Kroke Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 What is the best method for using 50ish trees and/or plants? Are you guys using RPCs or are you using models or what? I'm brand spankin' new here so ANYTHING you can tell me will be very helpful, thank you guys!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Is this for still images or animations? Stills, I almost always collage them in after. Usually tiffs with alpha channels. Animations, it's always been RPCs, but that may. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 I rpc trees, people, etc. They are very valuable because they do not kill render times. I recommend them. If you dont want to use them, then you can make a plane. And then map an image of a tree in the diffuse slot, and the alpha in the oppacity slot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kroke Posted March 20, 2004 Author Share Posted March 20, 2004 Thanks guys. I guess I will have to purchase the RPC plug to use my RPCs in that case. I'm doing a commercial building (5 story) that has a full parking lot with prob over 50 trees. I got the RPC trees free when I used to visit the accurender newsgroup. Some guy gave a slew of them out that he'd made. I am just learning max, my roomate will be the 'max man' on this project as he has his own licensed version. I will hope to learn a lot from him and you all on these boards. Thank you for the input! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 like saturn says, RPC is the way to go, especially for anims. saying that, i use c4d these days where RPC isn't yet available (i really miss them) so i use star shaped opacity maps to pretty good effect. check out this thread, especially the animation, it contains all opacity mapped trees. - http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=4884 (sorry for the shameless plug, only im an attention whore ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eagle Posted March 22, 2004 Share Posted March 22, 2004 speedtree is more commonly used these days, faster. good result, if you build your own leaf library(not difficult at all, just take some leaf pictures and edit), you can creat any kind of trees you want at any complexity(high, medium, low) . you spend much less money than rpc, those rpc library are horribly expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Mann Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 RPC trees are generally pretty good but they are very much WYSIWYG. I have just done an animation where there is a court full of cherry trees. Unfortunately the RPC cherry trees canopy is too low so I have increased their size. The client would also like to see more sky through the canopy; again thats a fixed item with RPC. An annoyance with RPC is that the base of the trunk in't necessarily at the insert/origin point. I have trees skidding out of the tree pits as you move past them. I also find it necessary to use an alpha map object to create the shadow for the tree Conclusion, if the RPC tree fits your requirements in terms of appearance or is a little way off in the distance then they are great. Otherwise... Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted March 23, 2004 Share Posted March 23, 2004 Hi Jim. I was wondering, why do you have to use an oppacity map for the shadows? Are the existing shadows not performing as you would like the to. Just wondering. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Mann Posted March 24, 2004 Share Posted March 24, 2004 Jason, Calvino56 best summed it up in another thread as follows: "The shadows from RPC objects in animations is even stranger, they twist and grow like they're reaching for your camera. It's freaky." The RPC shadows don't behave for us, are you finding them to be okay for animations? Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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