cmuraglia Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 I am rendering a large area commercial building site that is essentialy a birds eye view. There are many forested areas on the site that contain hundres of trees and scrub etc., Does anyone have any insight on how to create large areas of trees that look convincing. I was thinking of maping a photo onto a large polygon. I have used 2d imagecels trees in the past for perspective drawings, but again my vantage point now is very elevated, and this may look out of perspective. Any ideas? Sincerly Chris Muraglia Quote Link to comment
Kristen Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 This wouldn't be photo-realistic, but you could create a foliage texture using eroded transparency. If you apply that to a mesh (or several layers of mesh) it looks pretty decent. Quote Link to comment
cmuraglia Posted March 2, 2004 Author Share Posted March 2, 2004 Thanks Kristen, What type of mesh would you use? Would it be of each individual tree, or a larger area? Would the eroded transparency be a plain color, or is this texture based. Thanks alot Chris Quote Link to comment
Kristen Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 It'll probably look best if you have a mesh for each tree, but it'll render more effieciently if it's just one overall mesh. Pretty much the same answer for whether to use object attribute color or image -- the latter might look better but will take longer to render and make a bigger file size. I'd probably use several layers of mesh with plain object attribute color, and each layer a different shade of green. You'll have to experiment to see what gives the look you want. Quote Link to comment
Kurt Magness Posted March 2, 2004 Share Posted March 2, 2004 You might want to check out www.gardenhose.com Dennis there uses painter image sprayers to make trees, bushes, etc. He has examples and tutorials on how to do exactly what you discribe. But basically you make a texture map of the forest canopy with an associated invisible mask above the ground plane (+/- 20'), that has another texture map of the forest soil on the ground. He also uses a technique of mapping leaves onto cones with a invisible mask for pine trees. Then he puts them on a terrian model. Very realistic. You could try mapping leaves onto hemispheres. He uses the image hose to make trees instead of photos of trees but the technique is still the same. Quote Link to comment
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