Just a note about Speedtree. Never knew this, but Jochen made me aware (thanks again, Jochen!); with a 'cage' setup trunks and branches can become one structure with smooth transistions and adjustable texture flow. Terrific software. A quick try is illustrated.
As a quick try this looks much better in that regard indeed.
Yes, doesn't it? Here's an equally quick landscape with some flowers and the (shared) grasses. Now to work on the tree...
Nice :)
so it looks like the transition is accomplished by smooth the boundaries where similar textures touch each other?
Yes, branches 'grow' directly out of the trunk mesh, so it's one mesh. Texture flows with it. Whereas normally (ST and XFrog) branches are separate items roughly sticking out of the trunk.
Which version are you using?
7.1.1. studio
Thanks, that is interesting. I have ST but for some reason find myself not spending any time working with it.
It's not perfect but looks waaayy better than what has been possible before and probably *much* easier also!
Yeah, I like it :)
Thanks for the info Ulco................ ;D
Ah! Nice to finally see an app doing this. The results look rather simple and overly smooth, but I'm sure with some tweaking it could look great, and the geometry is more correct of course. So ultimately it's a very good thing.
- Oshyan
Thank Jochen! Not me. He found out about it. As usual I don't read but just try stuff.
I think if handled carefully with enough polys, this is great indeed.
It's a pity that trees are so nasty to unwrap, otherwise it would be just great if you could easily paint your textures on the tree and thus have much better control over the 'flow' of the textures from stem to branch.
In ZB I make polygroups and unwrap, then in LW I rotate each polygroup's UVmap (unwelded) and shove around so the textures neatly fit, quite doable.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on February 10, 2016, 06:08:52 AM
It's a pity that trees are so nasty to unwrap, otherwise it would be just great if you could easily paint your textures on the tree and thus have much better control over the 'flow' of the textures from stem to branch.
You could do that in Mari for example. A tree generated from speedtree should only need minor UV tweaks to be paintable in Mari. I am pretty sure you could just auto UV layout the thing and paint right away!
Well if so then that would be a really viable option to save money for :)
I'm really held off by this modelling if I feel I need to use a lot of different apps and a lot of tweaks/cheats/conversions to get what I want, ultimately.
ST and Mari, without too much UV hassling, would be great.
Not to mention the cost £1200 for Mari and a similar cost for speed tree!!!!! I can barely afford terragen on my pension!
Yes definitely true.
Affording is one, justifying it to yourself is another.
There is the Indie version of Mari that has been released last week:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/433930/
It has some limitation, but definitely nothing stopping you from texturing a simple (or even more complex) tree!
Read the fine print................"custom shaders not allowed". :P
That's not really an issue. What you just need is the ability to paint texture and export them. You will have to do the shaders in Terragen anyway...
It's great to see more conversation about partnering Speedtree with TG. Since IDV released version 7 of the Studio Modeler the ability to create "cages" and work with quad polygons the pipeline to programs like ZBrush and Mudbox (and others) has really been simplified and expanded:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrGt27UIPxk
More on that: http://blog.speedtree.com/2013/11/subdivision-surface-modeling-speedtree-cinema-studio-v7/
Also the modified mesh can then be imported back into ST and 'embedded' into the Speedtree Procedural Mesh (SPM) for further refinement:
http://docs.speedtree.com/doku.php?id=mesh_assets
The ST exported mesh does need to be UV'd before being imported back into ST, but as the most likely part of the tree to be 'sculpted' is the trunk(s) and major large branches, that's not a major task. The finer branches and twigs can then be re-incorporated with the embedded mesh(es) into one spm file. Darn Ulco, looks like this thread has raised this project on my 'to do' list priorities :)
I didn't know the latter part, Doug, re-import. Have to try that as well. Yes, there's always something new to explore, I wish days were longer :P