Onyx trees into SU

solo · 16 May 2008, 05:26

Richard, send me a tree that you have made (zip and email to my address thats on my site linked below) and I will make it into 4 .png or clipmaps for you (reason for 4 is i render them at 4 different rotated views so you have the same tree with 4 different views in order to mass if you need to without repetition)

mateo soletic · 16 May 2008, 07:22

All,
Sorry for my question but I dont quite understand the point of importing High polly
Onix into SU. If You are going to render it anyway why not import it directly
into and position it into a renderer. Unless You want it in natural SU then is a different
matter, still dont see the point.
Having said that I never used Onix trees, maybe there is something I should know.

Richard, by the way nice to see You here, You have a very interesting site .

ScottPara · 16 May 2008, 11:41

Richard,

When exporting are you decreasing the sliders to reduce geometry. There is no real thing you can do to bring them way down as like you said they are split into separate geometry. High poly is high poly. The more you crunch them down the less they will look like the original. I do use Onyx tree but I export out as 3ds and then import into my renderer of choice. SU can just not handle the 10's of thousands of polys for a decent looking landscape. I use a dummy object just for placement and then either remove the dummy object in the renderer or just shut it off using layers.

Scott

Richard · 17 May 2008, 08:52

@solo said:

Richard, send me a tree that you have made (zip and email to my address thats on my site linked below) and I will make it into 4 .png or clipmaps for you (reason for 4 is i render them at 4 different rotated views so you have the same tree with 4 different views in order to mass if you need to without repetition)

Thanks Solo for the generous offer, I can do a good job straight out of onyx for building billboards where the image map is exported with alpha and dxf panel sized correctly as well. I am really looking to make use of full 3d trees for rendering in forground in maxwell utilising the instancing abilities. and getting correct shadowing and more realism.

Thanks again!

Richard · 17 May 2008, 09:01

@mateo soletic said:

All,
Sorry for my question but I dont quite understand the point of importing High polly
Onix into SU. If You are going to render it anyway why not import it directly
into and position it into a renderer. Unless You want it in natural SU then is a different
matter, still dont see the point.
Having said that I never used Onix trees, maybe there is something I should know.

Richard, by the way nice to see You here, You have a very interesting site .

Thanks mate I'm happy to be here now too. I've been spending most of the last years over on the PushPullBar site and a lot also on the maxwell forums. I've fallen in love with maxwell!

Hence the reason for wanting more realistic trees!! I've made a good collection of light weight 3d trees using the TREE FACTORY file I developed a few years ago and should probably persevere with generating better ones with that as they really create very little drag within SU. Mind you once edited high poly onyx trees using a dummy layer can still work to populate a scene. I could drag these trees into Maxwell studio without any issues though it can be a pain there to populate without the ease of location to ground level given I don't ever have the luxury of working on flat sites!

BTW I look forward to hanging around here a bit more as I have seen now that the site has really built to a very good atandard!!!!

Richard · 17 May 2008, 09:13

@unknownuser said:

Richard,

When exporting are you decreasing the sliders to reduce geometry. There is no real thing you can do to bring them way down as like you said they are split into separate geometry. High poly is high poly. The more you crunch them down the less they will look like the original. I do use Onyx tree but I export out as 3ds and then import into my renderer of choice. SU can just not handle the 10's of thousands of polys for a decent looking landscape. I use a dummy object just for placement and then either remove the dummy object in the renderer or just shut it off using layers.

Scott

Thanks scott

Yes I've got the branches and trunk (only using bows and b1 branches) down to near minimum though it is the leaf density that is blowing the poly count! And yes mate I always use a dummy layer for placing landscape!

Here are the trees I've imported from Onyx to SU so far!

solo · 17 May 2008, 09:19

Those are awesome, excellent!!

I would love to get my hands on trees of that quality in order to make clipmaps and .png billboards.

solo · 17 May 2008, 09:37

I use tree generator, Vue, and a few other obscure softwares to create trees and then I create clipmaps from them by rendering them and extracting the alpha to create the billboard, see example.

Always looking for better trees.

mateo soletic · 17 May 2008, 11:05

Richard,
They look great, thanks for sharing.
And I share Your view about Maxwell. Pity I dont have
more time to really get into it.

jasonh1234 · 23 May 2008, 07:12

Those trees are awesome. Gonna have to look up this Onyx prog.
I wish SU allowed for LOD placeholders.

Richard · 27 May 2008, 04:09

@jasonh1234 said:

Those trees are awesome. Gonna have to look up this Onyx prog.
I wish SU allowed for LOD placeholders.

Sorry to sound dumb! LOD?

I would have to recommend ONYX. I'm amazed at the variety of species you can model, the ease of use and then check out the billboard abilities where you can look at the tree from any angle or elevation to suit your scene angle, change the sun direction to suit and get the ground shadow layer too. Great for compiling scenes later in PS! The other beauty is once you have set the parameters for one tree you can just randomise new versions of the same species.

I don't have any poly count problems if i import OBJ format to maxwell studio from Onyx where I can map leaf images without issue but all that is lost upon import of 3ds or dxf to SU!!! Bugger!

I've asked if any of the ruby guys could invest some time in creating a script for SU that works to make a component of one leaf then search for any similar geometry and replaces that with this new component, this would be an absolute gem for many other components bought into SU. no takers yet though unfortunately!

Limey · 26 Jun 2008, 16:27

This is a very interesting discussion as I am contemplating purchasing Onyx trees which my research leads me to believe are of excellent quality. Unfortunately I do not thoroughly understand some of the descriptions of techniques that I am reading in this post.

Solo, you mention that you create bitmaps from your trees and you extract the alpha to make a billboard.I have been trying to do the same thing in Photoshop for export to SU for a while and I just cannot get it to work the way it should.I seem to be missing some important piece of information.If you could describe the procedure in a bit more detail I would very much appreciate it.For example, how exactly do you "extract the alpha"...? Is this done after you have imported the tree into SU and what type of file is used to make this procedure possible?

Also, Richard mentions that he "can do a good job job straight out of Onyx...where the image map is exported with alpha and dxf panel sized correctly as well"...
Please excuse my ignorance but does this mean that I once I purchase Onyx trees I will not have to bother with Photoshop to produce these types of trees...I get confused by the terminology too.Could someone please explain the difference between "image map", "clipmaps",and "clipping paths" (as in Photoshop).It would seem that they could all be the same thing but I don't want to assume that, I'd like to know for sure.There may be clear or subtle distinctions between them for all I know.

I am new to these types of techniques but as always my enjoyment is derived from learning and developing my skills to produce better quality renditions.

Thanks to everyone participating in this type of discussion, you make this process even more entertaining and I am intrigued by the wealth of in-depth information that is so generously shared between strangers on a site such as this....
Limey

Richard · 27 Jun 2008, 05:11

@limey said:

This is a very interesting discussion as I am contemplating purchasing Onyx trees which my research leads me to believe are of excellent quality. Unfortunately I do not thoroughly understand some of the descriptions of techniques that I am reading in this post.

Solo, you mention that you create bitmaps from your trees and you extract the alpha to make a billboard.I have been trying to do the same thing in Photoshop for export to SU for a while and I just cannot get it to work the way it should.I seem to be missing some important piece of information.If you could describe the procedure in a bit more detail I would very much appreciate it.For example, how exactly do you "extract the alpha"...? Is this done after you have imported the tree into SU and what type of file is used to make this procedure possible?

Also, Richard mentions that he "can do a good job job straight out of Onyx...where the image map is exported with alpha and dxf panel sized correctly as well"...
Please excuse my ignorance but does this mean that I once I purchase Onyx trees I will not have to bother with Photoshop to produce these types of trees...I get confused by the terminology too.Could someone please explain the difference between "image map", "clipmaps",and "clipping paths" (as in Photoshop).It would seem that they could all be the same thing but I don't want to assume that, I'd like to know for sure.There may be clear or subtle distinctions between them for all I know.

I am new to these types of techniques but as always my enjoyment is derived from learning and developing my skills to produce better quality renditions.

Thanks to everyone participating in this type of discussion, you make this process even more entertaining and I am intrigued by the wealth of in-depth information that is so generously shared between strangers on a site such as this....
Limey

Limey

Mate firstly we aren't strangers! Like you we are SU users - that makes us mates even brothers (in some cases almost lovers!!) hehe!

Mate to get clipped images in SU you need to import the image as a PNG file with the areas not tree the be deleted in PShop. These PNG images will then need to be placed on a rectangular panel, made a component and normally set to face camera function in component dialogue.

However many render apps need two maps a colour map JPG, BMP, TGA or PNG and another map in B & W where the white area represents where the app will cut this area from the panel (the non tree area.)!

Onyx gives you the option to export your model as 3d (full geometry in a variety of 3D formats) or a 2D image with the option to include the alpha map. Now this is where it can be confusing first time! When the map image is exported as say JPG imported into PShop you wont see anything different. So in Pshop find the channels panel and you will note channels for the colour ranges and one named ALPHA. The simple process is then to CTRL+click on the alpha channel and the alpha area of the image will be selected. then in the layers pallet duplicate your background layer (PShop cant delete the alpha area from the background) select the new layer and hit delete and the background will be gone! Turn off the background and save the file as PNG as there you have it!!!!!!

If you aim to use the maps in a render app that requires a clip map create another layer and use the selection to paint B&W to the opposing inverted areas as needed. There are other options here which include just duplicating your background again, desaturate and adjust contrast. Use which ever suits you!

regarding Onyx, currently I'm finding the 3D import of models to SU just too large (that to make the tree effective in rendering) for them to work efficiently in SU as all geometry is bought in without the desired use of components to reproduce the leaves. I have requested the ruby guys might kick the can in creating a script that finds any similar geometry and replaces it with a repetative component though no one has taken up the challange yet!

For me it is a shame the Onyz developers don't see value in the option to just have aa library of trees available for purcahse instead of just flogging the application as I think so many users would be happy with just content. Though that said Onyx is very useful for the creation of maps for trees of any type and once you have created one it is just the case of sliding the random seed slider a few notches and bang you have another version of the same tree so the scene doesn't show as one tree duplicated. Plus you can adjust camera angle, sun and shadow effects in Onyx to suit any weird aspect you are aiming to achieve in your output! The big shame is that you have to buy Onyx as there is no trial version!

i hope this all helped mate! Richard

plot-paris · 27 Jun 2008, 07:40

@richard said:

Mate firstly we aren't strangers! Like you we are SU users - that makes us mates even brothers (**in some cases almost lovers!!)**hehe!

yeah, especially those without programing skills love the gods of ruby
(who hopefully will master the challenge of a "transform group to component (and find similar)" function. the other way arround already exists... )

Richard · 27 Jun 2008, 07:47

@plot-paris said:

@richard said:

Mate firstly we aren't strangers! Like you we are SU users - that makes us mates even brothers (**in some cases almost lovers!!)**hehe!

yeah, especially those without programing skills love the gods of ruby
(who hopefully will master the challenge of a "transform group to component (and find similar)" function. the other way arround already exists... )

Mate in the case of imported geometry and in this case from Onyx it probably goes a little deeper! The leaves are just mash - no groups (well the whole lot is but not individual leaves( so the script would need to firstly create a component from one leaf then search for any geometry (mindful they could be rotated flipped etc) similar to that selected for the first instance and destroy / replace this geometry with a new instance of the new component.

BTW trees are the only opportunity for this script, cars, chair . table legs etc etc all come to mind as solved by this action!

Alan Fraser · 27 Jun 2008, 10:06

Onyx trees generally are way too poly-intensive for use in SU; and as Richard says, their internal structure is one of all the leaves being separate entities rather rather instances of the same component. It's further complicated in that the leaves themselves often come into SU triangulated and sometimes with a blue back face evident, so they need to be edited. At the very least, you have to explode the entire canopy (which can hang-up SU for ages), then switch to wireframe and select/hide all the edges. The alternative being to edit each leaf...one at a time.

I've found the best use of Onyx to be that of a reference tool; generating a 3D model that can then be emulated in SU, assembling a similar tree from scratch, using a proper component structure and transparent images for entire leaf clumps. Dare I mention the term "Tree Factory"? It's about the only way you can get an end product that's actually usable in any numbers as opposed to a single tree that may look fantastic, but brings your system to its knees with no help from any other geometry.
You can also use Onyx generate realistic leaf clumps which could then be alpha-imaged and used on top of a low-poly tree skeleton in a 2.5D kind of way...have the trunk and branches as normal 3D but have the leaf clumps spinning around at appropriate points on the structure to always Face Camera. I've tried this myself; get it right and you'd swear you were looking at a fully 3D tree. I've produced some in a similar way for FF, but can't post one here.
There is one on the 3DW that uses the same principle here...but proper alpha leaf clumps would be better. Personally I'd do what I usually do and leave the pngs rectangular, but non-shadow casting, and set up a separate shadow-caster.

A similar piece of software worth considering (if you want great, hi-poly trees for instancing in a photoreal renderer that can handle the poly count) is XFrog. They not only have complete libraries for sale with ready-to go models in about 9 different formats, but they also have the XFrog modeller itself, with which you can create plants from scratch or edit existing ones. There is a standalone version or add-ons for Max, Maya and C4D. They also have very fancy kit for poly-reduction and even producing variable LOD. A bit pricey for my taste though...although the libraries themselves aren't too bad at about $150 per.

Richard · 27 Jun 2008, 15:38

Thanks alan

I've played ith Xfrog but don't find it as easy as onxy though still a gteat app! Does the leaves from xfrog come in as components???

The beauty of getting either of these apps and using them even in a primitive process is that SU MUST (yes I said MUST) at some stage soon be re-engined to handle this type of poly count or slowly I fear loose it's flavour! New apps appear nearly every day and it I'd suggest modelling in an almost real time rendered (at least ray trace and good GI) will surely be available sooner than later. Particularly now Nvidia have purchased Mental Ray - one wonders where that will go!

All said depending on the render app you use I know that pavol (maxwell plugin developer) is expecting to xref high poly components and maybe even actual MXS (maxwell studio) files. This would mean OBJ files exported from Onyx imported to MXS where mapping is maintained then material edited and used to replace the low poly SU component upon export!

I'm sure other apps will follow this lead!

Alan Fraser · 27 Jun 2008, 16:04

Yes, I agree Richard...Onyx is easier to use. I'm also playing with another one...a freebie from Stanford...called DRYAD

It also exports to obj format, but is a little flaky and sometimes just seizes up altogether...usually because it can't connect to the server. It has a rather quirky UI, but has many of the controls of the other two. Anything produced gets uploaded to the server and then forms a basis for any future creations by you or anyone else. As a quick, random generator it's pretty good. I find it quite useful for spitting out quick trunk/branch elements that can be edited and utilized in a SU tree farm. I wouldn't contemplate exporting a full-leaf version to SU. They sometimes have over 1 million polys.

Here's a quick export...rather more polys than I'd use myself from scratch, but not bad for a couple of minutes work.

bare.skp

ideas_arte · 25 Apr 2009, 07:34

Hello ..!

Richard, please be kind enough to explain a little secret material?
I already have some Xforg in. Tiff
I did my materials (MXM) using the 'ClipMap' of the material editor and the result is this:

Shot at 2009-04-25

Yours are excellent, as you do it?

Thanks in advance

Richard · 27 Apr 2009, 02:58

@ideas_arte said:

Hello ..!

Richard, please be kind enough to explain a little secret material?
I already have some Xforg in. Tiff
I did my materials (MXM) using the 'ClipMap' of the material editor and the result is this:

Shot at 2009-04-25

Yours are excellent, as you do it?

Thanks in advance

Mate for one it doesn't look like a great map to start with, bit low res! It also looks like the white area of your clip map needs to be expanded a pixel of two you would need to do this in an image editor!

BTW the trees in the image I posted are full 3d not clip maps!!