Testing SpeedTree with VRay

[chriswong]

I got strange and serious problem with speedtree when using vray rendered

 

[ATTACH]23684[/ATTACH]

See this one!

 

Is here anyone can help me?

 

I found a way avoid the problem, but not really fixed.

in speedtree cad, use trunk's texture map instead frond texture map, and set the frond size factor to whatever you want, save and use max import again.done.

just happened on vray render. i use vray 1.50 RC3 and 3dsmax 9

don't know way the problem only happened on frond, very strange, right?

[johnvid]

Years ago, I used speed tree, and it seemed to bring my machine to a halt, that was without Vray, so I never ever looked at it again, Prefare the Xfrog/Onyx and even RPC's to Speed Tree, and if you can get used to the editor of XFROG you could have endless variation( I am not sure but I think the Bionatics trees are modeled using Xfrog and repackaged???).

 

The prefered workflow would be to convert all plants and trees to Vray Proxies(single objects, as this keeps all the seperate textures) and then Group those seperate proxies and save them out as new Plants or Trees. Next time you need one, Just merge it into your new scene.

 

I also read about the problems with Speed Tree and Opacity Maps,

but its funny how Tom Lufts Ivy Gen, also relies heavily on mapping the leaves using opacity maps, and you dont hear anyone complaining about the speed bump there!

 

So personally I would say SpeedTree is a very clever marketing name not a true description of the product. It is perhaps fast in the sense that Modeling a tree without it could possibly take longer.

 

I also read that there is a CUTOFF value that can be adjusted to speed things up but I am not sure which one, anyone know the answer please post the info.

[chriswong]

Thanks for the Reply. i will try XFROG late. XD

[EricMLevy]

There has been a lot of discussion on these and the Chaos Group forums as to whether or not Digimation's SpeedTree plugin can be used in V-Ray.

 

They can.

 

You just have to go through a little workaround to get them looking good.

 

So here it is.

 

Tutorial: SpeedTree in V-Ray!

 

Yay! WOOO!

 

Also, a plug for myself. Check out Sweaty Robot.

[skana]

The natFX trees (http://www.natfx.com) also work very well with Vray...check out this image...use the natFX trees and plants in full geometry mode and convert them into VRay proxies in order to render them in large quantities with VRay

[slanier]

I found this thread to be interesting and helpful. I wanted to post one of my renders to get some feedback and see if you guys could draw anything from my experiences, and give me some help on my work.

 

First of all, I am pretty new to V-Ray, and am currently using the demo version 1.50sp2.

The render I attached contains just under 1000 speedtrees. None are instanced with v-ray proxy... all are created with speedforest, and I am using 5 different tree models.

 

I found it very helpful to go back through the speedtree materials and "adapt" them for vray...

change all materials from standard to vraymtl, and set all the bitmap filtering accordingly.

For this render, all my bitmaps are set to 0.35 blur for diffuse maps & bumps... and 0.01 for opacity maps. Pyramidal filtering on everything.

 

I am using a vray sun & sky, and a vray light, set to dome.

I am using light cache & irradiance map, irradiance map set to very low...

adaptive dmc AA, area filter 1.7

min 1 , max 4 sampling

no environment overrides, and I am using Reinhard color mapping set to 0.5 burn value.

 

also using vrayphysicalcam.

 

all that to say that i was able to get a render out @ 10 minutes.

 

The one question I have is... is speedtree able to create vray proxies? I am wondering if this would speed up the renders even more so that I could raise some of the quality settings without taking a huge rendering hit.

 

Thanks!

 

 

EDIT:

 

After checking some more tutorials I scraped my vray sun idea, in exchange for a vray dome light set to sphere, and i created a sky dome with a vraylt material applied to it. With this setup I was able to get my scene down to 6.5 minutes, with about 1500 speedtrees and 30 rpcs.

 

I also changed my color mode to HSV exponential, dark 0.5 light 1.5 gamma 1.0

 

any help/comments/questions are welcomed

Edited October 14, 2009 by slanier

[LuckyST]

impressive.