Making of a Golf course animation - query

[pradiptaseth]

Hi everybody,

 

Am working on my first project on an animation of a golf course, its gonna be pretty big and populated with tress, waterbody, bunkers etc etc.

 

I have couple of questions regarding modeling and using vegetation.

 

First question is, what would be the best tools to use for the modeling of the course, the bunkers are really an interesting parts and making them look realistic is very crucial for the overall project. I dont want to involve much hi-resolution mesh since it would add to the rendering time. I guess I have to emphasis more on the texture painting.

 

My second question is, what will be the suitable vegetation tools for the project. I am thinking to use onyx for the closeup and far-off trees with a combination of few xfrog in the closeups.

 

I would really like to see some suggestion on the overall project,

 

Thanks in advance

[dande]

Do you have any terrain information such as contours. I presume its not going to be flat. How as the designer designed the course has he just done 2D cad drawings. He shouldl have levels worked out. If he has levels you could create a contours in a CAD program. Import them into Max and create a terrain using the Terrain in the compound objects.

 

What ever trees you use make sure you make proxies. If I have a scene with a lot of trees I often render the trees out seperatly and put them together in post software such as AE or premiere pro. That way if the design changes I find the trees don't so they don't have to be re-rendered and this cuts down rendering time.

[jophus14]

It might be smart to look into getting a plugin to scatter the trees randomly so you don't have to waste time copying, scaling, rotating and adjusting for collision. If you can get the terrain worked out rather easily, the rest of the work will just be cosmetic.

[Tommy L]

It might be smart to look into getting a plugin to scatter the trees randomly so you don't have to waste time copying, scaling, rotating and adjusting for collision. If you can get the terrain worked out rather easily, the rest of the work will just be cosmetic.

 

Agreed. Using something VRayScatter you can paint distribution maps of your terrain for planting.

Paint a displacement map for your terrain also, using a geometry displace modifier, not a rendertime displace.

Vray Proxy will be your best friend on this project. Ive rendered at 6k with a million x 20k poly trees with GI in 20 mins before.

One tip is to disable filtering on opacity maps (for leaves) and tell your trees not to generate GI.

Just realized you didnt specify VRay...

[migelle]

For closer trees use scattered 3D trees, for something far, use forest pack, saves a ton of rendering time. Also a nice feature for grass, since your project is a golf course is a plugin called grassomatic or something similar. Grassomatic can give you that wavy look of grass on the wind. You can also check out the Russian pack called iGrass, it'll give you some great ideas. If you want to use "follow-the-ball" effect, like from Legend of Bagger Vance movie, forest pack is your thing. Just remember to stretch the camera view option inside the plugin to values over 120% or you'll get a weird effect of shadows and trees disappearing before they completely get out of range of camera.

 

here's an example (no shadows, no lights, grassomatic, forestpack, Vray)

 

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