Quote from: calico on January 25, 2008, 02:30:30 PM
moodflow, how easy / hard was it to make these trees? Do you have a TGO or is this something that's worth the effort to do on my own?
Hi Calico, I have a few TGO files I could post, but they are around 60MB in size (so too large for here).
But they are made easily enough in Dryad. The overall process is quite easy too and will work with .obj models from any app.
After you create a tree or plant to your liking, export it (which may take a few minutes), then hit the "dice" to randomize the parameters, and create another tree with similar features, but different model. I created 3 separate models for the foliage displayed in the foliage test image.
Once they were opened and saved again via Poseray (which is all that is required of Poseray), I took them into TG2 and dialed in the leaf textures via a power fractal plugged into the default shader that was already present. There are high and low colors in the power fractal, which can add variation. However, the fractal scale needs to be small enough to see on the tree leaves (usually around 0.1 or 1.0), else the colors are going to look uniform. Pick a good green color, or snag the RGB values from a real picture of a tree if you need. For the image above, I picked the colors by hand off the pallette. I then created a group, and saved it as a clip to import into the next models to save on time. Then I changed the high and low colors slightly and randomized the fractal for variation. This worked quite well.
Down the road, I'd like to get 2 sets of leaf colors in the model. With this, the leaves on the outside and top would be more colorful and larger, and the leaves on the inside and bottom would have less color and smaller to simulate dead leaves. This may require combining tree models. I've already done one test, and more to go.
