Best method for creating foliage?

Grums

Hey,

I making a prop which is covered in foliage, mostly leafs. And its my 1st time creating any type of vegitation. Editing a photo reference seems the quickiest and handiest way for creating the foliage, but does sculpting the leaf out in zbrush and polypainting it give greater results?

Cheers.

killingpeople

Wear a bib

Grums

Thanks for the link, will get a read through those.

I also have a question about alphas in 3DS Max, I have a hard time placing the leafs correctly as max doesnt seem to show the alpha in the viewport. I tried using the DX Shader, and enabling alpha but get crazy errors. Is there any way of showing the alpha correctly in the viewport?

Thanks.

Neavah

you should be able to show the alpha map in the view port by using the same method you would to have the diffuse map show in the viewport (hit the checker cube in the material editor on the opacity map).

edit: sorry musta skimed the part about the errors... apologies and good luck!

Eric Chadwick

What kind of errors specifically?

Mark Dygert

Depending on the "crazy errors" you might need to update your video card drivers.

Grums

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

What kind of errors specifically?

Heres an image of what I mean, Max is on the left and UDK on the right. Im using the same textures for both, but get errors just when viewing them in max. Im also using Max 2011.

Vig wrote: »

Depending on the "crazy errors" you might need to update your video card drivers.

You might be right. I've ran into problems with the DX Shader before as well, were enabling it would turn the model invisible.

fearian

Max (and maya) does not support alpha sorting very well in the slightest, so really, no matter what you do, you are likely to get crazy errors like this in the viewport. Max basically doesn't know what to render on top of hat when alpha is involved. its a pain in the arse.

Eric Chadwick

Yep, sorting. Explanation and possible solutions...
http://wiki.polycount.com/TransparencyMap#Sorting_Problems

Grums

Eric : Thanks for the link, will get a read through it now and hopefully find a solution that works.

Cheers.