it is built around a Y shape tree model already. the extras could be their own object and lod applied. they are for front line of trees, and for the trees on the inside of track, if necessary the parts between the Y vanes you cant see could be removed. (for tree lines this might be even better visually now I think about it) and also just an attempt to make better trees. which is certainly a success. edit. at 25 metre diameter, lets say 20 m with an overlap to another tree. it would take just 185 to cover the outer edge of track where trees lie. that's 100K polys.... not to bad. theoretically.... 4 large beech, 4 beech shrubs, 1 maple tree with miniscule leaves . fast fab tested them with block transform and they work really well with the light. so going to churn out many and set them up later. after terrain finished.
I looked at it in editor and it have a really good result On my side I'm almost finished cleaning the bases meshes and some UVs of the track. We will next be ready to build upon.
cheers fabz! well over 50 hours to get these trees right, unbelievable really. learned loads and enjoyed every minuite of it. really learned speed tree nice. I thought 3dmax was bad but sheesh ! its all easy when you know how . its worth it to go beyond the y shape in my opinion. but I couldn't do it without speed tree or the 5 hours spent staring at red dead redemption 2 tree models and forza horizons . theyre all using speed tree. its the only way to do the art for it.
[Disclaimer: constructive criticism ] I am not yet convinced that the effort is worth it. There is a lot of subjectivity involved (mine), but I do not find trees with "light" foliage too sexy. Also, without zooming in, those trees do not look more believable than standard Y trees, imo. Maybe it would make more sense if the textures would have more leaves ? Do you happen to have any comparison pics side to side ? - same textures, exibit A using Y-trees. Exibit B using these Y++ trees. Why do I say all this: lightning in AC does not add too much to objects in AC (see the "flatness" in the building of previous posts). Therefore, all those nice and soft shadows in a "leaves rich" tree, help with the general impression. Again, imo, a perfect texture, but with bad lightning(implicitly shadows) looks worse than the vice-versa. That being said, this project (and the idea to see it finished) is still very sexy . Good luck.
I understand the concern. More 3D and "fluffy" trees are more about parallax effect when moving by and better render at wrong angle on camera replay, than better aspect on screenshot. A still side by side comparison would not be very telling. The trick shines better when moving... ;-) Pixelchaser is still experimenting on it and I guess we will rationalise it when done. Beside that, as he said, it's not 3D trees like in openworld or like GT sport that generate a lot of distracting clipping and messes with shadows. They are Y shaped tree at their core with more detail to create more parallax when passing by. In any case, since Kunos put AC under the rug, I think it's down to modder to be "creative" with the engine... to push it forward and keep all those new GPUs busy on layer5... I would say I believe that different method should be used for different kind of trees and depending on the distance. Y shaped trees are really good for "not so far" from the track, but look bland right next to the track where they miss parallax effect, and they are overkill in far distance where no camera will ever look behind it, modder that fill their track with Y shaped trees for miles on hills are juste wasting ressource too. The right asset for the right distance using ressources where they matter the most... ^^
I am in complete agreement about the light adding nothing but distraction. I put up with it in forza and red dead. same thing going on. that said light can be controlled though. and just a touch of light and shadow from one side to the other is nice in effect. but I do prefer the static lighted trees with up normals together with my art,. it colours the trees as a whole. so they still get brighter or darker, but with no direction associated to it. but if this works then it will be great. we yet to see. there is a very long camera at turn 1 on LRP that captures just how thick the brush is on the final corner before the straight. no other way to capture that than by doing this I think... regards whether its worth it. I have viewed the base Y shape with or without the extras, sometimes it looks better with the Y in certain angles. and sometimes the built up effect looks better. I hope to be doing mods for more modern engines before long so none of this is wasted and whilst I can I am happy to potentially improve the look of the track with these trees if that is what it is doing. anyway we will have the choice through testing. another consideration is how the grass layer ill be doing works out. if that saves half the polys over having kslayer 5 grass then we can easily afford a few hundred thousand polys K in Lod parts.
can do a tree type in a day now. nice workflow. this poplar tree needs much less design so for this we have 5 trees at 500 polys here. can see the branches its form from. still a sparser looking Y shape at its core. all together now. \o/ I think that will do
through making my individual branch artwork in speed tree I found a more practical way to deal with the mirroring issue that arises from the usual way of using 1 tree image on 3 sides for the Y shape trees but this method allows it to work even better.. y shape 3d tree and take images from the extra side (which is also a separate tree texture) starting visual ideas for the vegetation fence. here I replicated the type of thing they have in forza 7. and then below is my version. which will have a 3d element like the trees producing thick volume with the scattered extra vines and leaf models.
@acfastfab is the terrain ground level going to change much with your fixes ? want to start planting some trees , and get some wip shots
Hello. Sorry I was not much around this week. Short answer no. I just globally cleaned so no significant change in the elevation. In some places maybe maximum 1 or 2cm change because some edges placed differently, but it's unlikely. For the road, the physical surface is of course untouched and the visual mesh I only cleaned the intersections. And pretty much everything was done using edge constraint and vertex snap. So don't worry, you can do some tree placement. I will give you the file back maybe tomorrow. 2 days ago I did a lot of snapshot on the Forza 6 version of the track to have a better understanding of the houses and buildings props around the track. I also watch for 1h this video to do things "2018" ^^
I shall watch. been watching a few races. and noticing how in summer all the tree achieve an overall greenness. and in autumn you can see the deciduous vs evergreen. so been using this drone vid to try capture some more individual tree types, especially where the evergreens are. anyway another day of tweaking and I reckon I can place most of it. really want to capture the bald tree trunks near the track quite like forza do. might take another 2 tree tyres. I did atlas every single tree texture on one file but it was 8192x8192, so split it into /4 which can be /2 at the end if textures are a problem. max 4 tree textures which includes everything needed for shrubs, there is plenty space between track and some tree lines and the shrubs in there will be done too. line of 3d with BB 2d backing. I have barrier textures. back then. I was having trouble lofting. I literally had to give up to save my hair from being pulled out. also have splines for the 4 high and 3 high variants.
No need to loft the barriers... You just make a big straight one, repeating a part and weld the wertex. Then you use a path deform with a spline that follow the ground. Even making the spline is easy, most of the time you just transform a "edge selection" of the ground into a spline "et voilà". ^^ I noticed in you 3dsmax file that all your mesh were "edit mesh" object. You have far more edit option if you turn them into "edit poly" object. I also put allthe object under different layers. It's then way easier to work on the file because you can hide or freeze the objects by layers in one click. It will also be very (very) usefull later for the multi layout track and still having everything in the same max file.
yep I take splines from edges all the time.( then I perform a piss poor job with them ) its one year old and yeah im on poly mode nearly always now. ac takes only a mesh, so that's why it left on that. the only work I did on it was manual moving of some verts. that freeze object stuff freaks me out. I try stay away from it but yeah, its nightmare to deal with in the list. so this layering I will just have to learn. its not so much the workflow or the fundamentals now but the tools knowledge and scope where learning is required. I have the stupidly fertile imagination for creation, and I always design the workflow first, just the damn tools.... all fun and games untill one day Ill be saying "alexa" "3dsmax model me a..... " ! Cool regards the path deform, working like that is much bennefitial for my style given that I model from texture all the time and that should be perfect for me if I gets it working. nice one lads.you mention welding vertices which keeps the object together I presume. looking to actually mimic a tool rtb has but over in max. this sounds like it tbh but together with applying FFD cages to it... any ideas there ? I wonder if a script writer would design a script for all this for a reasonable price.. hmmm...
help ! I have 4 types of trees, and about 5/6 variants of each in 3 types ...billboard, Y and Y+. my brain is a bit frazzled with this one and I just want to place them asap to achieve some progress. how do I title these with the KS_TREE_GROUP ? can some one example a group that retains the tree type and the model type in the name please? or is it just as simple as lets say. KS_TREE_1_BB_fir_001 ?
some major progress I think.. just practicing here with this object paint brush.. nothing good to see but the effect im getting over distance is exactly what I wanted so very happy with the art and the ground contouring shows through also. exactly the vision I had for it which as a design exercise is Superb ,feels like a real forest canopy... using bb cards in the background and just Y shapes here (need to devise a way to place the extra branch parts in unison with a Y for the super tree). its gona be just great when finished I expect. a real update to make the rest more enjoyable. edit: here`s the distant canopy effect I managed to get rendered a bit better... \o/ working perfect imo, no repetitiveness, natural colour blending and colour changing, natural alpha build up to solidity and the ground contouring that comes trough . ooo lah lah! I think its lovely ! and when it gets the grass shaders variance channel it be even better. @acfastfab spot the sideways tree ! it must have naturally fallen over. ,regarding this tool, is it normal orientation dependant on the scene object you place on ? would I best pointing all normal up on a temporary object?
The way I name my trees is as follows: KSTREE_GROUP_A_SUMMER.001 - To whatever number I need, its for one type of summer tree KSTREE_GROUP_B_SUMMER.001 - Also to whatever number i need, for another type of summer tree KSTREE_GROUP_C_EVERGREEN.001 - For evergreens KSTREE_GROUP_D_PINE.001 Clear as mud??
yep clear as mud. now looking kinda funky, but most stuff does in 3dmax just the billboard trees here, got them mixing nice I think, rather than regions of same trees I think manual placement for the rest of the Y`s will be required. and some removal of trees that you`ll never see at some point. what could be causing the loss of Z alignment with the object paint tool ? is it the bounding box possibly ? some close detail here, I love how the leaf colours blend into this separate combined colouring when far away as do real trees
