My turn.................... :)
Looks great! I really like those clouds. Speedtree model with the snow?
Very nice !
Cool, in all senses. Same question; did you add those snow meshes as assets in an ST tree? Like you can add apples, and whatever?
Two things come to mind if I need to make and other C: the snow on the branches may perhaps have a little tiny bump and be less shiny, more translucency perhaps. And I would break the rather straight edge line of the simple shape (or painted) river edge (up in the snow), just adding some not too large (fractal) warp will do it.
A nice view!
The snow on the trees could really get some of that bumpiness as Ulco said but in general very nice!
Good one!
Brrr, I don't wanna think about it yet...I harvested a full mug of raspberries in my back yard this afternoon so I'm not yet in winter mode...great image tho...
A few minor tweaks................ :)
zaxxon.............yes they are ST and if you want the clouds holler and I'll post. Just an "easy" cloud.
Ulco............yes and getting bump on the snow clumps was not as easy as it should have been. :-\
I gotta figure out how you got the snow on those trees. Please tell me it's not a special function found only in Speedtree.
Good tweaks, looks good.
I'm afraid it is, masonspappy. You can make (a variety of) meshes and call them in ST, hang them anywhere. I had a go at some yesterday, out of curiosity. Works very nicely. ST is the answer to all tribulations ;)
BTW, Richard. I had a default shader with the snow and ice tgc (somewhere around, you probably have it) as snow; some translucency, a tiny bit of luminosity and some sparkle. Also, reduce the opacity to 0.501, so shadows will be lighter. But keep in mind that opacity thing is working now, but in future (hopefully) there's greyscale opacity and it won't.
Quote from: masonspappy on November 04, 2016, 11:06:56 PM
I gotta figure out how you got the snow on those trees. Please tell me it's not a special function found only in Speedtree.
There are different ways you could fake it.
Not sure about the quality but you could make just one basic snow object and populate it on a tree.
Then just export the populated snow object and add it to the tree in another 3D software.
After that you could load the tree with the snow as one object
(the easiest way although you could use them separate too) and use it how you want.
This looks like it is ready for a Christmas card. Pretty.
This thread stuck with me, enough so that I revived a project from last year.
Last year I figured out a technique (using xFrog and Blender) to create snow accumulations on branches of deciduous trees (Tree 1 and Tree 2 in attachment) . I thought they looked ok.
Then used same technique on branches of xfrog models of evergreen trees (Tree 3 and 4. Might be best to pretend you don't see # 3. It kinda sucks :( )
Tree #5 is the same .OBJ model as #4, but uses an xFrog-only technique for accumulating snow on branches. I think it looks decent but the drawback is that the polygon count is nearly 2.5 time greated than the xFrog/Blender version. Need to retract that last sentence. Apparently my test model still used the full size TIFF files that came with xFrog model. I substituted smaller JPEG files and size dropped to roughly on par with other model.
To Ulco's earlier points, issues of shininess and bumpiness still need to be worked out but I think that's doable.
Problem with all these techniques of putting Snow on evergreens is that, in reality, snow will clump and thicken toward the end of the branch, and clumps will vaguely take the shape of the underlaying mass of needles. This affect seems very difficult to achieve in xFrog because the technique I'm using only works with 3D geometry. Pine Needles & Boughs are created using images on flat planes which can't be displaced. (I'm assuming same is true in Speedtree as well). If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
1 and 4 look pretty interesting. I didn't know XFrog had that snow adding possibility. So how did you make #4? Is that the Blender extra?
One way of adding snow to existing trees (I read) is to add another alpha mask, with, as you say, a slightly larger clumped snow area, covering most of the needles. If you add that as a UV image mask masking a surface shader, you would also be able to fractilize the amount I'd say. Preferable would be another mesh of course, a bit convex, but that would be another tree. Or you could double the branches, and replace one by that mesh, and choose wich one to use in TG.
This is what is said on the ST forum: However, if you look at the Scots Pine and the Colorado Blue Spruce, the snow was made by making a bumpy plane that sat on top of the leaf mesh (consisting of branch with needles). Then place the leaf map shape as the snows alpha so the snow will line up with the leaf map.
This technique helps prevent flatness on the leaf meshes and adds more reality because when you view the leaf mesh from above, you'll see the snow, and from below, you'll see the original leaf map with out snow. It gets a bit tricky though, because the snow texture and the leaf map texture have to be in the same image, so you'll have to line UV's up with mesh and combine the 2 textures in an image editing program.
Quote from: masonspappy on November 12, 2016, 12:37:50 AM
This thread stuck with me, enough so that I revived a project from last year.
Last year I figured out a technique (using xFrog and Blender) to create snow accumulations on branches of deciduous trees (Tree 1 and Tree 2 in attachment) . I thought they looked ok.
Then used same technique on branches of xfrog models of evergreen trees (Tree 3 and 4. Might be best to pretend you don't see # 3. It kinda sucks :( )
Tree #5 is the same .OBJ model as #4, but uses an xFrog-only technique for accumulating snow on branches. I think it looks decent but the drawback is that the polygon count is nearly 2.5 time greated than the xFrog/Blender version. Need to retract that last sentence. Apparently my test model still used the full size TIFF files that came with xFrog model. I substituted smaller JPEG files and size dropped to roughly on par with other model.
To Ulco's earlier points, issues of shininess and bumpiness still need to be worked out but I think that's doable.
Problem with all these techniques of putting Snow on evergreens is that, in reality, snow will clump and thicken toward the end of the branch, and clumps will vaguely take the shape of the underlaying mass of needles. This affect seems very difficult to achieve in xFrog because the technique I'm using only works with 3D geometry. Pine Needles & Boughs are created using images on flat planes which can't be displaced. (I'm assuming same is true in Speedtree as well). If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.
I got some hi poly Pine bushes from Walli that use only colour maps and are 3d geometry and he builds for XFROG so maybe he knows if there are trees as well.
Quote from: Dune on November 12, 2016, 03:11:56 AM
1 and 4 look pretty interesting. I didn't know XFrog had that snow adding possibility. So how did you make #4? Is that the Blender extra?
xFrog has something called a 'REVO' object that can be manipulated to produce a kinda/sorta snowy effect (mimicking snow accumulating on branch, not just coloring the plane white). Problem is that it doesn't work for all trees.
In my image, .OBJ for trees 1 and 4 were imported into Blender , and you have to rotate the camera until they are viewed from the top. Go into edit mode and select branches in a random, scattered mode (works well for me because I am also random and scattered. :) then switch to a sideways view and and move the cursor up a bit. This has the effect of expanding all the selected parts upward. At this point it's starting to look a bit like accumulating snow. Then view the tree again from the top down. Import a snow texture graphic (can be any kind of snow texture) and use Blender function 'Unwrap/ Project From view' The selected geometries will be superimposed over the snow graphic and the tree should now have accumulated snow on the branches.
Works pretty well for deciduous trees, and so-so for conifers. On the downside, the resulting files are !Yuge!. (Still working on that). But the tree will appear to have accumulations of snow and the branches will be visible from the underside.
Thanks for explaining. I don't use Blender, but there are other ways of course.