Tree

[zandoriastudios]

This is a model of a tree I started yesterday, in response to a little challenge amongst the Fellows...

It is 31,274 patches! all one mesh .

At the tip of each twig is an emitter that I will be adding a leaf material to.

[John Bigboote]

Very cool!

 

Perhaps some of us 'non-fellows' (does that make us...ladies???)should start lumberjacking some trees too! Are you guys gonna put them all together in an available library? That could become a valuable resource! 3D mirrors reality!

[Guest mrsl13]

Thats a nice looking tree ,how long did it take to model (in hours) and the process you used? (extrude ? etc.)?

And I'm no lady.....just a slut.....

 

Mike C

[zandoriastudios]

I worked on it all day yesterday. The basic parts were a Y-fork, a T-fork, and a branch made of those. then copied and pasted into the main model. the longest part was waiting for the find patches.align normals when i pasted a branch in.

There is a color and bump map for the bark. The leaves are particle hair (image to follow),

 

Perhaps some of us 'non-fellows' (does that make us...ladies???)should start lumberjacking some trees too! Are you guys gonna put them all together in an available library? That could become a valuable resource! 3D mirrors reality!

 

Great idea--post them here

[NancyGormezano]

Perhaps some of us 'non-fellows' (does that make us...ladies???)

I think the proper term is femellows.

[NancyGormezano]

Oh yeah - and beautiful tree by the way.

 

I sure hope there isn't a lot of good discussion going on in secret among you elite people that the rest of us plebians are missing out on ?

 

Don't leave us flopping in the wind please.

[starwarsguy]

Hey, wanna put that up for download? *wink, wink*

[cfree68f]

I sure hope there isn't a lot of good discussion going on in secret among you elite people that the rest of us plebians are missing out on ?

 

Lots of discussion.. not sure how much of it is good Probably half of it is me spouting my oppinion.. so that tells you how worthless most of it is.

 

C

[Zaryin]

Hey Will, that's a great looking tree. THe only problem I have is the "sameness" pf the end branches. I'm assuming the leaves will cover that up, however.

[williamgaylord]

Nice work, William. Guess I'll have to get back to work on my trees. In my case the goal is to make it grow from a sprout to a full grown tree. Quite a different challenge. I will be interested in how you do the foliage and how well it renders and how computationally intensive it might be. BTW, how do you set up a thumbnail picture with a link to the full size (as a curtousy to those with narrowband links or simultaneous rendering going on)?

 

Tree growth animation thread...

 

Bill Gaylord

[aaver]

BTW, how do you set up a thumbnail picture with a link to the full size

Instead of adding the picture as an IMG, add it as an attachment.

[NancyGormezano]

I also wanted to mention I thought the mood, lighting, setting was quite nice as well - with a hint of mountains? in the distance - (tho perhaps tree is a little too centered).

 

As a variation, it would be interesting to see a print-type rendering, reminiscent of an Ansel Adams type winter day in Yosemite, done in B&W of course.

 

I assume when you allow the hairy-leaves to sprout - you'll consider changing the season?

 

to repeat, very beautiful.

 

(And I'll be a hot bidder for the secret decoder ring for the Hash Fellows group when the next one shows up on ebay)

[Paul Forwood]

That gets my vote for the best looking A:M tree that I have seen to date!

[Mr. Jaqe]

jiiz! Only "31,274 patches", eyh? ... My record is 600 on a good day........ wanna see my dance? what Im trying to say here is that no words can explain the way you do your thing and make AM a tool of Gods.

[lazz]

My goodness, that's an excellent model! The only thing, and its probably not a big thing because I doubt that it'll be noticeable when it has leaves, but it seems as if every twig is the same. It just takes away from the realism a little bit, but like I said I doubt it'd be noticeable with leaves on top of all that. Plus, imagining the extra work of making hundreds of individual twigs that wouldn't even be seen under the leaves is crazy, not that the level of work you put into it isn't crazy . The stuff you do is always incredibly well done. Good stuff !

 

-Robert

[zandoriastudios]

Here it is with some leaves.

[R Reynolds]

Are you guys gonna put them all together in an available library?

 

This might come close;

 

http://www3.sympatico.ca/rodger.reynolds/t...e/tree_tute.htm

[zandoriastudios]

man--that would have saved me a little time Rodger!

[R Reynolds]

But then I would have deprived you of the satisfaction of doing it yourself.

[JTalbotski]

Doesn't anyone use Marcel's Treeez plugin? I would (and will when it gets ported to OSX).

 

Jim

[williamgaylord]

What kind of render time are you getting when you include the leaves?

 

Great idea--post them here

 

Here is a picture of a fully grown version of my tree:

[mtpeak2]

If we are allowed to use Marcel's plug-in, then here's my tree.

[lazz]

William, breathtaking . How did you make the leaves? They look so real. And the tree? And the background? And the bark? And the... ok, you get the idea. Seriously good stuff !

 

-Robert

[cfree68f]

Is it me.. or are there trees sprouting everywhere?

 

I think the point has been made. Well done people!

 

Hey Will throw some variation into those leaves. Size and Brightness should do it. Looks awesome dude.. So lets see. I think that took you 2 days to get to this point

 

I'd better watch if I ever throw a guantlet down to you. Oh.. wait.. I did. Guess I'd better get to work.

 

C

[ZachBG]

Now, give us a flythrough, with a tiny man walking on the branches, jumping from leaf to leaf.

[Reikster]

Okay, this is gonna probably sound like a dumb question, but are most peoples leaves the "sprite" emitter?

I started making a rough tree a while back and couldn't figure that part out right away so I started puting leaves in manually, copy paste...copy paste...etc. It got a little cumbersome.

 

I haven't downloaded the "tree building" kit....looked for that earlier (thought I did a search of the forums first )

 

anyways, guess I'll DL that this evening after work and try taking it apart.

 

 

thanks,

 

eric

[Mr. Jaqe]

It's just so...beautiful...

[williamgaylord]

Okay, this is gonna probably sound like a dumb question, but are most peoples leaves the "sprite" emitter?

 

Ever since AM hair, probably yes. It's a wonderful way to add leaves to a tree! A lot less labor intensive than making your own!

 

I started making a rough tree a while back and couldn't figure that part out right away so I started puting leaves in manually, copy paste...copy paste...etc. It got a little cumbersome.

 

For my trees I actually build the leaf clusters. In this case I am animating trees growing from sprouts to full grown trees. I tried hair for the leaves, but discovered that the hair does not grow very smoothly...the decals jump in size in large increments so the result is very "poppy". (I'll have to try the latest version to see if it still does this.) I build leaf clusters using a very simple leaf design with only four patches. This allows me to give the leaves a nice curl. You can use a decal on this simple leaf surface to get any shape leaf you want. To reduce the patch count further, I use splines rendered as lines for the leaf stems. It is very labor intensive!

[zandoriastudios]

I was walking outside to my car this morning and I was looking at the branches of the trees in the neighborhood. I had skipped my normal method of sketching and studying my subject before I began modeling, so I made a big mistake!

I had modeled my branches as essentially forking arcs , with the buds to emit leaves at the last tips. However, this morning I noted that ALL branches seem to follow an "S" curve.

They do arc as they extend away from the trunk, but as they reach for the sunlight, they sweep back up. The last twigs that sprout leaves are all pointing skyward, not downward (which is what they are doing in my model, since they are continuing the arc...)

So when you get ready to model your tree, go outside and look at some first! There are no leaves right now, so it is a good opportunity to study them trees nekkid!

Below is a sketch showing my error and the proper branch morphology.

[williamgaylord]

Another thing to notice is that the branches tend to spread out somewhat horizontally toward the ends until you get to the leafy branches that tend to stand up and out. The leaves sort of follow a curved surface as though they were cascading up and over the ends of the branches. There are of course leaves farther back, but most of the leaves are concentrated toward the ends. The leaves also face mostly up and out, rather than facing in random directions.

[pancho simpson]

what kind of Pc are you using!!!!! 32k patches!!!!! whoa, great tree!!

[Reikster]

Okay, this is gonna probably sound like a dumb question, but are most peoples leaves the "sprite" emitter?

 

Ever since AM hair, probably yes. It's a wonderful way to add leaves to a tree! A lot less labor intensive than making your own!

 

 

 

hmmm....so can you put a sprite emitter on the end of a hair or something?

 

I tried using a sprite emitter with a leaf image, but the leafs are so poorly organized that it looks horrid, they look like somebody just superglued leaves to a stick.

 

I guess I'll fiddle with it a little bit more...

 

 

eric

[apprentice]

Oh man...I got drools on my keyboard again.