Using alpha cards for leaves

Notes

Anyone know a good way to set up alpha cards to simulate mass on this??? I've tried other combinations but it still doesn't look like the original.

Pola

Are each alpha card just one leaf or have you painted multiple leaves to another texture that you use for them?

The lighting is pretty evenly distributed, try randomizing the vertex normals a bit, or distribute the vertex normals to smaller clumps like you drew over the reference if you distributed them all together previously.

Just need to break it up so you're not getting that sheet look if you did make a texture with lots of that leaf image is there much alpha between the leaves or is it just solid chunk of green with only alpha along the outside of the leaves?

Notes

each alpha card looks like the pic of the single leaf....might be kind of hard to see but its comprised of clumped up juniper leaves...
Im thinking I need to go back and add some more "alphas" to my alpha cards...the texture I have currently is too dense right???

Pola

If each alphacard is just using the small image there as a texture it looks like alot of them are layed on top of one another rather than intersecting, could you post a wireframe?

Eric Chadwick

Yes, the alpha is too dense. You need spaces between the juniper needles. The needles also need to be thicker... your texture looks more like hair right now. Also would help to add a normal map.

A recent thread with some info.
Best Practices for Creating 3D Trees for Games

Notes

The alpha itself wasn't that size, I'd just resize it to fit in the picture...the actual size of the alpha itself is 512x512

Pola wrote: »

The lighting is pretty evenly distributed, try randomizing the vertex normals a bit, or distribute the vertex normals to smaller clumps like you drew over the reference if you distributed them all together previously.

I had to do some goggle-ing on this...and it lead me here http://wiki.polycount.com/VertexNormal
thanks for that...never knew about it