Tree types

[dande]

I currently using some Xfrog trees mainly because they have a lot of different types of trees. But I don't like that they uses opacity maps for the leaves.

 

Anybody know of any other tree vendor that has a large selection of trees and doesn't use opacity maps. I'm trying avoid having to go and make my own.

[Chris MacDonald]

Why don't you like using opacity maps? I think all the trees, etc that I have come across use opacity maps.

[dande]

Because it increases rendering time. As I'm doing an animation I'm trying to get my frame render time down

[Devin Johnston]

Most tree models use opacity maps because who wants to model all those leaves. I think Onyx trees use geometry instead of opacity maps but they are very heavy and there pretty old.

[dande]

I notice growfx model the leaves but they don't have a big choice in tree types

[Devin Johnston]

Do you have your filtering set to none in the opacity map, if you don't then that's one reason why it's taking so long.

[dande]

Thanks Devin. I do have set to none. What the best option to set it to Pyramidal

[Devin Johnston]

None is the best option anything else will take longer. How long are your render times and how many trees are we talking about?

[dande]

Render frame times are about 10mins. I am using forest pack pro and their are hundreds of trees. I could live with the render frame time but I'm just trying to squeeze as much as I can out of it.

[Devin Johnston]

10 minutes on a single machine isn't bad at all, what do you think it should be?

[dande]

I know its not too bad I just want to see if I can knock and more time out of it. Every second counts

[Chris MacDonald]

I really have to agree with Devin here, 10 minutes is next to nothing really. I'd be looking elsewhere for speed gains, for example the anti-aliasing, or precalcs, etc.

[Devin Johnston]

You could exclude the trees from generating GI that will help a little.

[dande]

Thanks for the help lads.

 

I'm currently looking at everything. I'll probably have to go with the 10mins. I'm precalculating my GI and I don't want to exclude the trees to avoid shimmering

[M V]

Mentor plants itrees do not use maps on the leaves and render really quickly. Also Onyx has the option to create with or without maps. I use these for mid and background trees and save the opacity mapped ones for up close where it counts.

[RyderSK]

You could exclude the trees from generating GI that will help a little.

 

This is good option in aerials. What I did in regular shots when it could become bit too evident, I limited the GI via low multiplies (like 0.2 for example) per object group via Vray properties. This is because neither GI nor any noise is too evident in trees compared to rest of scene (the architecture).

 

10 minutes is crazy nice time. I would just be happy at this point.

 

Opacity maps are must, and so are geometry modeled leaves, but not through outline, but the bending of shape to pick-up reflections. Flat leaves, are just horrible. 4-9 polies per leave is more than enough, and coupled with additional normal map in bump slot will give reflections the look it should have instead of the flat, unnatural look it has in most visualizations.

 

But yeah...10 minutes, I don't think it's worth to go lower. You might ought to try brute force with limited bounces if you have just nature, but this would give you noisy architecture in any interior would be visible. IR isn't such vegetation friendly solution. Also clamp and sub-pixel on, this will give no post flexibility and crush highlights in leaves, but in nature scenes, the difference in render times can be like up to 4-6 times in extreme case.