Beech Tree Collection

[pclavett]

Hi to all !
I recently opened an account in Artstation and was exploring the trees that were on sale there..... when I saw just about the best trees ever !
The artist was Aron Kamolz and he is a 3D artist that does various 3D CG projects. He had taken the time to do 37 different models of beech trees, from very small young models to majestic models up to 24M. They are truly gorgeous and would certainly fit in a variety of Terragen projects.
The models were not available in Terragen friendly formats and I contacted Aron to see if we could get the model in OBJ format which would then make them possibly kept in TGO format. His response was that the formats available were Blender-friendly and from there likely possible to export them in OBJ format.
There were 4 models available for free, as a trial ! I got those models and the ALEMBIC format was indeed very Blender-friendly and exportable as OBJ, with nevertheless materials that did not stay connected inside the object. I proceeded to reconnect all the image files, adjust the color, translucency, displacement, and opacity. The objects in OBJ, with the reassigned material files, were perfect and when saved in TGO format, and reimported into Terragen, they again were perfect.
I proceeded to buy the whole set and then converted the whole lot into TGO. I learned on the way that MAC and WINDOWS do not exactly save things the same way. This was mostly a problem with setting up the material files "filepath" ! I did the conversions on my PC as the MAC was rendering my latest image. When the total conversions were then imported in my MAC Terragen, all the images were not following with those awful RED DOT error messages at the bottom. It turns out that all the "filepaths" for the textures were written with backslashes and MAC works with forward slashes. I noted that XFROGS gives us folders where the TGOs are in the same folder as the texture images...... removing the need for a filepath ! So I redid the conversions with this in mind.
I now have a complete folder of fully functional Beech Trees.
The models were a bit dark, as often happen with the XFROG models as well. I improved this with a POWERFRACTAL on the color and translucency with a high color of 2.0 and low color of 0.5. This is applied to the leaves, bark and branches (translucency for the leaves only). This improved the renders and note that I have done renders with the PF upper color as high as 4.0 and the renders were coming out OK. The powerfractal also gives some variation in the color making things more realistic. Of course you can change the PF values to your liking. You can also consider introducing some color saturation in the color values to introduce further color nuance in your models.... mostly when they are used as a population. In that case you can also override the color with TINTING in the populator node !
I include a test render of the free sampler models and the close-up of top leaves to show the quality of the leaves (FREE BEECHES and CLOSE-UP TOP LEAVES)........ and in a subfolder you will find the renders of the total collection with a relative scale to a 1.86M man !
You can find the whole collection at Aron's store in Artstation or Gumroad and the links are below.
I have just transferred the TGO files to Aron and they should be available for purchase soon.
Below is a DROPBOX link to the FREE SAMPLE FILEs FOLDER. You can download the folder and unZIP it onto your HD..... making sure to keep all the files as they are in one folder. Moving the files will affect the texture files and give you error messages. IF YOU SHOULD HAVE ANY PROBLEMS WITH THE DOWNLOAD AND THE FILES DO NOT WORK.....Please let me know and I can fix it !
I hope that you will find these models to your liking and should you want them, please direct your requests to ARON KAMOLZ at his ARTSTATION OR GUMROAD websites.

LINK FOR FREE SAMPLER DOWNLOAD: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8m6xijau5j9qyei/BEECHES_TGO_FREE.zip?dl=0

ARON KAMOLZ GUMROAD : https://aron-ka.gumroad.com/?recommended_by=library
ARON KAMOLZ ARTSTATION : https://www.artstation.com/aronk or is store https://www.artstation.com/aronk/store

[Dune]

Thanks for sharing this information and the tgo's with the community. I'm sure they will be welcome.

One small thing I would do is have another look at the leaves bump settings. At least I think that's not perfect, but it could also be a color variation that is not set to world position, but 'grains/stains' the leave on part/object scale. The leaves look very dark and grainy, whereas they should look pretty smooth and shiny, and much lighter.

[pclavett]

Hi All ! After Ulco made the comments on the leaves I went back in the models and examined things. The displacement for the leaves was taken from a roughness image and in fact should have dealt with the NORMAL image. Unfortuinately, Terragen does not handle NORMAL images for now and converting a Normal image to a height image is problematic. After searching for days, I have found a small piece of Open Source ocde that seems to do a fair job of it. I did go to convert some Blender texture package images that had both Normal and Displacement images and the result with this software was similar to the the displacement image posted in these packages. I have done a preliminary trial with one of the leaves and obtained this result. I will proceed to change the settings of all the material shaders and see what comes out. Have a good day ! Paul

[Dune]

That looks very much better, Paul! I think they can be a little lighter, and have some (more) reflection. If not by image map, then as a whole at fresnel say 0.3 or so, with roughness at 0.2-0.3.

[pclavett]

Thanks Ulco for the suggestions and all the trees have been redone in TGO format with that look. I have sent the files to Aron and will adjust the free sampler to have these available on the weekend so that whoever likes them can try them ! I have also done an image in the image sharing section so that you can see what comes out of these models ! Again, thanks and take care ! Paul