Foliage?

solidshark91493 · Mar 2015

Edit: Not sure if this should be in the UE section or here. >.>

Ive been trying to broaden my skill set a bit and not focus on one thing too hard lately so I dont grow irritated when I dont meet my expectations and stop trying to improve. So lately I thought Id try to make some sort of forest scene. I have UE4 but I still have almost no knowledge on how to use it.

So, what I'm trying to figure out:

1.How to make the foliage, that being the trees, grass, flowers and anything else. Ive made some good looking grass, but its not poly optimized at all.

2. Rocks, I have the Greg tools script. Havent fiddled with it too much. Id give the cred to the user here that made it but his name fails me atm.

3. Lighting etc. I was learning vray in max but since this will be done in UE4 its a whole new ballgame I assume.

4. Anything else Im not sure of that Id need for a UE4 scene since Im new to it. Also good ways to do a good placement so it looks natural.

Lot to cover Im sure, But gotta start someplace right? I did search for it quite a bit and the foliage creation area of the wiki seems to be MIA. So not sure on that. But any advice is welcome.

jfitch · Mar 2015

1. Alpha planes! Take your high poly foliage and bake it down to some super low poly planes and use alpha cutout.

2. I'm sure the script works well. You may want to learn some sculpting if you have any specific large rocks, but if you're doing lots of small rocks that works.

3. Lighting is tricky no matter what, but if you understand placement from vray then you'll be okay. You have the same type of lights: point, spot, directional. For an outdoor scene you've got it pretty easy because you can probably get away with using one directional light--the sun!
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/index.html

4. Look into the foliage painting tool

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Foliage/index.html

You may also want to look into speedtree!
http://docs.speedtree.com/doku.php?id=ue4_introduction

And this seems to work for me! http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage

Good luck

ghaztehschmexeh · Mar 2015

I'm recently getting into doing foliage. One thing I've learnt is as always, gather good reference for what you are making. Study the structure of the foliage. When placing, there is also structure to take into account. For example, at first I just placed planes of grass around randomly. But then I observed that grass tends to grow in clumps (this can be observed in uncut grass at least). Creating a few different clumps of grass and scattering them around with a bit of height variation looked much better. It also lowered the number of instances needed to make it look good.

I also highly recommend this tutorial: http://3dmotive.com/series/creating-foliage-for-udk.html

And of course there is the polycount wiki

Deadly Nightshade · Mar 2015

You either make highpoly foliage and bake NM and alpha to a lowpoly mesh / Or you get some good photos to resource from (bake NM).

Then in regards to optimization you primarly want to use 8-bit alpha with alpha blend - unless you are developing for mobile. Alpha blend kills performance.

solidshark91493 · Mar 2015

jfitch wrote: »

1. Alpha planes! Take your high poly foliage and bake it down to some super low poly planes and use alpha cutout.

2. I'm sure the script works well. You may want to learn some sculpting if you have any specific large rocks, but if you're doing lots of small rocks that works.

3. Lighting is tricky no matter what, but if you understand placement from vray then you'll be okay. You have the same type of lights: point, spot, directional. For an outdoor scene you've got it pretty easy because you can probably get away with using one directional light--the sun!
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/index.html

4. Look into the foliage painting tool https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Foliage/index.html

You may also want to look into speedtree!
http://docs.speedtree.com/doku.php?id=ue4_introduction

And this seems to work for me! http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage

Good luck

Thanks for replying!
Ill check these links. Apparently the links I saw for it in my searches were outdated. That one works for me as well. Thanks for the advice.

solidshark91493 · Mar 2015

ghaztehschmexeh wrote: »

I'm recently getting into doing foliage. One thing I've learnt is as always, gather good reference for what you are making. Study the structure of the foliage. When placing, there is also structure to take into account. For example, at first I just placed planes of grass around randomly. But then I observed that grass tends to grow in clumps (this can be observed in uncut grass at least). Creating a few different clumps of grass and scattering them around with a bit of height variation looked much better. It also lowered the number of instances needed to make it look good.

I also highly recommend this tutorial: http://3dmotive.com/series/creating-foliage-for-udk.html

And of course there is the polycount wiki

Alright yeah that sounds like a good idea. I like to get a lot of reference for whatever Im making.
Ill check that tutorial out too if I can. Looks great. Just strapped atm.

solidshark91493 · Mar 2015

Deadly Nightshade wrote: »

You either make highpoly foliage and bake NM and alpha to a lowpoly mesh / Or you get some good photos to resource from (bake NM).

Then in regards to optimization you primarly want to use 8-bit alpha with alpha blend - unless you are developing for mobile. Alpha blend kills performance.

This stuff is all new to me. I have little experience texturing. Im trying to learn it too so this can be another assist to it. Im about 3/4 of the way to understanding baking and Uv mapping. Now I just need to learn the types of maps etc.

Foliage?

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