Tree problems

[Aenea]

@RealUser: Oh sure...I WILL do that....I think there are still some secrets in working with objects I haven´t figured out *lol*
I think I´ll do that this weekend (the tut, not revealing the secrets...think this needs some time  )

Especially with these artifacts....

Another thing I have observed with the trees: the stem often look a bit edgy...not all are smooth round shaped...I wondered if this is a problem of the imported obj or they haven´t that much polygons when they were created...
Very clearly I saw this with the cerasifera nigra tree....I got results with very edgy stems and then I got it work properly and the stem was normal shaped...haven´t found the reason for it... maybe the texture also had something to do with it...as soon as I got the right texture on it and not only a colour, it worked fine....

Aenea

[RealUser]

Hey, Aenea!
Yep, i have had the edgy stem problems with the chestnut tree too. I am not certain if TG2TP handles smoothed (phong shaded or other technique) polygons correctly. Question to Planetside: Does TG2TP support polygon smoothing in any way?
Well, i did further experiments with the tree and added some translucency to the leafs with some succes. I first tried the lambert technique, in which you put a  lambert shader between the leaf shader and the multi shader. That didn't worked for me. Then i simply cranked up the translucency slider in the default shader up to 25 and voilá, translucent leafs as you can see in the image below. I didn't find out how a translucent image must look like to affect the translucency. Maybe a greyscale image works here. Another thing is, that the leafes look all flat. I need a certain bend over the leaf to give it a better and more realistic look. If you take a closer look at a real chestnut tree, the "fingers" of the leafes are hanging down a bit. I think this should be possible with some displacement and a suitable "bending image".

[king_tiger_666]

Realuser. that looks fantastic!!!.. applied to some other tree objects it has great potential..

[Aenea]

awesome realuser....

sad that I´m currently at work....my fingers are itching....wanna try this too

Aenea

[Oshyan]

H Question to Planetside: Does TG2TP support polygon smoothing in any way?

Not yet, no, but it will certainly be supported in the future.

- Oshyan

[RealUser]

Errrrr, displacing a leaf obviously affects the translucency. I have to double the translucency value to get the same effect than before without displacement. I have used the leaf alpha mask as a mask for the circular grayscale color range from white to black. White in the middel (high displcement) black to the edges of the leaf (low displacement) and the other way round. The only effect i got was that darkening and some bright green edges on the leaf. Any help anyone?

[Oshyan]

Relative to the leaf size such curvature is going to be pretty extreme. Generally the leaves will be only 1 polygon anyway (with a square texture + alpha providing proper shape). TG2 doesn't currently subdivide imported models for displacement as far as I know so you're not going to get the effect you want at present. This may be possible in the future however.

- Oshyan

[RealUser]

Oshyan, i was afraid you would say that. I can wait ...

[bigben]

I haven't tried displacement on leaves yet, only on bark where it works quite well.  If you've added a sub-surface for the displacement then this will be causing some loss of translucency. Adding additional surface layers below the default shader will require a lambert and reflective shader to also be added to get accurate results.

If you've added it to the default shader then obviously the increase in thickness will require an increase in translucency. If you increase the translucency but still have thin leaf margins then these will look lighter.

I think having a better shaped leaf polygon to map the image onto would be of more benefit than changing the thickness, but this would greatly increase the complexity of the tree, not mention the extra work in modelling. Flat leaves do have their limits.

[RealUser]

As far as i understand,  i could subdivide the leafs in PoseRay. But that would end in a huuuge tree object. On the other hand, the tree looks rather convincing from a normal distance. I would like to make a forest scene (Fangorn?) with rays, translucency, dust and nebula. I am curious if i can do that with the tech preview.

[Oshyan]

As far as i understand,  i could subdivide the leafs in PoseRay. But that would end in a huuuge tree object. On the other hand, the tree looks rather convincing from a normal distance. I would like to make a forest scene (Fangorn?) with rays, translucency, dust and nebula. I am curious if i can do that with the tech preview.

You can make it, it just may take an age to render.

- Oshyan

[RealUser]

From a certain distance displacement is not necessary, only for close ups. But i do hope this will be possible with not to much effort of render time in the future. It could be combined with a kind of LOD for the subdivision or some kind of fake displacement mapping. Like a kind of billboard of a displaced leaf and mapp it on a lower poly leaf object.