Trees!?

codyboone

Greetings!

I'm working on some trees, and would love to hear some crits. I'm having a hard time figuring out a strategy for making the leaf-masses feel volumetric.

Roughly 200 Polys per tree.





Thanks for looking!

raphick

What platform is it intended to?

I guess, from seeing the size of your maps, it could be minimum PS2 maybe newgen consoles.

So I'd advice to make less leafy textures but far more branches(I used to have up to 800polys on ps2), differently oriented, scaled etc... this will undoubtfully give volume to your tree.

edwardE

A big thing to be aware of is from where you'll usually be viewing the tree - this will help you determine where to face most of the tree planes; the goal is to make it so that the planes aren't being viewed from a really steep angle, where you'll notice the texture becomes greatly skewed and eventually the alpha card will nearly vanish.

I'm not sure what your geo actually is, but right now it looks like they are flat alpha cards. If so, cut rows into them and move the verts so that they are more curved in shape (kind of like a clam shell) than just flat planes - that way you won't be able to 'look down' them and the skewing effect will be greatly reduced. Also, by using this cutting and curving method, you'll be able to use less of these curved cards, as each one will give a greater illusion of volume, so your poly count should be about the same in the end.

AsylumSeaker

One thing I would recommend is adding a gradient to the diffuse to fake some ambient occlusion, ie make the base of the branch darker than the tip.

codyboone

Thanks for all the tips guys. I will put these suggestions into use, and return with the fruits.

codyboone

Ok, working on a new iteration, with some of these suggestions in mind...

Thegodzero

http://bk-coffeehouse.cottages.polycount.com/tut/realtimetree1.html

this should help you out quite a bit.

codyboone

Thegodzero, thanks for the link - that is some good advice.

Here is the latest version: