Modeling foilage

Reverenddevil

Hi, does anyone know fo any good tutorials for modleing plants, jungle vegetation etc. I know cards are the most efficient but I have my reasons for needing to do it by hand. Thanks..

Joshua Stubbles

One way to do it: http://bk-coffeehouse.cottages.polycount.com//tut/realtimetree1.html

There's lots of other methods out there though, just search for it.

Eric Chadwick

Another option, haven't used this in awhile though. This script creates trees with editable branches, so you can move them around or delete them, then it fillets them together to make a single mesh. Pretty cool.



http://scriptspot.com/3ds-max/tree-maker

Another tree-making script, haven't tried it
http://scriptspot.com/3ds-max/maxtree

Reverenddevil

Also, using scripts and textures is not allowed. I just need to model straight geo. Thanks for the links though, I will use them for my stuff.

Joshua Stubbles

no scripts or textures? teh?

Reverenddevil

Ya, just good ol geometry.

Toast

Do you have access to Maya? PaintFX is pretty good at achieving trees without too much work.

Is this a personal project? Because I don't know many people that model trees by hand these days.

Here's a good list of plant software.
http://www.vterrain.org/Plants/plantsw.html

Eric Chadwick

Sounds like a bizarre art test to me.

CrazyButcher

sounds like very stupid instruction, why not go back to notepad and type in stuff by hand... ts what is software development for... even if the software would cost something (which most dont), it plays in the amount of work spending doing one leave a time quickly
especially plants L-systems all that stuff is really old and so common.

seriously with restrictions like that, one could really wonder about the quality of the instructors.

Mark Dygert

EricChadwick wrote: »

Another option, haven't used this in awhile though. This script creates trees with editable branches, so you can move them around or delete them, then it fillets them together to make a single mesh. Pretty cool.



http://scriptspot.com/3ds-max/tree-maker

Another tree-making script, haven't tried it
http://scriptspot.com/3ds-max/maxtree

Maxtree is total crap. It creates high poly meshes without any real way to control how dense meshes are. Tree-Maker on the other hand offers more possibilities, and is easy to output optimized trees. It's also good at producing facing planes for the leaves which can be converted to geometry and used.

I can also see being forced to create plants from scratch for a few reasons.
- The place is building its own library to use. For licensing reasons and for creative freedom.
- Learning how to model plants can be a good exercise that doesn't take a long time but exposes people to a few different situations.
- Not every out of the box bush maker does exactly what you need, or is even based on the same ecosystem you're working in. Or you can purchase updates or just model them yourself. Most of them require quite a bit of rework to blend in anyway, often shoveled onto the last guy/gal in the door. So learning how to work with plants in preparation for that first job, makes sense...

CrazyButcher

good reasons vig, I haven't thought about (especially the make your own library), guess writing software makes me biased these days

root

Outside of reverenddevil's constraints, what is the approved method for creating trees and plants and ivy on stuff? Is using generators and scripts okay? I mean I wouldn't include trees a generator made in a portfolio on their own but I'm inclined to assume that including them in a larger environment and noting that they're machine-made would be okay..

sprunghunt

A lot of games use speedtree or something similar.

However I'm not a big fan of speedtree. It tends to make these bland, polygonal looking, trees. Most tree generation systems in games aren't really complex enough to truly capture the character of a tree.

There was a really good CG tree in the movie "what dreams may come" which was generated using L-systems in houdini but unfortunately game systems can't match that sort of sophistication.

I would reccomend this:
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.lowquality.pdf

as further reading.

Eric Chadwick

Using plugins and generators is acceptable in a portfolio, as long as you disclose what you did personally. It's the same principle as using someone else's concept art, or including group artwork in your portfolio... include attribution for the other artists (and generators) so people can evaluate what you brought to the table.

Psyk0

Particle generated foliage in 3d max:
http://www.andyzibits.com/tutorials_main.html

AnimeAngel

Psyk0 wrote: »

Particle generated foliage in 3d max:
http://www.andyzibits.com/tutorials_main.html

That's a very interesting read, thanks