Matt Sugden Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 I'm having to model a very large area, and with the project being very early on the development I need a quick and easy solution for placing large numbers of trees. I've considered doing blobs, but they look a bit naff, and I've looked at speed tree but I dont have 10k to spend. Any other ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 crossed planes with cutout maps of trees? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted June 28, 2011 Author Share Posted June 28, 2011 I was hoping for something a little more refined than billboards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beestee Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 iToo Forest Pack Pro if the terrain is uneven, Forest Pack Free if it is level. The original functionality of this software was specifically for this (placing many trees quickly). Forest Pack Pro comes with a bunch of 2D trees if I recall correctly. Lots of tools available in there to place the trees, such as object painting, spline boundaries, and density maps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted June 28, 2011 Author Share Posted June 28, 2011 iToo Forest Pack Pro if the terrain is uneven, Forest Pack Free if it is level. The original functionality of this software was specifically for this (placing many trees quickly). Forest Pack Pro comes with a bunch of 2D trees if I recall correctly. Lots of tools available in there to place the trees, such as object painting, spline boundaries, and density maps. looks interesting thanks... any idea what the rendering is like in terms of memory handling? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beestee Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 (edited) It's very efficient. For a quick test on your setup I would try out the free version on a plane with a bunch of trees and see what happens. If you want to use 3d geometry for your trees, you will have to feed it into Forest Pack. Itoo offers 3dMentor foliage models on their store which I have seen used in some very impressive projects. If you do go that route, you will need to create proxies of the trees. I have used the AEC Foliage built into Max before with a tinted green glass material and it gives a nice conceptual look. Edited June 28, 2011 by beestee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 I was hoping for something a little more refined than billboards. just because a technique is simple doesn't mean that good execution of it can't look very convincing. you don't always need a fancy, expensive bit of tree software. see alex york's KAIG image on cgtalk - he used billboard trees to cover a large area. http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=738195 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Sugden Posted June 28, 2011 Author Share Posted June 28, 2011 I take your point, but as it's for an animation, and the trees will be relatively close up, I need soemthing a little more convincing, or at least something more 3d looking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StevieBoy85 Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 (edited) I think xfrog has a variety of free plants and trees? *edit* - Yep they do!.. And they are pretty great quality. You'll just have to do as beestee said and create proxies of the trees before you load them into forest pack.. Otherwise you'll scene will get pretty laggy. Edited June 28, 2011 by StevieBoy85 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 28, 2011 Share Posted June 28, 2011 Use Multi-scatter with a selection of Vray proxied trees, any tree model will be fine. I scattered 1 million x 20k poly trees using a quickly created distribution map (I just painted over a top-view screen grab in PS). Rendered out at 6k and it took around 40mins. I think the scene load time into the render engine was around a minute. Multi-scatter is a very powerful tool. Just be careful to avoid tree models that depend on transparency for leaves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Itoosoft Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 I think xfrog has a variety of free plants and trees? *edit* - Yep they do!.. And they are pretty great quality. You'll just have to do as beestee said and create proxies of the trees before you load them into forest pack.. Otherwise you'll scene will get pretty laggy. A quick note to clarify that it is not needed to convert the trees to proxies. You can use meshes or procedural objects directly, Forest convert them on-the-fly to native render instances. The performance should be the same as using proxies. In our Rendering Guide you can find settings and tips to optimize your renders with Forest in Mental Ray and VRay: http://www.itoosoft.com/forestpack/r.../rendering.php Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
notamondayfan Posted June 30, 2011 Share Posted June 30, 2011 http://www.marlinstudios.com/products/treefarm/treefarm.html these are OK for fast renders or for distance shots. Also to add, you can manually paint trees and foliage without fancy expensive plugins, advanced painter is one that springs to mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MBetke Posted July 4, 2011 Share Posted July 4, 2011 I also stick to forest pack pro. you could use any other tree scatter tool combined with proxies to save some resources. you have a great control of your forest with such tools. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter M. Gruhn Posted July 8, 2011 Share Posted July 8, 2011 Once, a few years ago, I saw something that had really nice variable quality degeneration to plates. Let me know when you find it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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