Tree modelling

[Veleran]

Anyone using this program to make trees?
After a few hours of practicing (and save to file in between)you can get nice spooky tree barks.
After the tree is finished you can make a Lower polygon LOD (for faster far distance rendering)
if you select each branch one by one and lower the radial and length resolution,
and delete some of the smaller branches and then it can be then saved and used as _LOD2 etc.


http://ngplant.sourceforge.net/


Tips:
You can raise the values more quickly by clicking and dragging horizontally between the - and +.
and,if you mess up the curves diagrams you can right click on them and choose reset.

[bernie]

I seem to remember using it some time ago but I think the trees it made were good but were too high poly to be useful in RF.

[Veleran]

I did this tree with that program.It is 510 faces - 319 Vertices - not much for a base actor.
Several transparent patches with twigs texture and it will be ok (apart from trunk colors).
At least for Cartoon style that i wanted its ok.It just needed scaling up because it was imported with a height of 0,4 units (-only fungus is so short).





The Lod is 224 faces - Vertices 129.

[zany_001]

Ah yes, I remember using this. My biggest problem was that it didn't generate nice textures for you. Otherwise it's nice.

[Allanon]

Might also take a look a Arbaro.

[Veleran]

Thanks allanon.I guess i didn t search enough the net today.
I hope i manage to handle arbaro so i can generate textures inside max from high poly to the low poly by projection.
Specially the twigs to be projected on the lowpoly transparent faces with max's (rendertotexture/projection).
I anyway use projection mapping to copy textures from low poly to the lower lod vaersions,so why not try this.

[Veleran]

I tried it and cant do much with it,as it is rather slow on my computer and the trees are quite high poly.I

[Allanon]

You are correct, I just exported the default tree and it was something like 470 polys but when trying other trees the poly count went over 10000. You could lower the smooth value but that still didn't lower the poly count enough.

Try Treed, it is another free tree generator but it allows you to add textures and it displays the poly count in the program so it's easier to lower the polys. The poly count goes down fast if you lower the number of branches and leafs. Plus lowering the length and radial segs helps. It exports to .b3d and .X formats.

Also there is F3D TreeGen, it is a very simple program that allows you to specify .B3D models of a trunk and leaf. Then it uses the user's settings to place the leaves on the trunk. It only supports .B3D file format.

And there is PlantStudio, I found it complicated and the tests I did produced high poly models but you might find it useful.

And last there is PowerPlant which I found complicated and couldn't get it to work. But maybe you would have better luck.