Hi,
I have been playing with the trial version of xfrog and made my first tree with it.
I have borrowed the textures from xfrog's outstanding cracked willow from the european tree library, but the tree I have constructed by myself.
It hold's up quite well, even on close-up (although I should have probably moved the camera away another meter). Next thing I'll do is buy the full license of the modeller. Great software. And in combination with TG2's outstanding renderer... well, you know it ;D
BTW: the displacement map for the bark ...made by me :-)
Cheers,
Frank
Hi Frank,
Very cool tree and I love the bark!
The displacement is a bit "hairy" if you know what I mean.
I made textures and displacement-maps myself once and I had the same problem.
Blurring the displacementmap certainly helps but it also reduces detail.
I then only made displacements for the largest patches of bark and that worked fine.
Next time I'll see you online I'll send you those textures (~3500x2000px :))
Great work and cool you're going to be into tree-modeling.
I have some medium-exciting news in that regard as well, but will share that along with the bark ;)
Martin
Hi Martin, thank you very much!
I have reduced that "hairy" displacement quite a bit already through the self-made displacement map. Also, only the trunk is displaced, although it maybe seem to you that the branches have some level of displacement as well (which is probably due to the rough looking texture).
I'm probably on IM tonight, not 100% sure yet. but we'll meet eventually ;-)
Looking forward to your other news.
Cheers,
Frank
Ah I see...the main trunk indeed has very little "hair" (haha...that sounds ridiculous).
I meant the branches the most actually, so that's probably just a texture-issue then.
Also, did you mention that the first level of branches is textures, but the second level and further isn't?
Don't know if you can solve that?
Martin
no, the second level branches and further have a different, much less rough texture. I suppose these are much "younger" than the trunk and first level branches, hence are much smoother still. Probably to be more realistic, one would need to make texture shots from more than just two branch levels, to mimic how the roughness decreases as you go deeper in the branch hierachy. The xfrog model only had two levels of texture, which may be a little too coarse for close-ups like this.
Eventually when I have my full license, I'm going to take pictures of more than two textures per tree, to allow for real close-ups. That will certainly increase my "outdoor time" - which is a welcome side effect ;-)
Frank
Exciting to know that FrankB and possibly TU are going into the tree business. Does this mean we can expect some more TG2 packs from you Frank?
Quote from: domdib on April 03, 2009, 05:54:42 AM
Exciting to know that FrankB and possibly TU are going into the tree business. Does this mean we can expect some more TG2 packs from you Frank?
yes, most probably :-)
... once I have developed the required skills for that. XFrog is a pretty complex application on its own, there's lots to learn. At this point, I'm still wondering how far one can go in making truly realistic looking trees with it.
Frank
nice looking tree....
a quicky, showing the tree in a population.
Frank
Looks good man!
I'd only tone down the specularity a bit, slightly darken the diffuse color and increase the translucency.
Although the tree really looks alive I think this could improve it even further.
Great work! *gets itchy fingers* :)
Martin
Frank, this looks better from a distance and not just better - GREAT!
distibution with these trees are excellent. Doesn't look shabby at all
Looks amazing.
for a first try, that looks very good... i wait for evolution and wonder what you'll be able to do with the complete version :)
btw how does this software works ? is that user friendly ?
Great tree you got there, looks kinda willow like, have you decided on a type for it to be yet?
richard
Congratulations on this wonderful work. Looking forward to seeing more.
thanks guys, that is very encouraging! :-)
Richard, no I don't think I am going to try and reproduce any real existing species. There is a whole library of existing plants one can choose from. When and if xfrog decides one day to put them on sale model by model (and not packed in one library), I and many others have a convenient way of adding real plants to our renders.
The xfrog modeller is very versatile, it would almost be a waste to limit yourself to trying and re-modelling existing species only. With a little bit of imagination, I will be able to create entirely new species, that still look realistic. Like the one in this thread.
That being said, there may be demand for higher quality (real) species, where the xfrog model just is not satisfactory. Klas' oak is a good example - he just made a better one.
Franck, the xfrog UI is so so. It looks a little dusty, I think the last update must be like 5 years ago or so. The UI works, let's put it that way. Here again, it's useful to have a fast CPU when zooming and panning in the render view.
Cheers,
Frank
Frank, will you put this tree in your presets on your website?
Calico, maybe I will eventually, but I will first have to acquire the full license. Remember, this was only made by the trial version.
Can I interpret your question that you would be interested?
I would also have to make new textures, as i think I will not be allowed to re-distribute these textures from the cracked willow.
Regards,
Frank
I'm pretty sure you aren't.
There is a very nice site with neat bark-textures and others as well:
http://www.cgtextures.com (http://www.cgtextures.com)
I am interested, Frank. I'm also interested in how Modo 401 looks to be able to do some of this sort of thing. I'm just not sure about the quality yet. Anyway, yes. ;D
Quote from: FrankB on April 03, 2009, 03:55:04 PM
Calico, maybe I will eventually, but I will first have to acquire the full license. Remember, this was only made by the trial version.
Can I interpret your question that you would be interested?
I would also have to make new textures, as i think I will not be allowed to re-distribute these textures from the cracked willow.
Regards,
Frank
Lite => 299 Dollars
Full => 399 Dollars
Didn't think it could be that much...
I mean, can you do like flowers, grass, dead trees ?
is it possible to use it for something else than plants ? I know that sounds stupid but some people used TG2 for something else than landscape so I wonder if someone can use XFrog for something else than trees...
with lite you can do every plant. AFAIK the full version at 399 gives you the ability to animate the plants - in xfrog. I don't think it's good for anything else, but maybe, who knows? I'm only interested in it as a plant generator.
Frank
You can do flowers, dead trees, mushrooms, grass, moss, cells, i even made buildings with x-frog when i was using it for a short time.
ah that sounds great if it is so much versatile !
Indeed it is. ;D