Calling all foliage experts - really need advising on a project

[stayinwonderland]

So I've been hacking away at this for a few days solid now. It's a personal project and one that I hope will take my work to a new level. Sick of producing mediocre stuff.

 

I saw this short last week and have been wanting to do a similar project for a while now. It's a harder than it looks...

 

(if you want to see the short it's here, otherwise here are notable stills from Ruin):

 

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and here's their web site with a fair ol' bunch of making of stuff.

 

It was made in Modo and Lightwave. This is the only info I've found on how they do the foliage:

 

"Essentially I made ivy 'feathers' that I cover the buildings with.

All the grass is with dpinstance."

 

 

finally, here are my attempts so far. I'm trying my best to use free plugins, so I've used ivy generator and replaced the ivy leaves with bunches of leaves and made the leaf geometry large. Also using Forest Pack Lite in the most hacked way possible e.g. turning bushes on their side and pushing their tops through the face of a building to simulate growth...

 

 

(see next post, can't attach more than 5 images)

[stayinwonderland]

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So I'm really struggling to reach anywhere near that level of realism. Mainly due to foliage. You'll notice the specularity on the leaves is spot on in the short but my FPL trees just don't cut it no matter how I tweak the specularity.

 

Would really appreciate some quality feedback!

 

thanks

[datacrasher]

Beautiful, but i would add some rain with the PF source to make it more realistic

[stayinwonderland]

The scene is going to be bright, sunny with ground fog. Rain looks shit in still images imo.

[datacrasher]

Don't forget IRL sometimes the rain and sun will come together

[Devin Johnston]

Specularity is key, what is your light source and what software are you using?

[stayinwonderland]

yeah, it is rather. I'm using 3dsmax2010, vray 2. I tried many times to get those leaves to shine by tweaking the reflection but they refused. My guess is that the HQ trees that come with forest pack just aren't up to it. You can see SOME spec on the bigger building close up shot - I had to make the reflection green or it would just look pure white (didn't know you could do that).

[stayinwonderland]

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This is more like it. It's worth noting that to get better specularity, make sure the sun light is 'hot' enough. I'm also ditching the ivy in place of Forest Pack bushes turned on their side. Only thing is, you don't get the climbing effect as these are mainly good for looking like interior growth.