Thanks so much for all the positive feedback and suggestions. s_ource, you're doing some interesting things that i didn't anticipate, but i can add an option that gives you a consistent number of leaf meshes for each branch.
Right now the script tapers off the Base Branch Leaf Number value the higher it goes up the trunk of the tree... so for instance, if you set Branch Start # to 0, and base Branch Leaf Number to 30, there will be 30 branches on the bottom branch, and it will reduce slight the higher up the tree the branches go to compensate for the smaller branch size.
It avoids clumping at the top of the tree that would increase overdraw drastically.
I'll go ahead and add all of these great suggestions to the change list to help you guys out!
This script kicks ass. I've just been asked to model some trees and, BOOM, this little beauty pops up! Thanks very much, Virtuosic! Your kindness is only exceeded by your charm and wit.
You should make some icon or something that you can press to get back into the sxript on trees you have already made and crossed down the window, Maybey id excist i havent atleast seen any, and you should make the leafes to become refrences of the mesh you select and not copys so the leafes changes when you change the original obect.
I'm really enjoying working with this. If by any chance you're compiling a wishlist of additional features, I'd totally love to see the following:
--presets for types of trees (i.e. pine like, full deciduous)
--the ability to save out a configuration so you can pull it up later
--the ability to add sub-branches to the branches
So far love it, haven't had any chugging problems. It's been very easy to get a good base mesh with ability to customize further, and in general I can see this as a permanent addition to my workflow. Thanks!
EDIT: SOLVED... :poly122: I didn't realise that you were to create a seperate mesh for leaves, thought it also generated them not only constraining them. Good tool though!..and (now) easy!
I don't know if it's a bug but I can't create leaves for my trees, I've looked at the video but it's not clear. I first generated the tree, then I presume you select the branches and then 'add selection', then told I can't add leaves from the active tree... I've tried a few other things but I can't seem to any leaves on my trees!.. I've also changed the pivot points as said on the first page but no difference
Would it be possible to easily replace the trunk and main branches meshes? Just a button to select a trunk mesh and a main branches mesh?
The number of segments should be separate for the "guide splines" and the tree trunk/branches mesh. That way you can have an evenly subdivided mesh but still have the angles (not the gradual round curves) that a tree has in it's trunk and branches.
Awesome. I was creating the same tool some days ago for my new scene xD So... I feel a mix of happyness and dissapointment xD Weird feeling indeed
All I can say, is that its perfect.
I have a request, what about a bit of fractal idea?. Branches in branches...
Also, an optimization, less segments in the upper branches, based o size.
Ill post my results soon.
Thanks for this!
Wow, I just used this to make a pretty sweet tree! Thanks so much!!!
Just a suggestion (because I like the look of those crazy trees in New Zealand), but you should add in a roots section too. Like a check box to have roots, and then options to make them curly and crazy too (:
Hey Ryan, I've been using this for a couple of days and I'm really loving it! It does seem to me to lack a few features that would make it much easier to use and less... um, 'frustrating' in places!
My biggest issue is that once you start tweaking and moving splines around, if you touch any of the treegen settings, the tree will 'reset' itself and you will loose your changes. This came up a couple of times when I was moving branches and then found I needed to tweak the leaf settings after the fact. A solution I would propose would be a 'lock/unlock' checkbox for Trunk Branches and Leaves. You use the branch controls and then check 'lock'. now when you twiddle with the leaf controls treegen only affects the leaves and the branches don't flicker about or reset.
This leads me to the +/- spinners on some options. When you have a variation value plugged in, while you scale other options the branches or leaves will 'flicker' furiously between variations and this makes it hard to see what you are trying to do or what effect another spinner is having. At the moment I leave the +/- spinners blank until the very end, but it would be nice if I could just check them off while I adjust something else instead of having to reset them to 0 and then finding the right number later.
Lastly, I would be nice to be able to adjust the curve of the branch lengths as they go up the tree. At the moment the bottom-most two branches tend to be very long, and I find the upper branches too short. I just end up tweaking the splines later.
Sorry for the wall of text! I hope it makes sense, and sounds reasonable. Other features other people have already mentioned; the ability to save presets, fractal branches. I love the plugin, thanks for all the work you've put into it! :poly121:
edit: oh, it would be nice if it warned you before you exit if you havn't baked the tree yet!
Better Default Object Naming!:
Object Name system by user. (Can give basename+basenumber for the bake, then Under-slash, then part(if its trunk branch or leaf) then a number again. in this way its easier to work with.
You could chose if u want Random object color or you can specify one for branches, trunks and leafs separately. Or by leaf versions.
Drag and drop material choosing. (Improves interface speed)
Secondary branches with secondary leaves. More details cuter closeup trees.
A 'remember' modifier on tree trunk or tree helper(or instanced on all objects). It has 2 list of scene object, where you can easily select the leaves or branches of the selected tree by name.
Also it could also contain some option settings like a noise phase parameter for wind etc...
also if the light comes from above the cheats of the tree are pretty visible, you should do something with the secondary branches, or some special features to put some planes from above or something...
I've just given it a quick try again and sorely miss some controls that are more common in Tree[d] for instance... being able to change the 'roundness' of the tree (how fast the top branches shrink vs lower ones)
I also got in some trouble trying to collapse the tree after I'd closed the dialogue box for it (it shouldn't let you close it till you've baked it?)
All in I could see myself using this if it had a few more controls. Spline management that allows you to save edited paths would be nice... so you can kinda skip forward and backward through the build process. Right now it's very lossy and you have to work forward in a specific fashion, and ending with a bake is almost essential without having headaches later trying to export/collapse the mesh.
For free though this is amazing. Set your workflow, plan things before building, and it seems to work nicely indeed!
Did anyone see that university project where someone filmed trees and a computer algorithm generated trees with the correct skeleton of branches etc? It looked very powerful.
Maybe only a few more years and we can just film some footage of trees we like and feed some coefficients into a vert/pixel shader
Do you render out a version of the tree with normals/alpha etc so it's a 2d plane, and place it after say 200m?
Do you do this for clumps of trees so they are one batch?
Just wondering how to optimise when you use this approach manually.
Current thoughts are to use one atlas for a whole bunch of trees, then I can bunch a whole clump of trees (maybe 20) into one batch.
Then I can have a few 2d plane or X trees as LOD models with appropriate textures on them.
Thinking it'd be interesting to put these textures in the mipmap channels of the DDS so I save on memory in RAM, since up close we see the poly tree and high-end mip, on distant trees we will only ever see the mip, so use mips for those trees?
Main stumbling block I can see is that depending on viewing angle the pop from 3D to 2D imposter will be obvious to the viewer...
Has anyone implemented a shader to blend between the LOD models like SpeedTree does?
Alright, I'm still pretty new to this. I gather that this script doesn't actually make the leaves. So How should I make the leaves to use with the script? Also not even some of the 3ds max basic textures are showing up when I try to add bark, how can I fix this?
I'm sure I can figure all of this out on my own with enough dilly dallying, tinkering, and what have you. But if anyone can help me figure it out faster they'd be awesome. XD
Necro post here. I don't think it's fully abandoned, but people seem to have lost interest in this amazing little tool. I am just starting to use it in 3ds max 2015 and it's working okay. Some issues I'm seeing are, the bark texture won't apply to the trunk or branches using the tool's button (I was trying to apply a procedural checker texture map so maybe that's it?). I'm also noticing that the leaves are all only appearing on one side of each branch. They are not populating all the way 360 degrees around each branch. I've tweaked a ton of settings and none seemed to have resolve that.
Replies
its just a wild guess and might change nothing though
Hooooo!
just need to get my foliage planes looking right now
Thanks so much for all the positive feedback and suggestions. s_ource, you're doing some interesting things that i didn't anticipate, but i can add an option that gives you a consistent number of leaf meshes for each branch.
Right now the script tapers off the Base Branch Leaf Number value the higher it goes up the trunk of the tree... so for instance, if you set Branch Start # to 0, and base Branch Leaf Number to 30, there will be 30 branches on the bottom branch, and it will reduce slight the higher up the tree the branches go to compensate for the smaller branch size.
It avoids clumping at the top of the tree that would increase overdraw drastically.
I'll go ahead and add all of these great suggestions to the change list to help you guys out!
Cheers,
Ryan
I noticed that tabbing through the selection fields appear random in nature. It would be nice to tab down through the fields quickly.
my story as well. Looking forward to trying this. Thanks a ton! :thumbup:
It looks pretty good for just messing with the settings, but it still seems a little fidgy with the vertex to spline.
With some tweaks, I think the script would be a great basis for creating foliage.
Thanks again Ryan!
This looks like one of the best looking tree generators i have seen or used, and its free? Awesome.
Props to you man for cranking this out and sharing it!
an integration of this would be awesome... automitcally create reference geometry, bake vertexnormals and so on
True, some added vertex normals tools would be awesome with it, using default geo like a sphere or something. Similair to NormalThief.
Will play around with it later today and get back to you if I have any suggestions etc
@edit: kk found it
@edit:edit: heh, found that one as well, seed in the shape stack
--presets for types of trees (i.e. pine like, full deciduous)
--the ability to save out a configuration so you can pull it up later
--the ability to add sub-branches to the branches
So far love it, haven't had any chugging problems. It's been very easy to get a good base mesh with ability to customize further, and in general I can see this as a permanent addition to my workflow. Thanks!
I don't know if it's a bug but I can't create leaves for my trees, I've looked at the video but it's not clear. I first generated the tree, then I presume you select the branches and then 'add selection', then told I can't add leaves from the active tree... I've tried a few other things but I can't seem to any leaves on my trees!.. I've also changed the pivot points as said on the first page but no difference
Would it be possible to easily replace the trunk and main branches meshes? Just a button to select a trunk mesh and a main branches mesh?
The number of segments should be separate for the "guide splines" and the tree trunk/branches mesh. That way you can have an evenly subdivided mesh but still have the angles (not the gradual round curves) that a tree has in it's trunk and branches.
All I can say, is that its perfect.
I have a request, what about a bit of fractal idea?. Branches in branches...
Also, an optimization, less segments in the upper branches, based o size.
Ill post my results soon.
Thanks for this!
Just a suggestion (because I like the look of those crazy trees in New Zealand), but you should add in a roots section too. Like a check box to have roots, and then options to make them curly and crazy too (:
Sorry for the wall of text! I hope it makes sense, and sounds reasonable. Other features other people have already mentioned; the ability to save presets, fractal branches. I love the plugin, thanks for all the work you've put into it! :poly121:
edit: oh, it would be nice if it warned you before you exit if you havn't baked the tree yet!
Is there any chance that you update this tool with some nice improvements that were suggested here in the topic?
Yeah the normal align suggestion is great idea,
Better Default Object Naming!:
Object Name system by user. (Can give basename+basenumber for the bake, then Under-slash, then part(if its trunk branch or leaf) then a number again. in this way its easier to work with.
You could chose if u want Random object color or you can specify one for branches, trunks and leafs separately. Or by leaf versions.
Drag and drop material choosing. (Improves interface speed)
Secondary branches with secondary leaves. More details cuter closeup trees.
A 'remember' modifier on tree trunk or tree helper(or instanced on all objects). It has 2 list of scene object, where you can easily select the leaves or branches of the selected tree by name.
Also it could also contain some option settings like a noise phase parameter for wind etc...
also if the light comes from above the cheats of the tree are pretty visible, you should do something with the secondary branches, or some special features to put some planes from above or something...
I also got in some trouble trying to collapse the tree after I'd closed the dialogue box for it (it shouldn't let you close it till you've baked it?)
All in I could see myself using this if it had a few more controls. Spline management that allows you to save edited paths would be nice... so you can kinda skip forward and backward through the build process. Right now it's very lossy and you have to work forward in a specific fashion, and ending with a bake is almost essential without having headaches later trying to export/collapse the mesh.
For free though this is amazing. Set your workflow, plan things before building, and it seems to work nicely indeed!
Did anyone see that university project where someone filmed trees and a computer algorithm generated trees with the correct skeleton of branches etc? It looked very powerful.
Maybe only a few more years and we can just film some footage of trees we like and feed some coefficients into a vert/pixel shader
Dave
I'm curious how people approach LOD's.
Do you render out a version of the tree with normals/alpha etc so it's a 2d plane, and place it after say 200m?
Do you do this for clumps of trees so they are one batch?
Just wondering how to optimise when you use this approach manually.
Current thoughts are to use one atlas for a whole bunch of trees, then I can bunch a whole clump of trees (maybe 20) into one batch.
Then I can have a few 2d plane or X trees as LOD models with appropriate textures on them.
Thinking it'd be interesting to put these textures in the mipmap channels of the DDS so I save on memory in RAM, since up close we see the poly tree and high-end mip, on distant trees we will only ever see the mip, so use mips for those trees?
Main stumbling block I can see is that depending on viewing angle the pop from 3D to 2D imposter will be obvious to the viewer...
Has anyone implemented a shader to blend between the LOD models like SpeedTree does?
Hmmm
Thanks
Dave
Thanks
But I don't understand how to add leaves to tree,can anyone explain to me how do that,please ?
I'm sure I can figure all of this out on my own with enough dilly dallying, tinkering, and what have you. But if anyone can help me figure it out faster they'd be awesome. XD