After looking how looks ingame I think looks poor , I have now to redo , I will try a different approach , eventually manually draw more shaped tree branches to fill in a more density and scatter more leaves ,remake the main branches too , and also make over the higher poly branches directly the low poly so that I have more control on the distant models form ,this is getting still more time but I plan to make in a modular way so I make branches that I canreuse and rearrange later , I have now to look for more pictures of the canopy to get a better performance / distribution shape ....
Ok befoure remaking the canopy and the trees , wich I will in order to get also a bette rplacement of branches and have also the low poly version premade there , I tried this experiment by just doubling the branches on the tree , that's the effect , the polycount just reached 4072 tris , so is this still acceptable for a big tree ? lods would be like 2200 - 1100 - 550 - 301 billboard or sprite .....
And after a lot of work here is finally the ingame version completed with all the maps etc , I hope looks good , what you think?
This is the Huge version , the other versions should be coming after ....
The Ceiba Pentandra , a 40 m Emergent Rainforest Tree Also known as the Kapok Tree .....
Total Polycount of the Main model is here 3186
The Lod n 1 is 2011 polys
From top to bottom , couple of pictures of the roots in shadow and on lightning , the canopy from the bottom , the Detail of the leaves and the silouette among other trees ....
One statement helped me model vegetation proficiently...
If it doesn't look natural in the 3D modeling program, it won't look natural in-game.
As for tri counts, it all depends on how large that object will be in relation to the characters in the scene. If that tree is going to be extremely large, then even 4000 tris is alright.
Judging the appropriate tri counts is easy, you just need to first off, give detail to bigger objects, and give less detail to smaller objects. That's basically the entire basis of optimizing assets in this generation of gaming. I know it seems simple and you already know this, but put it into action. Knowing something but not using that information is the same as not knowing it.
Yeh , this Tree is the biggest of the Forest and Pretty scattered not concentrated into one place , I will make may be a couple of other variants , I don't think that this shoul dhit much the engine since a model should cost few and it loads the same material , the thing is just about the polys , I could even go a little bit higher , I was wondering if for that add lianas and ivis yet or not I have to see if this tree has to , or eventually smooth a bit more the down roots ....
Anyway Does this looks natural? I usually can't judge in the 3dsmax , couse what looks good there usually didn't look good ingame and I had to remake this tree dozens of times from scratch ....
I have seen and I see that the FPS goes down when I hit terrain level where I have my grass , but the grass patch is just dense as 0.7 distance view 0.5 and sprites for it starts at 0.1 the polycount for crass is around 1260 no lods on it yet the grass texture is around 2048 x1024 , on the bare ground look I have like 80 fps .. SO I think it's the grass , but I dont understand why is more expensive than normal , I also using it as procedurarly generated and not manually placed ...
Procedurally generated vegetation takes up much more performance than hand-placed vegetation. Additionally, look at your triangle counts. It's at 4 million, but it should be at 1.5 million max.
Why is it at 4 million I haven't placed much stuff actually the land is almoust empty ....
Plus most of the models are very low poly and have lods ....
Most of the triangle counts are likely coming from the terrain - you can adjust how many triangles are allocated for the terrain on screen through a console cvar... although I don't know the command.
I don't like this tree compared to your other work. The leaves just seem randomly placed and it's creating obvious shapes especially on the top where you can see these triangle shapes. Maybe you can work on placement of leaves or the texture itself to change that shape some. And are you using pot leaves for the leaves??
I don't like this tree compared to your other work. The leaves just seem randomly placed and it's creating obvious shapes especially on the top where you can see these triangle shapes. Maybe you can work on placement of leaves or the texture itself to change that shape some. And are you using pot leaves for the leaves??
What you mean by triangle shape?
I made each brach leave system start from a laerger tree branch , I didnt want to use many leaves couse I was fearing polygound , I will try may be give in more leaves and redo it again , probably the triangle shape is due to the missing ortogonal plane fro the leaves?
the texture is handmade after a kapok tree leaf wich is just like that starshaped leaf , its not marijuana ...
this tree is very big and has to span quite alot over other trees so thats why I was trying to save polys but I guess I should just go for make lots of leaves and even if I hit 7k olys I guess is better than the actual 3k if I can get a pbetter shape may be I leave those as lods ....
anyway skip akll previouse images of this tree and consider just the last one couse I remade each time again ....
I know it's not marijuana lol, jk. What I was saying is that the shapes of the leaves are very distinct towards the top. I pointed out the area that is especially noticeable to me.
Yes you are right I think may be I can solve it by increasing the nmber of polygons there , add a more polygonalshape on the border areas and also to change the texture eliminating some parts of leaves that make a too squarish obvious look when putting in a plane ... I ll have to test and redo all ...
I didn't had much time towork on this lately but here I made just a< small change , I deleted some leaves breaking the "line" of leaves that was atually filling the whole texture sidening to fill the space up to the edges of the polygon , I dunno if this was clear , more simply I just deleted some leaves in key areas to breack the line , I think just making this already solved a lot of the squarish look , what you think? I will redo the whole tree and leaves arrangement the same tough to get a better shape m better odel and more polygons in more visible areas and less in the central parts less visible ....
I think it reads better but as you say placement is gonna do wonders! Also try to cover up the fact that your using flat planes, it's really noticeable right now.
Thanks I am redoing the whole canopy now but , I got to solve a export problem I got right now dunno why befoure I can show , in meanwhile I can say that I added to the normal places 3 types , totally flat for the low poly version , flat with central division along the diagonal and so slightly curved planes , then 4 divided planes and finally 8 divided planes for filling areas of most obviouse flat panel look , I cant judge how looks in 3dsmax couse the rendering isnt working well but I have to see ingame and hope for good....
Ok I remade the shape and leaves arrangement , hod does it looks now what shoudl I change fix in the shape?
3226 polys on the high poly m the lods has less of course....
Apart from the previouse I added a little bit more polys on the edge parts and this is how looks ingame , I am comparing now two different density of leaves , left one is less density larger leaves , more proportional to real size and human reference , the right one is smaller leaves more density and slight smaller compared to real size ... what do you thnk what looks better and more realistic and most of all does it look realistic? ....
Here is an experiment of a double planet beyond horizon , the only thing is I dunno why but the mood is rendered behind the stars so the stars get rendered in front of the moon is that possible to change?
the two planets should reflect the lighting of your scene. they look like they are being lit from the upper right while the only light source we see is from the sun, which is in the middle.
yes unfortunately there is no dynamicity in the cryengine for sky and solar items .... Wish it was so whenever I put the light beam , the sun moves around and would always look odd... I coul dmake the scenery static but then I wouldnt like couse I like it to be dynamic ....
Is the whole two planet visible the direction you were going to take? Personally I never really like the whole giant planet thing in the sky, but that's just me.
I'd say the tress are looking fantastic, and I agree with the whole silhouette issue with the leaves. There still may be some evidence of it left, but seriously, unless you really look at it from a certain angle from in-game, its not really that noticeable.
Oh and just a general question about the engine, how are you finding it? I've never touched Sandbox before, but I imagine it would be easy to use with these kind of scenes.
Is the whole two planet visible the direction you were going to take? Personally I never really like the whole giant planet thing in the sky, but that's just me.
I'd say the tress are looking fantastic, and I agree with the whole silhouette issue with the leaves. There still may be some evidence of it left, but seriously, unless you really look at it from a certain angle from in-game, its not really that noticeable.
Oh and just a general question about the engine, how are you finding it? I've never touched Sandbox before, but I imagine it would be easy to use with these kind of scenes.
Looking great, mate.
I am loving Cryengine but , It is quite limited according to stars and sky system modding , I have worked with the gamebyro engine of Oblivion and there they have a lot of moddability that allows even have cycles and moon phases as well as be able to replace the whiole star systems without having to renounce to dinamicity .....
for rest Cryengine is the best to me and I loook foward for cryengine 3
...
Here is my new Forest Ground , I will cover this with leaves and rocks and some branches togive even more 3d look hope it looks good .... this will be the main floor of the rainforest its completely handmade ...
Here is the Tiling compared to the Crysis game one .....
you have heavier patterning than they do try adding a another couple of stones in the dark area to reduce it
but importance of tiling does depend on how many repetitions you are going to ever see of it
Well its a forest texture so it will be mostly covered by vegetation , the Grass texture tiling pattern was more concerning to my point of view ,I could intervene in this texture still tough since I have all layered leaves / stones / roots / soil etc ... how does it look from a pro point of view?
Here is my new Forest Ground , I will cover this with leaves and rocks and some branches togive even more 3d look hope it looks good .... this will be the main floor of the rainforest its completely handmade ...
Here is the Tiling compared to the Crysis game one .....
What you think og it?
I easily improved the tiling buy quickly darkening the middle of the lighter "squares" that you see you your texture, there's still some "stripes" going through it you can fix by lighting/darkening areas.
The secret to hiding tiling is making it as consistent as possible.
I easily improved the tiling buy quickly darkening the middle of the lighter "squares" that you see you your texture, there's still some "stripes" going through it you can fix by lighting/darkening areas.
The secret to hiding tiling is making it as consistent as possible.
Here is the whole completed ( I hope ) set of palms I did ... I will add some fallen too and some debris like dead leaves and coconuts but should be final ....
could you explain (with pictures maybe ) of how you constructed the palms?
They are very simply done model wise , more complex and lot of work instead texture wise ....
The model is just a tube , blended into the desired shape with the lattice tool in 3dsmax , the top fronds are simply angular V planes with some edges horizontal to bend well , then some planes stuff attached to the top in center , not much visible in the pics I guess....
the texture work is a combo of elements , leaves , trunk and partial trunks to add some shade effect , the leaves are hand made then cut in 3 types of leaves from green , green and yellow and dry , then I made the 3d bump in crazybump and addded some noise in material of the world with a secondary detail bump ... the leaves also have a subsurface scatter map and a specular map . the Trunks are also handmade but by using severall photographic sources couse I couln't fune a decent trunk picture so I hand composed pieces ...
Of course I had constantly reference of a crytek made palm from crysis .
I hope they come out well , next I have to make some dead palms and some trunk palms as well as some dried leaves of palm frunds ...
Also the total polycount of each palm is around 1000 and 1200 , I count on making one lod that brings this down to 800 also , not sure if I can make a second lod around 300 .....
and thanks for appreciation , I am open to any critic ...
Btw I tried to make a lod for one palm and tested the results among a similar palm without .... the lodded palm has 1100 polygons while the lod 800 ...
The result is that with the Lodded palm I have a gain of 20 FPS .... wich is pretty incredible and satisfiyng I guess , so adding a lod to each palm I should just double even the framerate I suppose....
Here is a superstress test with thousands of trees , three different types with all lods around this ratio 1200 / 600 more or less .... distance view 5 and sprite view 0.5 , even if I noticed , if I am not wrong , that under 1 the sprite distance view doesn't change much ... I guess I am lucky that the sprites are coming along nicely with my palms ....
What do you think of the frame rate ?
Of course I do not think to use that many plants but gives an idea of how it can go if I make lods for everything and this is what I am doing right now ... I am lodding allthe 'palms ....
And a super view of the whole Welcome Island totally covered by the palms with a distance view of 7 now .....
Replies
This is the Huge version , the other versions should be coming after ....
The Ceiba Pentandra , a 40 m Emergent Rainforest Tree Also known as the Kapok Tree .....
Total Polycount of the Main model is here 3186
The Lod n 1 is 2011 polys
From top to bottom , couple of pictures of the roots in shadow and on lightning , the canopy from the bottom , the Detail of the leaves and the silouette among other trees ....
If it doesn't look natural in the 3D modeling program, it won't look natural in-game.
As for tri counts, it all depends on how large that object will be in relation to the characters in the scene. If that tree is going to be extremely large, then even 4000 tris is alright.
Judging the appropriate tri counts is easy, you just need to first off, give detail to bigger objects, and give less detail to smaller objects. That's basically the entire basis of optimizing assets in this generation of gaming. I know it seems simple and you already know this, but put it into action. Knowing something but not using that information is the same as not knowing it.
Anyway Does this looks natural? I usually can't judge in the 3dsmax , couse what looks good there usually didn't look good ingame and I had to remake this tree dozens of times from scratch ....
and wow crysis engine really has beautiful lighting
I have seen and I see that the FPS goes down when I hit terrain level where I have my grass , but the grass patch is just dense as 0.7 distance view 0.5 and sprites for it starts at 0.1 the polycount for crass is around 1260 no lods on it yet the grass texture is around 2048 x1024 , on the bare ground look I have like 80 fps .. SO I think it's the grass , but I dont understand why is more expensive than normal , I also using it as procedurarly generated and not manually placed ...
Plus most of the models are very low poly and have lods ....
and yeah 4 mills pushing it try reducing the density of grass some, atm its very lush you can probably halve it without much difference to the look
think about it seriously, think about the max of your screen. Are you ever going to see that texture at 2048 vert 1:1??
no
your pixel density should only be ruled by the screen, not by complexity it's self
I made each brach leave system start from a laerger tree branch , I didnt want to use many leaves couse I was fearing polygound , I will try may be give in more leaves and redo it again , probably the triangle shape is due to the missing ortogonal plane fro the leaves?
the texture is handmade after a kapok tree leaf wich is just like that starshaped leaf , its not marijuana ...
this tree is very big and has to span quite alot over other trees so thats why I was trying to save polys but I guess I should just go for make lots of leaves and even if I hit 7k olys I guess is better than the actual 3k if I can get a pbetter shape may be I leave those as lods ....
anyway skip akll previouse images of this tree and consider just the last one couse I remade each time again ....
3226 polys on the high poly m the lods has less of course....
Apart from the previouse I added a little bit more polys on the edge parts and this is how looks ingame , I am comparing now two different density of leaves , left one is less density larger leaves , more proportional to real size and human reference , the right one is smaller leaves more density and slight smaller compared to real size ... what do you thnk what looks better and more realistic and most of all does it look realistic?
And by Night ...
I'd say the tress are looking fantastic, and I agree with the whole silhouette issue with the leaves. There still may be some evidence of it left, but seriously, unless you really look at it from a certain angle from in-game, its not really that noticeable.
Oh and just a general question about the engine, how are you finding it? I've never touched Sandbox before, but I imagine it would be easy to use with these kind of scenes.
Looking great, mate.
I am loving Cryengine but , It is quite limited according to stars and sky system modding , I have worked with the gamebyro engine of Oblivion and there they have a lot of moddability that allows even have cycles and moon phases as well as be able to replace the whiole star systems without having to renounce to dinamicity .....
for rest Cryengine is the best to me and I loook foward for cryengine 3
...
Here is the Tiling compared to the Crysis game one .....
What you think og it?
but importance of tiling does depend on how many repetitions you are going to ever see of it
haha
I like the two moon idea.
This scene needs some Triple Rainbow POW!
I easily improved the tiling buy quickly darkening the middle of the lighter "squares" that you see you your texture, there's still some "stripes" going through it you can fix by lighting/darkening areas.
The secret to hiding tiling is making it as consistent as possible.
Thanks how did yopu do to darken the areas?
I have darkened a bit the center with a simple layer overlaying , how looks now ?
They are very simply done model wise , more complex and lot of work instead texture wise ....
The model is just a tube , blended into the desired shape with the lattice tool in 3dsmax , the top fronds are simply angular V planes with some edges horizontal to bend well , then some planes stuff attached to the top in center , not much visible in the pics I guess....
the texture work is a combo of elements , leaves , trunk and partial trunks to add some shade effect , the leaves are hand made then cut in 3 types of leaves from green , green and yellow and dry , then I made the 3d bump in crazybump and addded some noise in material of the world with a secondary detail bump ... the leaves also have a subsurface scatter map and a specular map . the Trunks are also handmade but by using severall photographic sources couse I couln't fune a decent trunk picture so I hand composed pieces ...
Of course I had constantly reference of a crytek made palm from crysis .
I hope they come out well , next I have to make some dead palms and some trunk palms as well as some dried leaves of palm frunds ...
Also the total polycount of each palm is around 1000 and 1200 , I count on making one lod that brings this down to 800 also , not sure if I can make a second lod around 300 .....
and thanks for appreciation , I am open to any critic
The result is that with the Lodded palm I have a gain of 20 FPS .... wich is pretty incredible and satisfiyng I guess , so adding a lod to each palm I should just double even the framerate I suppose....
What do you think of the frame rate ?
Of course I do not think to use that many plants but gives an idea of how it can go if I make lods for everything and this is what I am doing right now ... I am lodding allthe 'palms ....
And a super view of the whole Welcome Island totally covered by the palms with a distance view of 7 now .....
notice the FPS ....
The pebbles instead are those ...