Foliage Tutorials

Nemlet17

I'm going to be making a little 3 part series on foliage. Now it may not be the most efficient way out there and by all means if I'm doing something that is teaching something really really bad, please correct me Anyways, enjoy!

Part 1 (the basics):
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb_Lj9VL9AI[/ame]

Snader

I see you're using 4 quads as a plane, which seems like it's a bit unoptimized, especially since you're not using those triangles to reduce transparency overdraw. I'd say use mesh more like this:



As for your workflow, using 2 bend modifiers seems a hassle, just make it an editable poly and move those verts around. It's also a good idea to move the xx to the base of the leaf. That way you can shift-rotate around Z to create clones, and they'll form a simple circle which is much closer to your desired endresult than cloning along the X or Y axis.

So yeah, your method could use some tweaking.

Also, the tutorial is a bit lengthy. It could probably be done in about 2-3 minutes. Best way, I think, to make one is to do the model first, and a voice over later. Edit some of the repetetive actions to run as 2x or 3x speed to condense time. For instance I'd model the leaf, then clone a circle all in regular time with a voiceover, then rotate the first leaf a bit still in real time and speed up all the other leaves.

pumbaa

Just a tip on texturing to make sure there's no weird alpha artefacts, I found this photoshop action in the Unity 3d help section that dilates the border of your selected layer:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/HOWTO-alphamaps.html

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m4dcow

pumbaa wrote: »

Just a tip on texturing to make sure there's no weird alpha artefacts, I found this photoshop action in the Unity 3d help section that dilates the border of your selected layer:
http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/HOWTO-alphamaps.html

The xNormal plugins for photoshop also have a dilate filter.

pumbaa

Well that's a whole lot simpler. Totally missed that, thanks