I recently acquired a full license of TPF and have had a chance to see how these objects work in TG. This image is a mix of ST(general foliage) and TPF (the Oaks). TPF and ST basically do similar things, but the differences are intriguing. TPF has a fairly steep learning curve I must say!
Great trees, Doug. And nice terrain and shrubbery as well. You can just edit your post and untick the wrong image, then save.
Thanks Ulco!
Not sure about the branching but the trunks and bark look great on the trees.
The trees look a bit low-poly (sharp vertex edges?) but this image looks fairly photoreal (softness and lighting) and the vegetation distribution looks good.
Great image. Maybe the bump of the oaks' bark is set a bit too high? It looks somehow unnatural to me.
These are my first tests at getting TPF objects into TG, and I'm still tweaking with the settings. The Oak tree is a retail item from the Cornucopia store. It was made by Frederic Bec, he is probably the best 3D foliage modeler using TPF from what I can see. The set-up in TPF is very complex and I've attached a partial screen shot of the interface. However, once the network is constructed it's a simple matter to adjust via sliders the age, health, and season of the tree in a parametric manner. Very slick.
Hannes: you're right. The bump map may be the culprit (from Crazy Bump) and I've continued to mess with the settings
Chris: there are 1.1 million tri's in the object, so any clunky-ness is in my scene settings. I have a couple of models to play with besides the Oak, but I probably haven't presented the tree as well as it deserved.
Otakar: Here's another image, hopefully the trees look a bit more natural in their shapes. Also another TPF object in there is the Dandelion plant.
Frederic Bec - English Oak: https://vimeo.com/141994574
Terrific! I very much like the vegetation coverage and layout. The tree is much better, there even seems to be less sharpness in the trunk profile. I always love the soft light you bring into your renders.
There's one thing bothering me; the vegetation on the barren slope seems not to rotate with the slope, and therefore kind of 'floats' a bit. What render settings did you use (detail/AA...)?
Hmmm. I'll take a look at the barren section. I revised the bump map in Crazy Bump to make it a bit 'softer', hopefully that will hold up in some other renders. The render settings were detail .8 and AA 12 using the Mitchell-Netravali pixel filter. About a three hour render on my 6 core machine.
Yes, very nice looking trees in the second image! Must be quite heavy, no?
Yes, that is a decent amount of polygons. Now that i see the preview examples, the trees makes more sense to me. :D
Its very cool.
But doesn't that node network just make you dizzy?
Dizzy? More like shock and terror!
Oh good, I thought so too. Made me sick a little. But I did not want to be first to be up set by it ;D
Holy Nodes Batman!
I just now noticed all of that...
Some more tweaking with the material settings of the Oak trees. The specularity and translucency levels are more than twice what I've used in the ST assets, but essentially it's just the .obj format for each. Originally this started as a 'test' image, but it sort of 'grew' ;) into a composition piece with trees. Not sure that these are the final settings for this particular object, but I'll try a different TPF model and see what gives with the asset settings in it.
It's always fun to compare two different apps that basically produce the same things. While both ST and TPF create excellent trees, they have a very different feel in doing so. ST feels more like sculpting, TPF more like machining. ST is a very mature product and was designed as an 'artists' tool from the outset, TPF is only in it's second iteration. I'm using TPF 2014 and will upgrade to 2015 in the next few days. From what I've read 2015 tilts a little more towards being more user-friendly with some major bug fixes. If any of you are considering buying a foliage generator app it will be a difficult choice. For the TG users already familiar with complex node networks TPF would be a lot more familiar, for those of us who are visually oriented and like to work directly in the viewport environment ST would be by far the best choice. However, if it is the creation of small precise plant models, then TPF would be my choice. Of course all of my comments and examples are limited by my current level of understanding of these two, very deep, apps. But at this point I'm pleased that both apps create objects that can be successfully imported into TG!
Wonderful!
Looks great.
Are the leaves objects? It does not look like a leaf image map along an alpha plain.
Amazing! I like it very much. From the grass up to the trees ... couldn't be more realistic!
Absolutely realistic! The only thing that imho would improve the image even more is a little color variation in the foliage of the trees.
Thanks for the great comments!
Chris: yeah, the leaves are bitmaps on alpha planes. I've attached two images; a wireframe, and another render that shows the leaf detail a bit better.
Hannes: I agree. I have a couple of other trees made with varying foliage colors that are being set in another composition, some are mixed within the same tree and with different levels of leaf density.
I'm still playing with material settings. The last two renders have a specularity setting of 2 and translucency set at 3. I do have spec maps in place, but these levels just seem all wrong. Not to mention the render time hit. The ST models settings were more in line with my normal experience; with spec at .05 to .1, and translucency between .3 and 1. Seems curious as it's just plain old .obj/.mtl for both sets of assets. But this may just be this object and it's assets, we'll see. I also intend to render some of these objects (both ST and TPF) in several other renderers. Mental Ray and VRay via fbx export into Max, and the Vue renderer as well. Curious to see how they compare. But I must say that the native TG renderer, imo, does a very nice job; and considering the trade-offs in creating environments in those other apps, is still the landscape tool of choice for me.
That looks good. I usually see entire twigs and leaves on a single alpha and of course it looks very unrealistic. Can the geometry for the leave alpha be modified slightly? For example, bending and twisting along any axis?
Hi Chris! Yes. TPF has a leaf setting for 'Curl', but TPF also has a nifty utility built in that allows the creation of custom leaf meshes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYKrt5sE2c8
I will watch that video soon but let me understand this correctly. If you have an imported leaf color diffuse and alpha image, it will curl to adapt to the mesh plain? I have never seen this done before if it is possible.
As far as I found out, if you have a leaf plane (that logically should consist of a number of vertices), you can indeed bend it, random, but also by other means, like gravity, magnet, curl.... and the textures bend with it. The latest version even has a way to pick individual branches or leaves and manipulate them the way you want (or delete them if they're no good). VERY handy feature.
Great stuff! Never really got into TPF and I can't afford the latest versions now.
Quote from: Dune on November 03, 2015, 02:24:21 AM
As far as I found out, if you have a leaf plane (that logically should consist of a number of vertices), you can indeed bend it, random, but also by other means, like gravity, magnet, curl.... and the textures bend with it. The latest version even has a way to pick individual branches or leaves and manipulate them the way you want (or delete them if they're no good). VERY handy feature.
That is good to know. I think i had seen a video on the separate vegetation parts for manipulating which is neat.
I'm talking about Speedtree, not TPF.
Talking back and forth between two softwares can become a bit confusing. ;D
:)
So are you saying you can incorporate different bitmap sets for leaves in one single object right in TPF? Or do you have to manipulate the color in TG per the established method?
Being able to manipulate the leaf shape is already a fantastic feature and surely enhances realism especially for close-ups.
Both ST and TPF allow for multiple 'sets' or 'populations' of different leaves. The TPF Oak model here has 4 separate populations of leaves. So to vary the 'aging' process is simply a matter of assigning the desired leaf texture to any one or more of them. Likewise, culling of individual pops can vary the looks of the tree in a very natural way. ST has the same capabilities. All of the model elements can be controlled by various forces as Dune noted earlier in the thread, both TPF and ST can do this. Both TPF and ST can create a sort of parametric 'timeline' for the model to simulate 'Age' and 'Health' and 'Season'. This essentially is the gradual substitution of varying textures and element density to reflect the changing seasons. The ST version that does this is rather pricey at this point and that capability hopefully will filter down to the more affordable Studio version in a future update. On top of all that there is the 'Wind' function in each app that can be used to further model the object. And watching the trees blow in the configurable 'wind' in real time in the interface is awesome! The wind sequences can be exported via FBX, MDD and Alembic. MDD is large and cumbersome: but either FBX or Alembic would be really nice to see in TG!