Landscape with 30,000 trees [Archive]

marble_sheep

07-07-2005, 02:10 PM

that's a lotta trees! I think it looks really awesome in the background, but maybe not as good in the front. The image maps are too obvious, IMO. But, if you're just using the scene as background for some cars, then it probably doesn't matter!

What method did you use to scatter the tress about? It looks very "natural," for lack of better word. The hill in the distance could probably pass for a photo... if there was a sky, of course ;)

Martin Adams

07-07-2005, 02:11 PM

That looks really good. Did you do this all in LightWave or make use of something like Vue Infinite?

cholo

07-07-2005, 03:08 PM

I did it all myself in lightwave. First I built the road and the I constructed the landscape extending polygons away from the road. After I had the whole landscape I used random pricks to "populate" areas with points. This was quite exhausting I had to do several passes and manually select areas of points so as to not have trees so uniformly spaced. Once I was happy I used point clone plus to fill it up with trees. :) I have versions of the trees with much higher geometry, but these, which are the lowest polygon count (6 poly's per tree) look quite good as long as the camera moves. Motion blur tends to make them less obvious. I'll post some movies as soon as I have some.

cholo

07-07-2005, 03:56 PM

This is a much more distant shot to get some perspective of the landscape I built.

marble_sheep

07-07-2005, 04:34 PM

Very beautiful!

What kind of lighting setup are you using? It fits the overcast sky beautifully. Speaking of that, was the fog done in LW or is it done in post?

:thumbsup:

shockwave

07-07-2005, 04:39 PM

I have always wondered how to make trees. Any links to tutorials that you know of ?

hulagirl7

07-07-2005, 05:34 PM

You should look into HD_Instance plug in. You can use a variety of
large poly-count trees, it's quick and fun for the whole family!
find website on flay.com

shaol

07-07-2005, 05:58 PM

the trees are to uniform put some differant trees not all the same.

sKb875

07-07-2005, 07:12 PM

Holy.. Someone's mad bored! :P
Looks soo cool. I'm interested in those cars that you're gonna put in it.. Have any pictures that I can see? :l33t:

cholo

07-07-2005, 07:53 PM

Here's an update at road level.

riki

07-07-2005, 09:28 PM

I have always wondered how to make trees. Any links to tutorials that you know of ?

Here's an example of a lo-poly tree, something from an old tut. 2 polys I think, but gives you the general idea.

Nice work by the way? Duid you use any random variation in size with Point Clone Plus?

Kuzey

07-07-2005, 10:16 PM

Just wonderful!!

Kuzey

nthused

07-07-2005, 10:55 PM

Outstanding.

fixer1977

07-08-2005, 02:53 AM

The last two images you posted are really, really nice. The fog really makes it. What is your lighting rig for this scene?

Silkrooster

07-08-2005, 03:02 AM

Very, very nice. I like it.
Silk

Darrell

07-08-2005, 03:06 AM

did you create those trees by hand or you used a tree generator plugin?

starbase1

07-08-2005, 03:07 AM

Very, very good. Like it a lot.

cholo

07-08-2005, 12:48 PM

Back with an update, this time a test animation. The main concern with this test was to see if trees would hold with movement, and they apparently do. I'm thinking of changing the trees immediate to the road to higher res version and leaving the rest of the trees low res. I did the trees myself although it was more a photoshop job than a modeling job. They are based on a photo I took with a Canon EOS 20D. I have many more trees, but in a forest environment there's no room for other tree species I think. If anyone's interested in my trees I can upload them for free onto turbosquid. Anyway, enough talking, on to the test, the file was encoded in windows media, enjoy!

http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/lanzarote/roadtest.wmv

marble_sheep

07-08-2005, 01:13 PM

Looking good! The best part is when the camera is flying... at that distance, the trees look perfect! For the close-up shots, in addition to higher-poly trees, I think some ground clutter would go a long way in "selling" the shot. Throw some rocks in there by the road, and maybe some shrubbery. Also, maybe work on the road texture a bit. It looks too uniform.

Keep up the good work!!!

Igu4n4

07-08-2005, 02:47 PM

very nice work.. how long are the frames taking to render, and what kind of memory overhead are you finding the scene takes.

I'm interested because running a sequence like that with some hi-res vehicles in it could be a very interesting piece of footage. It could be composited.. but there's some sweet environmental work there for reflections.

Steve

cholo

07-08-2005, 03:16 PM

Lightwave does not like so many polygons, that is for sure. Ive been trying all morning to replace the closest trees to the road with high res versions and as much as I try I end up adding a quarter of a million polys to the scene and modeler just flips. And I still have to add the car to the scene which means another 80k poly's or so. However, fprime doesn't seem too bothered by the poly count. I rendered the sequence overnight and it reached 2 refinements with MC radiosity! Well, back to LW...

lardbros

07-08-2005, 05:00 PM

Whoah, that is bloody impressive! The lighting is spot on. No crits from me at all, despite the trees being such low poly they still look great. I can't imagine what you could create with HD Instance...

Just downloading the movie clip now...

nthused

07-08-2005, 05:39 PM

HD Instance works wonderfully for this kind of project...except you wouldn't be limited to a mere 30,000 low poly trees :-)

Now if NewTek and Worley would just hurry up and make volumetrics work with FPrime...it would truly be the best of both worlds.

cholo

07-08-2005, 08:54 PM

Here's the landscape with a car in it... It's starting to look really good :)

riki

07-08-2005, 10:14 PM

Would it be possible to render the background seperately and then composit the car?

MooseDog

07-09-2005, 10:44 AM

:bowdown: :bowdown:

outstanding stuff! congratulations. only minor critique would be to add some random shrubbery close to the road. would definetly sell the shot and seal the deal.

off topic but i would also suggest looking into hd_instance for forestry work as well. reduces the load in both modeler and layout, but the rendered output looks the same as you have. plus lets you have more variety in the trees. also very useful for grass and ground cover and such close to the road, as well as back in the woods.

thx for sharing! continued success.

shaol

07-09-2005, 03:03 PM

cant you use low poly trees in the far dissants and as you get closer use high that what they do in games to save on polys. does anyone know if lightwave can render the same ?

badllarma

07-11-2005, 03:10 AM

Hi cholo,
Very impressed with the look of your scenes just a couple of questions did you used the tree images in a typical X formation? And is the grass procedural? or grass photo textures or a mix of both methods?

Currently fighting with large tree scenes myself using the Xfrog /HD instance route but, things are taking way to long so looking at another way of doing things.

cheers
andy

RonB

07-11-2005, 10:50 AM

That's beautiful work Cholo, very realistic. I especially like the road level view. I remember you did a post on how the trees are done...you kind of roughed it out. Would you be into going into some detail on how to do them? I really couldn't quite understand the process. I know you use images and clip maps but I don't understand how the geomery of the tree is arrived at and how the maps are applied. I would certainly applaud you for sharing that info. Great work!
Cheers, Ron

sKb875

07-11-2005, 02:55 PM

Dangg that's soo realisitc :o
Only thing though, other then the AA problem, the rims have too much chrome. But :o nice!

Vel_crow

07-11-2005, 04:21 PM

very impressive.....

but the first thing that caught my eye.....was the big black windows just staring at me.....

maybe a little more reflectivness so you can see the tree in them a little bit more, and get that sort of...'little glare' you see when light shines on them

cholo

07-11-2005, 05:55 PM

Ok, I'm back with a big bad animation that took all weekend to render. Although I'm pretty sure this animation will make it into the cut, there's a few things I think could be better... The car's edges look transparent sometimes, maybe this is a bug of fprime's motion blur, but the white stripe on the street tends to "eat" into the car. Second, the car seems a bit small. Third, the texture around the centerline of the street seems a bit odd. Last, the simple version of the trees I'm using is a star shape with 6 planar polygons intersecting at the middle UV mapped and deformed to break symmetry (actually it's like 3 planes divided into 6 polygons down the middle, I'll post images later on, I promise). The complex version of the trees running on the sides of the road are simply the same trees subdivided once and further deformed to make their flat nature less obvious to a moving camera. Anyway, here's a link to the animation I rendered, I hope you are as impressed as I am.

http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/lanzarote/dc.wmv

BeeVee

07-11-2005, 06:22 PM

Absolutely beautiful. You're right about the car being too small - especially if it's an American car... :)

Also, the URL you've given here isn't quite right, you missed out the subdirectory: http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/lanzarote/dc.wmv works

B

nthused

07-11-2005, 07:17 PM

Cholo,

Excellent animation.

Forgive my 'merican measurements here...

Be careful with the resizing of the car...just check it against the real deal...then check your street width (normally for a two lane road it should not exceed approx. 15-20 feet for each lane - which may be the issue.

Also, the striping appears to be too wide. Striping is usually 4 - 8 inches wide for this type of application. Also recommend reducing the brightness of the striping.

cholo

07-11-2005, 07:23 PM

Maybe my highway was a four laner but Kramer decided to make it first class :)

nthused

07-11-2005, 07:50 PM

:D Gosh that episode was funny... Yes the luxury of W I D E pavement

cholo

07-11-2005, 08:46 PM

Here's a still of the car with some surfacing adjustments and a little bigger. This is not the best perspective to judge scale, but I think the new scale matches the whole environment better. I also added a few fixes to the road surface. The motion blur bug I mentioned earlier is also more apparent in this picture.

nthused

07-11-2005, 08:51 PM

That looks great, Cholo. To be honest I don't notice the "errors" in the motion blur.

cholo

07-11-2005, 10:00 PM

These are not reflections... the car becomes "see through".

MonroePoteet

07-11-2005, 11:15 PM

Very, very nice! I'd love to see one of your tree models, with textures, posted here.

The posted WMV looks fantastic, but a couple of minor comments:

I'd agree the car is too small for that lane width. Stripe width would be OK if the car was bigger.

Should the centerline be yellow (probably double-striped for no-passing zones on those curves) if it's two-way, or white striped if it's one side of a freeway?

The reflections on the car seems tinny to me. Maybe pull it back a bit?

mTp

fixer1977

07-12-2005, 02:59 AM

Absolutely lovely. Is it lit with HDRI? You still could use a few rocks and shrubbery but that's a very minor gripe! Good stuff.

sKb875

07-12-2005, 03:45 AM

Holy crap dude! That looks pimp :o Soo realistic! :thumbsup:
You should make a video tutorial on car animation ;)

Mudvayne

07-12-2005, 11:55 AM

Cholo, Awesome.

joshthompson3d

07-12-2005, 01:53 PM

Awsome man, way to go. Where I work we are getting into the HD Instance and combineing XFrog and doing wonders a little longer on renders but great. Keep up the good work. :cool:

Schwing

07-12-2005, 02:44 PM

Looks nice. Be sure to add alittle suspension (body) movement and a tad of body lean during turns. Just my opinion: The car would look sportier with larger rims, lower profile tires and the car lowered a tad. The car reflection looks like red chrome. Nice work so far. :thumbsup:

badllarma

07-12-2005, 04:55 PM

Awsome man, way to go. Where I work we are getting into the HD Instance and combineing XFrog and doing wonders a little longer on renders but great. Keep up the good work. :cool:

I'm finding even at 4 or 5 thousand trees on a large ground map (1km x 1km) & HD Instance (with low poly Xfrog trees) :( my computer clocking up 5-6 hours a frame on medium AA at D1 PAL res hence my intrest in how cholo has done these trees.
The quicker HV are worked on in Lightwave the better :thumbsup:

cholo

07-12-2005, 05:20 PM

Well, today has been spent mostly waiting for another render which I'll post as soon as it's ready. The second shot is an aerial so it's good fun. In the meantime I have in good spirit decided to share my tree with the world, so I have uploaded it onto my webspace (I don't know how much it can take bandwidth wise so maybe NewTek could host it for us in the member freebie section). The photographs and models are 100% mine and you can use it freely in anything you like, no strings attached. The link is

http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/lanzarote/tree.zip

badllarma

07-12-2005, 05:52 PM

cholo, your a true gent been having problems with one side of my trees being ok but the others being very dark, even after I turned off self shadows etc.. looking forward to see how you set this tree up
cheers
andy

MonroePoteet

07-12-2005, 06:55 PM

Many, many thanks. Very interesting technique! Did you develop that vortex/jitter method for distorting the planes? Certainly makes it more interesting from all angles.

Also, how did you create that perfect alpha channel from your photo? Was it backed by something contrasting originally, or LOTS of sweat & eyestrain, or some magic auto-masker?

FYI, for the "mildly distant tree" object in the .ZIP I had to create the transparency map by copying the color map, loading your alpha image and inverting the texture. Maybe 'cause I'm on V8.2?

Nice that it's a foggy day for the lighting, huh?

Again, many thanks! It's "Cholo's Tree" from now 'til eternity.

mTp

oxyg3n

07-12-2005, 08:24 PM

Wow, this is looking really nice. I like the car too!

cholo

07-13-2005, 10:02 AM

Yes, I thought that by making the polygons have intersecting angles the tree would be viewable from a much wider range of perspectives.so I basically just selected points and rotated ad-lib until I was happy with the results. What I did to make rendering go faster is instead of using the UV mapped alpha image as a transparency map I used it as a clip map, but that can't be saved with the object because that information goes in with the scene. Also, if you multiply using point clone plus the trees retain their UV maps :) I was lucky that I found that tree near a road construction site so it was in the middle of nowhere so the original photo was set against a blue sky which made the whole alpha map creation go a lot smoother. I did have to strain my eyes though hehehe :)

MonroePoteet

07-13-2005, 12:08 PM

Yes, I thought that by making the polygons have intersecting angles the tree would be viewable from a much wider range of perspectives.so I basically just selected points and rotated ad-lib until I was happy with the results.
Definitely an interesting technique, and works great. My plane-based tree experiments to date have been less than exciting, but I think your technique will make forests much easier to make look natural.

What I did to make rendering go faster is instead of using the UV mapped alpha image as a transparency map I used it as a clip map, but that can't be saved with the object because that information goes in with the scene. Also, if you multiply using point clone plus the trees retain their UV maps
OK, great. Yes, clip maps are much much faster than transparency, as long as you only want 0% or 100% transparency.

I was lucky that I found that tree near a road construction site so it was in the middle of nowhere so the original photo was set against a blue sky which made the whole alpha map creation go a lot smoother. I did have to strain my eyes though hehehe
Well, the mask is beautiful and really makes it work. I'm going to experiment with some gradient/calculated luminosity, see if this will work in other lighting situations.

Thanks again!
mTp

nthused

07-13-2005, 01:28 PM

cholo

07-14-2005, 10:19 AM

And here's another shot. **** those noise levels are hard to cope with in fprime. Aerials seem to be the noisiest. This has been rendering for 3 days and it still looks pretty bad noise-wise.

http://www.prodigyweb.net.mx/lanzarote/b.wmv

Schwing

07-14-2005, 10:24 AM

Your car needs to be 20-40% larger.

fixer1977

07-14-2005, 10:37 AM

Cholo, that looks absolutely marvellous. It looks like Europe! I'd have to agree with Schwing though, you're car looks too small, or the road is too wide. It looks like a major road, which doesn't seem to fit with the terrain.

digital verve

07-17-2005, 07:39 AM

Looks very good and thanks for the tree.zip :thumbsup:

As others already mentioned, the proportions of the road and car aren't quite right. The road markings on the road look too clean. They could do with a bit of dirtying up (inc paint cracks and such like) to match the road surface.

Your lighting looks spot on. :)

sKb875

07-17-2005, 11:45 PM

Very sweet! :D Loving it! You planning on making a longer animation? ^^D

Schwing

07-18-2005, 08:45 AM

I'd be interested in knowing how you did the topography with the road. Does the road bank for turns? Wires without the trees would be nice. :D

icegiantnewtek

01-12-2006, 10:44 AM

Cholo. Your site seems to be down. Any chance of fixing it so I can check out the animation and the tree.zip? It looks deadly!

IceGiant.

Rory_L

01-12-2006, 10:49 PM

FPrime problem. Reduce the 2.5D motion blur percentage and allow FPrime to use Lightwave`s moblur.

Cheers,

R

De Bont

01-13-2006, 06:33 AM

Beautiful work... congratulations :thumbsup:

prospector

01-13-2006, 07:20 AM

really notice those ghosting areas. Does LW renderer do it?
The reflections are great, something you can't get in compositing. You can almost see the trees in detail in some shots on the car.
But the lines are still too wide. the fog lines are good solid (tho too wide) but center line would look nicer if they were the dashed ones (IMHO), and thinner too.
excellent work tho

was looking again and noticed that here in the mountains, the 2 lanes are only 2 foot on each side of the car (with car in center of lane).
maby that's what looks strange with the lines.......car should be bigger compared to road. It looks like you have about 6 feet on each side of car.

cholo

01-29-2006, 01:50 AM

Thanks all for all the replys. I've been crazy busy lately and didn't really have time to check in. I'm hoping to have some time soon to work on a further version of my landscape with much more detail and much more realistic. The project that was made for is over now, but I could really use a very realistic road for future projects. I also spent a whole day last year photographing a street I particularly like here, and I was also hoping to use all the photos I took to make a 3d version of the street for more urban shots.

inquisitive

01-29-2006, 02:35 AM

the first clip where the camera begins flying for a second made me think i too was taking off ;) and the rest of the animations look great as well.

5had0w

01-29-2006, 05:02 AM

That's perfectly cool! :thumbsup:

Keep on the good work :)

evolross

07-17-2007, 11:58 AM

This has been a great thread and was vastly helpful to me in creating trees and a forest on a rolling landscape. The Clip Map and Point Clone Plus information was also great. Thank you. :thumbsup:

Eldorado

07-17-2007, 12:35 PM

Thats Amazing! If the it comes down to it you could try Reduce Polygons +. I'm assuming you know what it is but just in case. It Lowers the Polygon count and keeps the geometry(When done in small amounts). If quality is an issue then I wouldn't do it though.
P.S. When I first saw that, the first image that came to mind was Yellowstone National Park.

tyrot

12-09-2008, 06:13 PM

dear cholo

i know it is crazy but can you re-link your clipmap trees files.. i know iknow this is an old thread but still for me these renders are the best clipmap examples ever...

best

archijam

12-10-2008, 02:27 AM

dear cholo

i know it is crazy but can you re-link your clipmap trees files.. i know iknow this is an old thread but still for me these renders are the best clipmap examples ever...

best

This is them I think (hope you don't mind, cholo) .. popular thread! ;)

tyrot

12-10-2008, 07:29 AM

dear archijam

you rock! thanks mate...appreciate it..

Best

Lewis

12-10-2008, 08:20 AM

Excellent work man and as you know key thing to make good looking Car is environment and you have ONE :) :). BTW Any update on project :)?

cholo

12-11-2008, 01:17 AM

Ever since I did that project I haven't had the time to do any more fancy car animations :( There are quite a few environments I'd love to try and model/render but I would have to take a sabbatical ;) Most of my recent stuff has been boring logo stuff. I did enjoy modeling the dodge logo a while back, but that's as fancy as it's gotten. Hope you guys are having more fun than I have.

PS. Glad someone found and relinked the file. My files are buried somewhere in a backup hdd, so it would've taken a while to find.
PPS. You guys should post your own results. I'm curious to see what you come up with :)