You dont need photoshop to fine tune your texture. Just make sure it looks good. Crytek used photos of gras batches/blades for example. You can see this if you look at the textures.
Finetune it with the lighting settings in material editor and mostly with shader params. You will have plenty of options there if you choose the vegetation shader.
You can do magic to every material with a good setup in the material editor.
Just up the saturation in photoshop, doing it in the material editor (shader) is going to be more expensive and just be doing more mathops per-pixel. Also, don't bother with a normalmap/spec, it's not needed.
I am tryng to make the whole ambient look coherent and realistic , possibly , so also TOD , not only assets etc I want to make the island look realistic ....
SO far I made 10 different types of grass , but seems the tech behind the crysis grass is like an old game and adding other kind of maps is useless , so I decided ot make thinner leaves so far the only problem is now about how it blends with terrain and how it looks desaturated and light the texture when I activate use terrain colour , even increasing a lot the saturation and lowering a lot the lightness of the texture didn't work much but as far as I can see also in crysis the textures look slightly light and desaturated , may be there isn't much to do about it?
Here is a Preview of my new Custom made Textures for my island , just some , and I am not sure if are all final , but I took lot of time to make and fine tune to have good smooth transitions and a good close distance look , all textures are 2048x2048 , most include parallax mapping and specular mapping ,
the whole list of textures is :
Cliff 3d Distant
Cliff 3d Close 1
Cliff 3d Close 2
Coral 3d
Grass
Ground Pebbles
Ground Stones
Ground Dirt
Rainforest Fresh
Rainforest Dry
Sand Wet
Sand Messy
Sand Grassy
Sand Underwater
There is still one slot for a 15th texture if I am not wrong and I am undecided if to use for the following :
1 Grass long
2 Grass Dry
3 Mud
4 Small Pebbles
5 Ruins pavement
5 Rock
Any suggestions and critiques are very welcome ....
I think This needed a thread apart couse I cant fix the problem of the voxels not keeping their materials , hereis a cave texture I made for it , but I had to use a terrain texture slot , that of course I could use for something else if voxels could use extra materials that arent just for terrains , so my questions are two :
1 Hw I make the materials stick to the voxels and stay on them even after reloading?
2 Do I need to use only terrain texxtures for texturing voxels or I can use other extra materials and if so how ?
Wip on Cave Textures ....
I am wondering how do I change the colors on the voxels ? Also how do I do to make stick the textures on the voxels ? it's weird couse after I generated textures the voxel textures inside the cave are kept but the ones out on the other rock voxels are not ...
crap... replying from a page back....talking about blurring mip-maps
if you really want to go fancy pants, dont blur your lower mips, but use the heal tool to paint out low frequency detail (like the slightly darker patch in the grass) on a copy of your texture, generate the mip for both then blend the more unique texture (worse for tiling) into the say top 2 or three mips, this means you dont get the tiling in the distance but you still get the rougher shapes up close
Here is a Work in progresss on my Rocks , Those are Cliff Rocks , actually only 3 Rocks ....Rotated and placed in different positions .... polycount is around 1000 polys per rock so may be I can make a lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not?
Also I used a tiling of the texture with smart seams positioning on the rock , instead than go with a specific bake on the texture couse this allows me for a higher resolution map to be displayed on the rock , while a baked one would be only the size of the texture ....
Question :
1
lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not?
2
If I make two materials completely identical but one has a tiling of 1 and one of 3 do they have a different load for the engine or considers them the same?
In that case is better to tile the texture on the model and leave one material at 1 or instead tile it in the material so that eventually I can also have different sizes of the rocks according to the dimensions I chose for it I can use different tiled materials of the same type to keep coherence in the texture detail ....
[img]Here is a Work in progresss on my Rocks , Those are Cliff Rocks , actually only 3 Rocks ....Rotated and placed in different positions .... polycount is around 1000 polys per rock so may be I can make a lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not?
Also I used a tiling of the texture with smart seams positioning on the rock , instead than go with a specific bake on the texture couse this allows me for a higher resolution map to be displayed on the rock , while a baked one would be only the size of the texture ....
Question :
1
lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not?
2
If I make two materials completely identical but one has a tiling of 1 and one of 3 do they have a different load for the engine or considers them the same?
In that case is better to tile the texture on the model and leave one material at 1 or instead tile it in the material so that eventually I can also have different sizes of the rocks according to the dimensions I chose for it I can use different tiled materials of the same type to keep coherence in the texture detail ....
3
Can I add any occluder inside the rocks ? In that case can I use any different shaped occluder apart from a cube or plane or primitive inside the rock hidden ? This to save further renderings in the layout of the island when I place them ....[/img]
Its always worth. You'll have a good amount of rocks on screen so you can save polies. Not only geometry but also shadows.
Can I add any occluder inside the rocks ?
Definitly. Use a basic shape. You'll get a good fps boost with them too. Crytek did also Occuders for their rocks. Maybe you take a look how they did it.
Rule of thumb is to have between 10-20 polies for the occluder.
Its always worth. You'll have a good amount of rocks on screen so you can save polies. Not only geometry but also shadows.
Definitly. Use a basic shape. You'll get a good fps boost with them too. Crytek did also Occuders for their rocks. Maybe you take a look how they did it.
Rule of thumb is to have between 10-20 polies for the occluder.
by basic shape you mean that I need to use specifically primitives or that I can use also a shape that barely resemples the rock so custom ?
Thankyou , here is the fourth rock shape added , this can't be much rotated etc , also is much higher polygonal but since I have to represent a spiky ground close to rockyshores I guess it's ok , I will lower it with more lods , since the spikes aren't visible by faraway ....
Is credible or may be I need to tune it better somehow?
A wip on My new River Rocks , for those I went instead than a tiled image to a perfectly seamed texture , since the size is smaller and I do not need all this detail spread like for the big cliffs , I am making around 5 stones that rotated can get like 10 , My fear is that for those I will need probably 5 different materials , I hope it won't be an issue tough ...beeing them smaller or anyway the size comparable to an avatar are more or less as poly as the big cliffs but beeing smaller look more detailed and smooth in some parts will have as well lods ....
My work is now on making a seamless normal map , wich doesn't seems a simple task , for me at least , then tune the wet , and dry areas of the stones ...
planning also some other texture variations , using the same shape like for mossy rocks or beach rocks with algae etc....
Comments and suggestions are welcome as always .....
You've done a great job. Very nice. Getting a Lost vibe when I look at the picture above. But I like Lost so thats a good thing imo Looking foward to see the rest.
Thankyou , Lost is also what I am trying to get to with the feel , that's why I plan also to make a ancient Ruin in center of the Island ,Sort of like the Anghkor Vat Ruins with roots craking the same structures and overgrown jungle all around ....
It's all fantastic work, you've done a great job. It's awesome how faithfully you've reproduced everything at the Crysis standard for visuals.
For some critique..I think the feel is too close to how Crysis feels (if that's what you're going for though, disregard this). Even though all the assets are custom now, they look too similar to the style of art Crysis conveyed. Good thing you're making more trees, and I'd also recommend lowering the saturation for some of your vegetation. Also, make some jungle vegetation that Crysis didn't have - do that, and this will really begin to come into its own. I would also recommend contacting Xzero on crymod; he has some amazing custom shaders which brings CE2 functionality closer to CE3 in terms of visual fidelity.
I work with Sandbox 2 as well, and also make custom vegetation and models - so send me a PM sometime and we can share information.
sure thanks a lot , I am a newbie and I am learning ,and eventually see if , even if I am all selftought and without any bachelor orother degrees in arts or graphic stuff m I could eventually reach the pro levels and even one day propose myself as level designer .... that's the reason why I am almoust looking at the Crysis things as the way to go , mostly couse they look good , are professional and are adapt for the game engine , tought if I can find even better I would also jump on those for learning and imitation ,I am basically mimicizing most of the basical plant assets for Crysis but I will have to make also some special ones that stand out of and Crysis didnt make like Roots , lianas and banyan trees , I was looking to reproduce actually this kind of vegetation set:...
In order to have some Coherent organization of the Island Biomes I will sectorize areas of Vegetation:
Beachs shore:
Random palm trees and bushes
hibiscus bushes
small bushes
scattered small grass in the backside
scattered shells
scattered sea elements
scattered decals
scattered tree trunks and stones
Prairie
Dense grass , tall and Short
Scattered large bushes and small bushes
Random no leaves bushes
Scattered trunks and stones
Rare Flower bushes
Palms forest
Scattered Coconut Palms from bushes to all types of shapes
Clustered Hibiscus bushes
Clustered small and large bushes
Scattered trunks and stones
Scattered Dead leaves
Scattered Fan Palm trees
Scattered Small tree bushes of hibiscus
Scattered Banano Tree ( Musacea) and bushes
Rare flower bushes
random cycad plants
Rare ferns ( small )
Jungle
random Coconut palms
Scattered Ferns
Scattered Cycads
Rare flower bushes
Scattered Dead Leaves
Scattered Stones
Scattered trunks and Dead trunks
Scattered Banano trees ( larger )
Random Fan palms
scattered rubber tree
small Durian trees
Small kapok trees
Small Tualang
Rainforest
Jungle will be also the base of the
Emergents
Durian trees
kapok trees
Tualang
Banyan
Canopy
As for the Jungle
Lianas Understorey
As for jungle but bush level and also Aracacee and large leaves plants
Forest Floor
Mostly stones , scattered leaves , Dead Trunks , Dead plants , Rocks etc...
Cliffs
Hanging Bushes , Hanging Trees , Roots, Distant layers for Cliffs?( to be tested)
Rocky
Scattered Grass , Scattered Rocks and Pebbles
River and LAke Sides
According to the bordering biome plus
Side tall leaves plants
Emergent plants
Floating plants
Underwater
Sea Algae
Fresh water Algae
Corals of al lkinds
Rocky coral formations
The problems I am having are mostly two ,
1 reproduce a decent shape for bushes and plants tha tdo not look like offering the "cut or planes " look , the Crysis ones are well done and do not offer that much unless you get really close , the second problem is that my whole island needs to be detailed and with many things over so there is a big problem of layouting , in Crysis they solved this sectorizing a lot the ambients , but I cant and I need ot make a whole ambient so I am also making lods on all plants and items and I rarely go beyond the 2k polygons per item ...
Thanks for your support and appreciations for any suggestion or other samples I am all ears ....
Edit : about Saturation , I know that desat stuff usually look more real and I go for this , tough I have noticed that some pictures of RL jungles or tropical forests , and actually even having traveled there , the plants are incredibly brilliant and saturated at midday and become seems less at other hours of the day , but still are more brilliant than tought usually or seen in games or the like ... I think much depends on the illumination but I haven't yet been able to find a decent TOD for this Island ....
You mean triangles right? 2k triangles per item? xD
Anyways, I try to shoot for a little less - while also maintaining visual fidelity. The end result has been custom scenes that perform great while looking like many more triangles were used. My motto with game environments is to create more with less; do more with less.
You are looking to become more of an environment artist than a level designer - level designers script level events, help out with the controls and base gameplay.. etc. It's just important to be specific with what exactly you're trying to get into.
I am in the same position as you - self-taught, love the innovation in CE2 and SB2, and am trying to bring my environment artistic skills to a level that will get me a job in the industry.
Anyways, yeah you are probably right about the saturation, but you need to find some way to have the vegetation look more varied in terms of color/tone. Perhaps holes or rips in some leaves, some dead parts of the vegetation... just these two things add so much to vegetation.
Awesome trees models ... Actually I said 2000 k tris as a max ,but I am usually much under this , like 300 or few more , just for the rocks I hit I think 1500 or around that and with lods like 1500 , 1000 , 600 , 300 polys , I have been told that goind under this number in cryengine is useless since the game would spend more resources than gaining for loading a further lod under 300 polys ....
I am actually taking RL pictures , dissect leaves and paint out branches , then put into position leaves ramdomly on the branches alternating yellow , dark , and colored ones on the overall branch , but ingame they all sort of look merged together as color , Its not usually like I expect it to be like .....
Edit2:
Actually the specular map in this image is not the right one for this plant but its similar , that's from another plant ...
Here an example of the tree and bushes I am working on right now and the look ingame and on texture ....
I try to add those yellow , brown , green leaves alternation altough I am seeing that even when I go out to get pictures I find out that 90% of the leaves are all green ....
I can help you out with what I've learned about adjusting vegetation materials to make vegetation look as good as possible. My game development interests started with ToD modding as well; I am known as UltimaRage throughout the Crysis community.
1300 seems like a little much for that bush - try bringing it down to 700 tris while keeping that thick, full look. If you can, bring it down even further. Also, setup draw distances for smaller foliage like this, so you can't see it super far away. 4 million tris in a scene at once is waaaay too much - aim for 2 million tris; MAX.
Additionally, watch those draw calls. Do everything you can to lower draw calls, as they can bring down performance more than an excessive amount of tris can.
LoD's aren't recommended for most vegetation models. I don't have any LoD's for any of my vegetation models, yet the scenes I showed you all perform at 40 FPS and top out at 1.2 million tris or a little more.
That's why you should go for the lowest counts you can while still maintaining that next-gen look - vegetation fills the screen, so that many LoD transitions at once really brings down performance.
I can help you out with what I've learned about adjusting vegetation materials to make vegetation look as good as possible. My game development interests started with ToD modding as well; I am known as UltimaRage throughout the Crysis community.
1300 seems like a little much for that bush - try bringing it down to 700 tris while keeping that thick, full look. If you can, bring it down even further. Also, setup draw distances for smaller foliage like this, so you can't see it super far away. 4 million tris in a scene at once is waaaay too much - aim for 2 million tris; MAX.
Additionally, watch those draw calls. Do everything you can to lower draw calls, as they can bring down performance more than an excessive amount of tris can.
I saw that also a similar Crysis bush has this same number , actually bit over that in tris , but what u mean by draw calls and where I look for those stats like total tris etc?
Also I can't get really " the feel of what's wrong in this bush look , may be maps ? I edited the post above to show , or shape , how to arrange the planes is a pain ... I dont like when I see the cut edge look ingame but I can't see it in max...
Indeed, but the vegetation models in Crysis are badly optimized. Aim for the Crysis look without the Crysis' waste of tris.
Also, Draw Calls is displayed as DP: 2038 (or some other 4 digit number) when r_displayinfo is enabled.
Yes, arranging the planes is definitely a pain, but finding the best way to balance visuals and performance is rewarding. I continually think about optimization when I first create any model - saves time over finishing a model and going to optimize it later.
Try to add some dead leaves to that bush. Not a lot, but make like 10-15 leaves on that diffuse dead, then 10-15 alive leaves with holes and tears. It'll add so much to your bush; you will be amazed. Also, start painting the lighting on the diffuse using the dodge and burn tools in photoshop. Where the texture is most likely to be in the shadows, darken that area - so when you get to a distance to where shadows are not rendered, you still have a darkening effect on the vegetation. Greatly enhances realism all around.
Another update , remade the normal giving more enphasis to the light details and lowering the larrge ones that made sort of bumpy leaves , desaturated a lot the texture , remade the model .... how's looking now?
Looks good, but to me it's still very visible that the bush is made of multiple foliage planes, but you said you were trying to avoid that feel on your vegetation. Or maybe it's just the angle the picture is taken from, sometimes foliage looks correct from certain angles and not from others.
And it's maybe a detail now but I think the dead leafs are too much saturated imho. When the leaf is dead, it turns into grey-brown.
Yeah.. it really does take quite a bit of trial and error to find out how to truly get assortments of planes to look good from all angles. Work with it more; the only real thing that will get you the desired results is just experimentation.
In Meanwhile here is a First very wip Kapok Giant Tree , the surrounding vegetation is not final and is provisorial , the Kapok tree is still missing tuning like better arrangement of canopy , better optimizations , ivy , relief maps etc....
but more or less the texture for leaves is done and I think also the trunk now is ok as texture and shape ....
Sorry for the Delay , the Arrangement there was odd couse was just a fast arrangement to test ingame the lightning and density of the texture and resulted to be enough scattered to not look like square panels at least I think so .... here is the arrangement of the new canopy that I am making , is done , the totalpolycount of this tree is like 2230 polys ...
May be is too much but this tree is also the main Rainforest big tree , is tall 40 m and the canopy is so wide that I can't find out another way to reduce it without making look bad a tiled image .... I have scaled also the planes and textue to look proportional to a human size , comparing the leaves sizes and the hand of the reference model each branch has a range of 300 to 500 polys each and are around 4 main branches and some top canopy ....
What you think ? is it too much or is it ok ? I will make lods of course....
Here is how it looks ingame and I honestly expected a better result , this is not good at allat my opinion , now I am wondering what I am doing wrong?
the overall canopy looks a bit scarce , but its already 2200 polys how I can do to increase the density but not the polycount? plus I have used simple romboid squares for the planes to save tris and so I didnt bend into more angles the single leaves and so there is this visible squarish thing ngame , how to solve that too?
Replies
Finetune it with the lighting settings in material editor and mostly with shader params. You will have plenty of options there if you choose the vegetation shader.
You can do magic to every material with a good setup in the material editor.
SO far I made 10 different types of grass , but seems the tech behind the crysis grass is like an old game and adding other kind of maps is useless , so I decided ot make thinner leaves so far the only problem is now about how it blends with terrain and how it looks desaturated and light the texture when I activate use terrain colour , even increasing a lot the saturation and lowering a lot the lightness of the texture didn't work much but as far as I can see also in crysis the textures look slightly light and desaturated , may be there isn't much to do about it?
the whole list of textures is :
Cliff 3d Distant
Cliff 3d Close 1
Cliff 3d Close 2
Coral 3d
Grass
Ground Pebbles
Ground Stones
Ground Dirt
Rainforest Fresh
Rainforest Dry
Sand Wet
Sand Messy
Sand Grassy
Sand Underwater
There is still one slot for a 15th texture if I am not wrong and I am undecided if to use for the following :
1 Grass long
2 Grass Dry
3 Mud
4 Small Pebbles
5 Ruins pavement
5 Rock
Any suggestions and critiques are very welcome ....
1 Hw I make the materials stick to the voxels and stay on them even after reloading?
2 Do I need to use only terrain texxtures for texturing voxels or I can use other extra materials and if so how ?
Wip on Cave Textures ....
I am wondering how do I change the colors on the voxels ? Also how do I do to make stick the textures on the voxels ? it's weird couse after I generated textures the voxel textures inside the cave are kept but the ones out on the other rock voxels are not ...
if you really want to go fancy pants, dont blur your lower mips, but use the heal tool to paint out low frequency detail (like the slightly darker patch in the grass) on a copy of your texture, generate the mip for both then blend the more unique texture (worse for tiling) into the say top 2 or three mips, this means you dont get the tiling in the distance but you still get the rougher shapes up close
Also I used a tiling of the texture with smart seams positioning on the rock , instead than go with a specific bake on the texture couse this allows me for a higher resolution map to be displayed on the rock , while a baked one would be only the size of the texture ....
Question :
1
lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not?
2
If I make two materials completely identical but one has a tiling of 1 and one of 3 do they have a different load for the engine or considers them the same?
In that case is better to tile the texture on the model and leave one material at 1 or instead tile it in the material so that eventually I can also have different sizes of the rocks according to the dimensions I chose for it I can use different tiled materials of the same type to keep coherence in the texture detail ....
[img]Here is a Work in progresss on my Rocks , Those are Cliff Rocks , actually only 3 Rocks ....Rotated and placed in different positions .... polycount is around 1000 polys per rock so may be I can make a lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not? Also I used a tiling of the texture with smart seams positioning on the rock , instead than go with a specific bake on the texture couse this allows me for a higher resolution map to be displayed on the rock , while a baked one would be only the size of the texture .... Question : 1 lod level at 500 ? Worth it or not? 2 If I make two materials completely identical but one has a tiling of 1 and one of 3 do they have a different load for the engine or considers them the same? In that case is better to tile the texture on the model and leave one material at 1 or instead tile it in the material so that eventually I can also have different sizes of the rocks according to the dimensions I chose for it I can use different tiled materials of the same type to keep coherence in the texture detail .... 3 Can I add any occluder inside the rocks ? In that case can I use any different shaped occluder apart from a cube or plane or primitive inside the rock hidden ? This to save further renderings in the layout of the island when I place them ....[/img]
Definitly. Use a basic shape. You'll get a good fps boost with them too. Crytek did also Occuders for their rocks. Maybe you take a look how they did it.
Rule of thumb is to have between 10-20 polies for the occluder.
(source: http://doc.crymod.com/AssetCreation/OcclusionProxy.html)
by basic shape you mean that I need to use specifically primitives or that I can use also a shape that barely resemples the rock so custom ?
(http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/7770/textureset.jpg)
Is credible or may be I need to tune it better somehow?
My work is now on making a seamless normal map , wich doesn't seems a simple task , for me at least , then tune the wet , and dry areas of the stones ...
planning also some other texture variations , using the same shape like for mossy rocks or beach rocks with algae etc....
Comments and suggestions are welcome as always .....
Far , far , middle , middle , closer
Wich are like Rocks , rock blocks , striated blocks , sediments and jungle covers...
For some critique..I think the feel is too close to how Crysis feels (if that's what you're going for though, disregard this). Even though all the assets are custom now, they look too similar to the style of art Crysis conveyed. Good thing you're making more trees, and I'd also recommend lowering the saturation for some of your vegetation. Also, make some jungle vegetation that Crysis didn't have - do that, and this will really begin to come into its own. I would also recommend contacting Xzero on crymod; he has some amazing custom shaders which brings CE2 functionality closer to CE3 in terms of visual fidelity.
I work with Sandbox 2 as well, and also make custom vegetation and models - so send me a PM sometime and we can share information.
The problems I am having are mostly two ,
1 reproduce a decent shape for bushes and plants tha tdo not look like offering the "cut or planes " look , the Crysis ones are well done and do not offer that much unless you get really close , the second problem is that my whole island needs to be detailed and with many things over so there is a big problem of layouting , in Crysis they solved this sectorizing a lot the ambients , but I cant and I need ot make a whole ambient so I am also making lods on all plants and items and I rarely go beyond the 2k polygons per item ...
Thanks for your support and appreciations for any suggestion or other samples I am all ears
Edit : about Saturation , I know that desat stuff usually look more real and I go for this , tough I have noticed that some pictures of RL jungles or tropical forests , and actually even having traveled there , the plants are incredibly brilliant and saturated at midday and become seems less at other hours of the day , but still are more brilliant than tought usually or seen in games or the like ... I think much depends on the illumination but I haven't yet been able to find a decent TOD for this Island ....
Anyways, I try to shoot for a little less - while also maintaining visual fidelity. The end result has been custom scenes that perform great while looking like many more triangles were used. My motto with game environments is to create more with less; do more with less.
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/1156/latestfirs26.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/6827/latestfirs25.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/8917/latestfirs24.jpg
Image showing tri counts for the trees:
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/135/firtreestricounts.jpg
You are looking to become more of an environment artist than a level designer - level designers script level events, help out with the controls and base gameplay.. etc. It's just important to be specific with what exactly you're trying to get into.
I am in the same position as you - self-taught, love the innovation in CE2 and SB2, and am trying to bring my environment artistic skills to a level that will get me a job in the industry.
Anyways, yeah you are probably right about the saturation, but you need to find some way to have the vegetation look more varied in terms of color/tone. Perhaps holes or rips in some leaves, some dead parts of the vegetation... just these two things add so much to vegetation.
I am actually taking RL pictures , dissect leaves and paint out branches , then put into position leaves ramdomly on the branches alternating yellow , dark , and colored ones on the overall branch , but ingame they all sort of look merged together as color , Its not usually like I expect it to be like .....
Edit2:
Actually the specular map in this image is not the right one for this plant but its similar , that's from another plant ...
Here an example of the tree and bushes I am working on right now and the look ingame and on texture ....
I try to add those yellow , brown , green leaves alternation altough I am seeing that even when I go out to get pictures I find out that 90% of the leaves are all green ....
Lods Like 1300 , 650 , 325 tris .
1300 seems like a little much for that bush - try bringing it down to 700 tris while keeping that thick, full look. If you can, bring it down even further. Also, setup draw distances for smaller foliage like this, so you can't see it super far away. 4 million tris in a scene at once is waaaay too much - aim for 2 million tris; MAX.
Additionally, watch those draw calls. Do everything you can to lower draw calls, as they can bring down performance more than an excessive amount of tris can.
LoD's aren't recommended for most vegetation models. I don't have any LoD's for any of my vegetation models, yet the scenes I showed you all perform at 40 FPS and top out at 1.2 million tris or a little more.
That's why you should go for the lowest counts you can while still maintaining that next-gen look - vegetation fills the screen, so that many LoD transitions at once really brings down performance.
I saw that also a similar Crysis bush has this same number , actually bit over that in tris , but what u mean by draw calls and where I look for those stats like total tris etc?
Also I can't get really " the feel of what's wrong in this bush look , may be maps ? I edited the post above to show , or shape , how to arrange the planes is a pain ... I dont like when I see the cut edge look ingame but I can't see it in max...
Also, Draw Calls is displayed as DP: 2038 (or some other 4 digit number) when r_displayinfo is enabled.
Yes, arranging the planes is definitely a pain, but finding the best way to balance visuals and performance is rewarding. I continually think about optimization when I first create any model - saves time over finishing a model and going to optimize it later.
Try to add some dead leaves to that bush. Not a lot, but make like 10-15 leaves on that diffuse dead, then 10-15 alive leaves with holes and tears. It'll add so much to your bush; you will be amazed. Also, start painting the lighting on the diffuse using the dodge and burn tools in photoshop. Where the texture is most likely to be in the shadows, darken that area - so when you get to a distance to where shadows are not rendered, you still have a darkening effect on the vegetation. Greatly enhances realism all around.
I tried to add some highlights with the darkening brush on some leaves , added more sat on the "brown" leaves desat the rest ,
And it's maybe a detail now but I think the dead leafs are too much saturated imho. When the leaf is dead, it turns into grey-brown.
but more or less the texture for leaves is done and I think also the trunk now is ok as texture and shape ....
May be is too much but this tree is also the main Rainforest big tree , is tall 40 m and the canopy is so wide that I can't find out another way to reduce it without making look bad a tiled image .... I have scaled also the planes and textue to look proportional to a human size , comparing the leaves sizes and the hand of the reference model each branch has a range of 300 to 500 polys each and are around 4 main branches and some top canopy ....
What you think ? is it too much or is it ok ? I will make lods of course....
the overall canopy looks a bit scarce , but its already 2200 polys how I can do to increase the density but not the polycount? plus I have used simple romboid squares for the planes to save tris and so I didnt bend into more angles the single leaves and so there is this visible squarish thing ngame , how to solve that too?