Realistic Larch model

[pclavett]

Hi All !
Had some time off this week and played with XFrog to make plants...focusing on realistic larch models. Found the one supplied with the XFrog collection not to look like our larches...and my house is surrounded my these trees. Have constructed these from scratch except for the utilization of their tiff for the leaf model and the bark. I am including model 23 and 24 for example and yes.....it took me the week to get to this level. I could share these...but obviously could not share the tiffs as they have copyright issues. For those who have the collection...this would not be an issue as they already have them and they would simply have to deposit the models in the Western Larch folder and this would likely work without having to reassign all shader...which can be painfully long as each model has 12 to 16 leaf shaders....obviously am missing something in making things simple !!! The autumn model has a version of the leaf tiff that was modified in photoshop..replacing the green with a yellow (going a bit on orange) colour. The bark displacement is their tiff modified in photoshop to black and white and some contrast adjustment (with the levels) and these copied to the base Western Larch folder. In this way you would have access to these trees. They are rather big and therefore high resolution...but Terragen handles this remarkably well.
If you have the XFrog collection (and access to the tiffs for leaf and bark) and want these models.....let me know and can post them for download somewhere !
Take care and have a great weekend !
Paul
PS: First pict is the collection model, second  a pict download on the web of natural larch in both green and yellow models, the third a render of my models 23 and 24.

[Tangled-Universe]

I don't know whether you are allowed to distribute .xfr files?? Some of these plant creation softwares have strange conditions/EULA's/licences/you name it...
For instance: anything you create with Onyx software is not allowed to be distributed.

So if you're allowed to send .xfr's then I'm happy to have a look at them.

So far I think they look pretty good. What I'd like to see is less straight branches/twigs and more randomness in angle of branches and twigs.

If you're surrounded by these trees why don't you shoot your textures yourself?
On an overcast day it's ideal to shoot bark textures and if you have a (flatbed)scanner then you can scan (groups of) needles and such.

Cheers,
Martin

[Walli]

if the files are created from scratch, then you can share your creations. But it is not allowed to take xfr files, adjust them and then share them (as has happened).

[Dune]

I often hold some branch in front of a white piece of carton, so you don't get shadows and shoot a picture. Easier than scanning is my experience. In PS select the white, inverse, make as alpha channel and you're basically done.

[masonspappy]

Interesting....My 7 year old Grandson, Mason,  and I spent some time this weekend photographing tree leaves. (He thinks he's pretty important because he's carrying my old Nikon camera and actually taking the photographs.)  Then I showed him how I processed a single leaf in  PSP, then used that image to populate an entire tree in xFrog, and then made a forest from that single xFrog model. In his world that's probably as close as it gets to real magic 

This is his tree - a little too green and leaves a bit too big, but he was pretty happy with his creation and wants to do it again next Saturda

[yossam]

Teach them while their imagination is still intact. It will probably stick. 

[Walli]

great!