnarly, for one thing. Also might add a vertex shader to get some wind going.

Rick Stirling

So many things depend on the art style you are going for here, so....

I thing the colour of the trunks is perhaps too brown - it depends on the art style, but trunks are almost green in many cases.

The trunks seem to be big needles - no variation

The branches seem to be big leaves intersecting the needletrunks

And it's been a pretty harsh winter.

Zatoichi

So many Bugs (Graphic: Texture: Trees:) are because of weird reversed normals. Moddelers can cut their bug count early by just taking a little time before submitting a model by making shure all verts are welded and all normals are where they should be.

Weiser_Cain

It's very blurry. I don't know about the rest of the world but when I go into a forest one of the things I notice is how much clearer things look in there and how little direct lighting there is at the floor.

Zergxes

Shadows on forest floors tend to be purple-ish. Nice style with the painterly look.

ElysiumGX

too...much...bloom. eyes...burning.

Toomas

I agree with the "too much bloom", it looks like underwater scene.
Bloom is almost the lense flare 2.0.

Thegodzero

To me bloom is like cheap depth of field, and dof makes me happy. Bloom is great for making a world have that relaxing dreamscape feel that is very soothing for the eyes.

As for the trees, i'm not a fan of them at all art wise. For all those shader ops those trees should be much higher detail. If you want i could make you some trees for your tech demo?

dfacto

Personally I like the style, bloom and all, but I don't like the branches. Make the tree branches look like actual tree branches instead of large leaves and the scene will look very cool. Just have to make sure that anything else that goes in the scene adheres to that painted looking pastel style.

John Warner

i think it might help to have acctual geometry branches comming out more here and there. right now it looks like a big cone with leafy-cards on it.

Eric Chadwick

Excellent feedback guys, much appreciated.

Sorry about the bloom, don't have any control over that right now.

Yeah the weird oversized leaves need work. I was inspired by a redwood forest in one of the LucasArts games, but then took it way too far.

I don't understand the normals issue Zatoichi. Verts are welded where possible, and the normals work pretty well as-is. Could use more finesse though, too brightly lit right now. What bugs do you speak of?

Thegodzero, I'll take you up on that. I'll use all the help I can get.

OK more geometry, yes a good plan. I need to profile the scene, but I think I'm fill-rate bound at this point, more room for more geom. Should probably drop the normalmaps from the leaves/branches, not all that effective at this point anyhow.

Will post improvements as I get them. Thanks again. More comments appreciated.

Eric Chadwick

Here's some reference I shot last summer in Muir Woods near San Francisco. I'm not going for realism, but there's a ways to go in terms of detail and naturalism.

rooster

ah that looks like a nice place to walk! Going by those photos Id think about varying size, shape and angle to get a more organic, chaotic feel. Maybe add some mid-level detail inbetween the trees and ground foliage like vines etc growing up the trunks

Thegodzero

Eric IM me so we can talk about what polycount you want these to be and what all tree types you wants and small plants.

I'm not sure if you saw this, but this is the LOD i was thinking of going for.

http://tgz3d.com/newtree2.avi

quick test of some redwood bark using at 256 res and 512

Eric Chadwick

Thanks rooster, good point about the mid-level detail.

That is indeed an amazing place to walk, though the paths are kind of fenced in now since it gets so much traffic. The photos are the areas you're forbidden from entering, so they've retained their untrampled lushness. If you venture further afield though, you can find less managed groves. Magical. I'm hoping to get a sense of this, not just a reproduction. But I'm not nearly there yet.

Tgz, I unfortunately don't have the budget to pay for anything, and to be totally honest in the end I might not being able to use your trees for one reason or another. But I encourage you to go for it. You could use it as a learning experience if you like.

Your tree complexity looks reasonable, though the redwood version of it would need some work with the vertex normals to soften the shading artifacts in the crossing planes. The bark seems a bit too lumpy to me, redwood bark actually has these hairy-like striations in it, and deep grooves. Hard to do in a normalmap.

Here are the flats I used. I like how the bark came out, the normalmap is also intended to tile separately from the colormap. I think the ground texture needs more color variation though.

Thegodzero

Eric i'm going to just make them for practice then, if you want to use them id love that, buti do understand the reasons why you might not be able to. I'd love to tke a gander at those textures at full size when i get off work as i couldnt find that good of redwood bark refs. I know my bark doesnt fully look like redwood yet but your textures might help alot. When I get off work later today i'll hit you up for you textures. Anyway thanks for the crits.