I made an experimental tree to play around with this normal jiggery. Here's my WIP:
I had a much nicer looking one but it used a LOT more foliage meshes and was around 8k triangles (13k verts! :O). So I did a new one with more careful foliage placement (this one). It's about 2k tris. Is that reasonable? Am I going horribly wrong somewhere?
I think you should invest some more polys in the leaf-planes, and bend them a bit, so that it won't completely disappear when you view the plane from a certain angle. How many triangles is the tree trunk?
Feanix: Your leaves are far too dense. When you make your diffuse/alpha make sure that you have a lot of negative space between each leaf. Can't really say how it affects the overdraw, but it certainly makes your trees look a lot better.
Wow Octo, speedtree's come a long way since the last time I used it. That was pretty badass, and would certainly make getting the right tree shape way easier than moving a bunch of sliders around and hitting 'regenerate" all the time.
I genuinely think that being good at using SpeedTree is a lot harder than people give credit for. A lot of people think it's as easy as "Push Button, Receive Tree" which is fair enough for a generic tree that doesn't look like an particular species. But you try to nail down a specific look for a specific species with lots of accuracy and variety and it's a LOT tougher.
Thanks for the tip, TAC! Will try it and post back.
Agreed Feanix. That's why we eventually tossed Speedtree entirely. We were taking longer to make crappier looking trees that performed worse than if we built them by hand. . .
Definitely agree Tumerboy. It's probably a nicer tool if you really really suck at making trees or if you wanna get a whole bunch of mediocre trees fast. I always imagined that one of the benefits of speedtree would be having it populate an area rapidly with a bunch of unique, procedural trees.
It's a pain in the ass to learn making trees manually but I think you get better, more flexible results.
Okay, so I have a new effort. This one is 5k, falling somewhere between the original 8k and the 2k above. The material I've applied to the trees to create the seasonal effect is actually a instanced material with one Scalar Param for "autumness" and another for "winterness". Combining these gives you all the variations of the seasons.
I'm having real trouble with my lightmaps. Normally I just quickly to a new unwrap in modo which supports as many damned UV maps for your geometry as you want. I export from modo directly into max. This is an odd case where I HAVE to to export from max because modo doesn't do smoothing groups at all (crazyness). I can import and OBJ with explicit normals from max into modo and export as an FBX with modo but Unreal has a shitfit when it sees the FBX contains no smoothing groups and redoes all the smoothing groups (which wipes out my explicit normals for the leaves). I can export explicit normals from max just fine but I can seem to find out how to do multiple UV maps for the same geometry in max. In fact, I've seen it suggest that this is impossible. Really? Really Autodesk? Anyways, here's some progress.
EDIT: Another idea I had was import the leaves a completely seperate meshes. This is mostly because the overdraw on several thousand completely transparent polies is kinda horrendous and a massive waste. Also, it would allow me to unwrap the trunk's lightmap UVW map properly. I could then just package the tree and the leaves as a prefab.
they are called uv channels and can be changed in the unwrap UVW modifier by changing the map channel to the desired number and hitting "reset uvws".
it allows more channels than you'd probably ever need. just like modo ^^
I don't see the benefits from either of these methods. The tree shots in the Wolfire blog don't look like they're avoiding the planar look very well. Maybe I'm missing something?
I don't see the benefits from either of these methods. The tree shots in the Wolfire blog don't look like they're avoiding the planar look very well. Maybe I'm missing something?
Wolfire's examples indeed don't show it very well but the method should work rather well for photosourced leaves. Personally, I didn't have the time to test it myself, but its principles are similar to what I'm doing. When making my diffuse I always make highpoly branches and have the leaves point into readically different directions - this way, when baked down to normal maps you get a nice variety of colours. It really makes your canopy stand out a bit more. Leaves get a bit more depth and volume, though it's best to keep the effect subtle.
Personally I prefer when my normal maps contain a lot of varied hues; the example you posted has leaves facing (more or less) the same direction; that rarely happens in nature. Usually, I rotate the leaves to grow from the branch at very sharp angles, it gives you a nice color variation in the normal map and counters that planar look a little bit more.
I'm having lots of trouble making my tree look good in UDK, it's looking pretty solid in Max viewport however. Anyone have any suggestions on lighting? I've used normal thief so it should just be a matter of choosing good lights and maybe some material tweaks, any ideas?
Has anyone got a tree succesfully from 3dsmax into UDK using an FBX file? I'm getting the same issue as the user above. When I import into Unreal the UV / Texture is completely wiped out. It also complains about having no smoothing groups.
Setup is 3dsmax 2009 64 bit and I used the original normalthief if that matters any.
I go from this (without explicit normals unfortunately)
I feel like an idiot now since I knew it was probably this; the max fbx exporter sucks (or atleast mine does) I sent it to a friend who's using maya and it works fine now.
Hey, Im kind of new to all of this, half of it I had to search on what everyone was talking about. But I understand most of it now.
Very useful thread, and although I've never really tried making foliage. I'll have my first go on it. With all the help here, I hope to achieve something reasonable. And will post a result of it.
Thanks everybody for their help
I made an experimental tree to play around with this normal jiggery. Here's my WIP:
I had a much nicer looking one but it used a LOT more foliage meshes and was around 8k triangles (13k verts! :O). So I did a new one with more careful foliage placement (this one). It's about 2k tris. Is that reasonable? Am I going horribly wrong somewhere?
My suggestion instead is not focus much on the number of polys but on the texture itself It looks too much dense to me and I discovered that I go0t much better results if the texture isn't filling up all the space but actually leaving a lot of empty areas , asymetrically around the borders of the texture and also gaps and holes , the density will instead be given out by the polygons itself after , but still leave the see throught effect that with your planes and toodense foliage you kind of loose ...
I am having trouble getting the SlideNormalTheif script to work in Max 2010. I was able to get NormalTheif to run perfectly fine but when I try and run the Slide version nothing seems to happen. I dont even get the pop up window that shows up in the wiki.
I almost never use scripts so I am not sure if I am doing something wrong. Just went to MAXScript and used Run Script with both NormalTheif and SlideNormalTheif.
You'll need to bind the script to a key to actually trigger the menu - it won't show up automatically. You should be able to create a shortcut in Customize User Interface.
I think I'm encountering the same problem as Feanix, exporting as .FBX from Max and have a second UV channel. UDK keeps bugging me about overlayed triangles on the second UV map when I'm 100% positive there aren't any.
When I export to ASE they work perfectly fine.
This stuff's really breaking me up since I need to do a complete foliage package...
Do you guys think it's worth even using explicit normals considering the hassle it's giving? You still end up with 4K worth of triangles, could spend those on bent and more detailed planes as well right?
I think I'm encountering the same problem as Feanix, exporting as .FBX from Max and have a second UV channel. UDK keeps bugging me about overlayed triangles on the second UV map when I'm 100% positive there aren't any.
When I export to ASE they work perfectly fine.
It should still import the file even with overlapping UVs on the 2nd channel. Once you've got it imported you can then use the UV display in the static mesh editor to see what it is complaining about. It may be you've got some UV's outside the 0-1 range.
If all else fails you can import it without a second UV and just use the auto unrwap function in UE3
I've tried both, when I use UDK to make the unwrap for me it either destroys the explicit normal effect or the map is so horrendously bad that it's useless.
When I look at the UV all I see is a criss cross of wires, not even the original outlines of the UV set remain.
This was asked in General Discussion, so I figured I'd post it here as it seems to be "The Foliage" thread and I didn't want my reply lost to the sands of time...
Anyone know of any great tutorial out there for creating tree leaves? I use modo and i was thinking i could create several poly planes of my leaves and use the Tack tool to place loads of leaves on my tree quickly, but i thought, someone out there must have created a good tutorial on doing something like this already?
Or just tutorials on plants in general would be helpful if anyone knows of anything good. would really appreciate any info. thanks in advance
Replies
was not aware of those. might be nice.
Lol - I think blaming the 'secret hidden magic transform' was my version of the age-old excuse 'well it works on MY machine'
ParoXum, if you're able to send me your model I can have a look at why it's still not working - contact@slidelondon.com
Rob
Great script by the way. Thanks
I had a much nicer looking one but it used a LOT more foliage meshes and was around 8k triangles (13k verts! :O). So I did a new one with more careful foliage placement (this one). It's about 2k tris. Is that reasonable? Am I going horribly wrong somewhere?
[ame]
Also, try this: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1162581&postcount=13
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1162822&postcount=19
Thanks for the tip, TAC! Will try it and post back.
Maybe it's improved since then.
It's a pain in the ass to learn making trees manually but I think you get better, more flexible results.
I'm having real trouble with my lightmaps. Normally I just quickly to a new unwrap in modo which supports as many damned UV maps for your geometry as you want. I export from modo directly into max. This is an odd case where I HAVE to to export from max because modo doesn't do smoothing groups at all (crazyness). I can import and OBJ with explicit normals from max into modo and export as an FBX with modo but Unreal has a shitfit when it sees the FBX contains no smoothing groups and redoes all the smoothing groups (which wipes out my explicit normals for the leaves). I can export explicit normals from max just fine but I can seem to find out how to do multiple UV maps for the same geometry in max. In fact, I've seen it suggest that this is impossible. Really? Really Autodesk? Anyways, here's some progress.
EDIT: Another idea I had was import the leaves a completely seperate meshes. This is mostly because the overdraw on several thousand completely transparent polies is kinda horrendous and a massive waste. Also, it would allow me to unwrap the trunk's lightmap UVW map properly. I could then just package the tree and the leaves as a prefab.
it allows more channels than you'd probably ever need. just like modo ^^
Wolfire's examples indeed don't show it very well but the method should work rather well for photosourced leaves. Personally, I didn't have the time to test it myself, but its principles are similar to what I'm doing. When making my diffuse I always make highpoly branches and have the leaves point into readically different directions - this way, when baked down to normal maps you get a nice variety of colours. It really makes your canopy stand out a bit more. Leaves get a bit more depth and volume, though it's best to keep the effect subtle.
I will try to post some examples tomorrow.
I thought he was talking about massaging the vertex normals somehow, which is a different thing entirely.
Personally I prefer when my normal maps contain a lot of varied hues; the example you posted has leaves facing (more or less) the same direction; that rarely happens in nature. Usually, I rotate the leaves to grow from the branch at very sharp angles, it gives you a nice color variation in the normal map and counters that planar look a little bit more.
I'm thinking my best bet is to have the tree self illuminated (not sure how to do), but still cast shadows.
Edit: have it lighting OK, just with a directional light,
Setup is 3dsmax 2009 64 bit and I used the original normalthief if that matters any.
I go from this (without explicit normals unfortunately)
to this...
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855
Very useful thread, and although I've never really tried making foliage. I'll have my first go on it. With all the help here, I hope to achieve something reasonable. And will post a result of it.
Thanks everybody for their help
I almost never use scripts so I am not sure if I am doing something wrong. Just went to MAXScript and used Run Script with both NormalTheif and SlideNormalTheif.
Anyone have the problem or know a work around?
When I export to ASE they work perfectly fine.
This stuff's really breaking me up since I need to do a complete foliage package...
Do you guys think it's worth even using explicit normals considering the hassle it's giving? You still end up with 4K worth of triangles, could spend those on bent and more detailed planes as well right?
It should still import the file even with overlapping UVs on the 2nd channel. Once you've got it imported you can then use the UV display in the static mesh editor to see what it is complaining about. It may be you've got some UV's outside the 0-1 range.
If all else fails you can import it without a second UV and just use the auto unrwap function in UE3
When I look at the UV all I see is a criss cross of wires, not even the original outlines of the UV set remain.