Since the XFrog "Free" files are limited, I was wondering if I could modify them. This is my 1st attempt. I wanted to see if I could add some "Variety" to the foilage. For me, using the same tree over and over (200,000 times) just misses the realism effect.
The image I did , use (2) different files from a modified Sweet Birch. I think it would be pointless to make several dozen variets of the same tree, but at least a few would be nice...
Your thoughts?
The variations look good, though they still seem somewhat regular in their repetition. I've noticed a certain clumping and patchiness to autumn foliage changes. Maybe using several different distribution shaders for the same area tied together for the final effect would help? Cool idea though!
Thank's for the suggestion. This test however, was to see if I could edit the original XFrog tree's coloration - and have it still work. I would imagine part of the repetition look on the image submitted might be due to the fact that I had the object spacing at 10. And for this tree, aparently very close.
It's a shame that XFrog only uses (1) leaf sample instead of several (dozen)
Quote from: rmfrase on January 17, 2007, 08:20:50 AM
It's a shame that XFrog only uses (1) leaf sample instead of several (dozen)
Agreed. I was surprised to find that although Xfrog's vegetation is industry leading in terms of realism, it still only uses a single leaf texture in most cases. I would expect at least 2 to be used, if not 5 or more. Hopefully the next generation of Xfrog libraries will increase variety.
- Oshyan
Quote from: JavaJones on January 19, 2007, 08:21:54 PM
Agreed. I was surprised to find that although Xfrog's vegetation is industry leading in terms of realism, it still only uses a single leaf texture in most cases. I would expect at least 2 to be used, if not 5 or more. Hopefully the next generation of Xfrog libraries will increase variety.
- Oshyan
and cost *winces*
Yeah, those DVDs are like 150 clams each. :o
tell me about it !! I bought the Basic DVD but I just buy individual plants from TurboSquid as and when I need 'em
I did a very similar experiment, using 3 populations of the modified birch xfrog tree. There is an orange, yellow and red variation here:
http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-3738 (http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-3738)
That's very good, but the yellow trees seem to be almost the same colour as the terrain..
Sounded like a good idea so I had a play (without really knowing what I was doing... maybe that was the key ;) )
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Here is a modification done within TG2. First I created a two colour shader (a shade of red/orange and a yellow contrast). I then went into the objects shader and replaced the leaf shader with my TG shader. Each leaf gets its own colour :)
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Add another copy of the population and new leaf shader and repeat. Edit the colour of the red/orange surface to provide a new hue. By using different object spacings for the populations you can get a more realistic forest. e.g. a mix of red/orange trees with a scattering of bright yellow trees.
Here's my leaf shader: [attachurl=#3]
And a simplified leaf shader for 3 populations: [attachurl=#5]
A very quick test render using spacings of 10, 20 & 30m for the different tree populations.
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There are a few pluses for this approach.
- only need one set of files for your model
- easy to tweak the colours
- for those using fake stones to simulate distant trees, you have a surface to keep them the same colour
On the down side, you don't want to get too close to the trees to see the loss of detail in the leaves (they get turned into squares).
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Quote from: bigben on January 31, 2007, 10:36:12 PM
On the down side, you don't want to get too close to the trees to see the loss of detail in the leaves (they get turned into squares).
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Neat idea! They don't have to turn into squares if you keep the opacity image.
Helen
That colour stuff is very clever...
Quote from: helentr on February 01, 2007, 03:45:44 AM
Neat idea! They don't have to turn into squares if you keep the opacity image.
Helen
I worked on that overnight but to no avail. I could get a coloured surface to apply to the leaves using a default shader but I couldn't combine this with the surface layer I had created. All I could get was a monochrone leaf (with some shading from a modified leaf image). I'll read the snow trees post more slowly and see if I can make sense of it... but otherwise, as I said earlier, I don't really know everything I'm doing so there's a lot of guess work here. Someone with more experience might be able to help more on this one.
;D ;D ;D
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Thanks to helentr for helping me with this one. I had to place my surface layers within the internal node network for the object to get the transparency to apply properly. It may be possible to still do this outside of the internal network but I'll look at that after I tweak this a bit more.
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There are 3 layers here although only the 2 child layers add colour to the render. Whether that's supposed to work that way or not, I don't really care because I reckon these trees look much better with random coloured leaves.
Most of the tweaking is done via the last child surface layer and it's breakup fractal. fiddling with the coverage and fractal sizing can create different combinations including putting detailed patterns on each leaf.
The TGD is below. If you have the XFrog birch you may want to edit the path to your model in a text editor before you open it.
This is where saving a TGO comes in handy because it would be a pain to do this for every colour combination whenever you added a tree population. Now for some finetuning
Here is another tweak with some additional masking to help the leaves look a little more realistic at closer range. The render quality was only at 0.8 to keep the render time down.
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For this test I had completely replaced the leaf texture with TG surfaces, but you could also reduce the coverage of the surfaces to "tint" the leaf texture image. I had also exprimented with a masked reflection layer, but this crashed when rendering at high quality on my laptop. I was considering retrying it on another computer but at the moment it seems an excessive tweak (greatly increases render time) and probably isn't necessary unless you want to get very close to the leaves.
Attahced the TGD and a zip of the extra mask images I made (extract to the same directory as the tgo)
Those leaves look really good...
Quote from: RArcher on January 22, 2007, 12:56:02 PM
I did a very similar experiment, using 3 populations of the modified birch xfrog tree. There is an orange, yellow and red variation here:
http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-3738 (http://www.ashundar.com/CPG/displayimage.php?pos=-3738)
I agree with the comments on Ashundar about your sky. That is brilliant. I wonder if you would share your sky settings?
This has been very helpful learning about the coloration of trees. I wonder if anyone could tackle the realistic coloration of aspens in the mountains. They grow in clusters and change at roughly the same time, so you have patches of yellow dotting an otherwise evergreen mountainside. I'm still too novice to understand this process of using the right shaders in TG2, but I'd like to learn.