RyanSpaulding Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 What's the best method? I've been playing with this a bit and the opacity mapping of the leaves KILLS my render time. Is there a better way to do this? Vegetation is key IMO...helps bring life to a render. I do have Xfrog by the way...in case I need to export with different options. I'm also experimenting with getting convincing grass going but am having problems. Displacement looks too straight and I hear VRay fur is ungodly to work with for grass. Any ideas if rendering grass via displacement in scanline and coming it in would be an appropriate? I'm not too concerned with the speed (I'm coming from Vue 5 Infinite so I'm used to waiting...ha) unless it gets crazy on me. I'll post my 1st work soon....still comig to grips with the material system which I'm just STRUGGLING with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Eloy Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 Well, Ryan, you can use XFrog trees with VRay. The best way, however, is to convert them into VRay Proxy meshes. It makes your display a lot faster and takes less memory to render. For the grass, displacement is the best method (at least for me). About the straight look you get, you can always have a more detailed displacement map (with more variation, having not only black and white, but also some grey, so you'll get different heights for your grass). Also, use a mask in the diffuse slot, so you get a more varied look (not that plain green). Looking forward to seeing your first work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanSpaulding Posted August 21, 2006 Author Share Posted August 21, 2006 Looking forward to seeing your first work! Hah. We'll see. My 1st project is for an understudy of Frank Lloyd Wright...and it shows. I've got tons of glass, copper trim, stained glass, and it's supposed to be in a wooded area, and I'm learning on the fly. I _expect_ a ram/Max crash. I'm just not sure what GI methods would work best...trying to follow the advice of these and the chaosgroup forums and my mind is a mush from all the info and advice. Ha, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Eloy Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 I bet you see many people talking about LightCache + Irr Map, right? That's the one I'd go for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted August 21, 2006 Share Posted August 21, 2006 You've switched all your xfrog materials to vraymtls, right? That will help. Also, from what I've read, you want to change the blur of the map to .01, and set the filtering to "none" and this should help with some things. Grass you definately want to do with displacement. If you don't like yours, check the chaos site and there's probably 10 variations of people's grass that you can download materials for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanSpaulding Posted August 22, 2006 Author Share Posted August 22, 2006 Grass you definately want to do with displacement. If you don't like yours, check the chaos site and there's probably 10 variations of people's grass that you can download materials for. Hmn. How did I miss this? And still am? LOL Thanks for the advice. I just heard people are changing the leaves to geometry and it's rendering like 6x faster...but doesn't look as nice. As I always do, I'll go with the better looking version Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manta Posted August 22, 2006 Share Posted August 22, 2006 Ya, I think you'll find that vray would rather deal with huge amounts of geometry, than lots of opacity maps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricardo Eloy Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 Doesn't even take a lot. One opacity tree renders slower than 5 geometry ones (believe, I've tested it myself). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 Is there a way to quickly change flat opacity leaves into model leaves that have the correct leaf shape? JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 I wouldn't say that it's quick, but someone over on the chaos forum made a nifty little tool that will replace all objects of a certain material ID in the tree with another object of your choosing. I'm not at work at the moment, so I don't know the exact thing to looks for, I'll look into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noiré Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 This is the post from CahosGirup fourm: http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14248&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=leaves+convert&start=0 but it appears that the script-link is broken at the moment. The script certainly is nifty, but unfortunately there is no way to control the rotation of the replaced leaves, which makes useless it most situations (unless you have a really generic looking leaf, of course not always a viable option. Bottom line: Steer away from tree-solutions that involve opacity-mapping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 Yeah, I checked the link this morning and found it didn't work anymore. While the script might do exactly what you'd like, for background or midground trees it should work fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted August 23, 2006 Share Posted August 23, 2006 Thanks for that. I wonder if I posed the question on the Max forum someone would be willing to write a similar script. Unfortunatly I don't know how to script any further that recording macros. The closest thing I ever wrote was a routine to turn a plane into a window frame with glass. It was crude but worked a treat. Until then I'll just continue with trees in Post. JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
puciorek Posted August 24, 2006 Share Posted August 24, 2006 Xfrog allows to modify the geometry of the leaves. You just need to spend some time and explore the options with in xfrog. It' not as simple and straight forward as Onyxx trees but it's definiyely do-able. Good luck Darius Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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