Free 3D Tree generator

Alan Fraser · 26 Nov 2008, 11:37

It's no good for SU...small trees come in at about 12K faces and 4.5 MB, but if you can use or convert from Blitz 3D or Direct X format, there's a freebie here that is easy to use and produces not half bad trees...much better than other free programs. You may need to reapply the materials on export. May be useful for some poly-tolerant rendering apps. Or, you can render directly to file for a billboard.

ELYSIUM · 26 Nov 2008, 12:32

Tks Alan, it looks great, but i can´t get it to work, it says "unable to build 3d scene" when i start it...

Pixero · 26 Nov 2008, 13:05

You can also create low poly trees with horizontal and/or vertical crosses.
Another cool thing is that the trees are animated so if yo export the tree to a game/realtime engine the trees will move like the wind is blowing.

pilou · 26 Nov 2008, 14:23

Cool
It's not yet this but it's not so bad

pilou · 26 Nov 2008, 14:41

But try this one .
By Andrew the conceptor of 3D Coat

solo · 26 Nov 2008, 14:48

Pilou, correct me if i'm wrong but do you not need to have purchased 3D coat in order to use the tree generator?

pilou · 26 Nov 2008, 15:42

It's write "It is free to everyone who has purchaced 3D-Coat" but I am not sure because is like a beta one,
If you can load the prog and run it
If you leave the prog
Last model is reloaded

Stu · 27 Nov 2008, 00:51

Thanks Alan,

Seems we cant see the forest now for tree generators

A VERY quick test shows that it will export as a Png and so import into SU as a billboard [no shadow], or render in Podium after exploding.

Stu · 27 Nov 2008, 07:23

Thanks again Alan, I had just about forgotten about DigArts....worth another look!

Alan Fraser · 27 Nov 2008, 07:43

A couple of things I discovered about this, while playing:
The leaf settings are very extensive and there is no scroll bar....so you will need to collapse some of the upper settings to get at the lower one, where you can set the leaf image (needs to be set separately from the one on the branch tab, which takes one of the cross images) this will get rid of the chequered map, which only controls the orientation of the leaf image (the origin point on this map will usuually be the centre lower edge).
Also, the png files are rather ghostly in colour, because you can instantly overlay a colour scheme on them, switching from autumn to summer, without having to change the actual image. You can use any of your own images as well, of course.
It's a shame the billboards are limited to 512 pixels, but they ought to be good enough for middle distance and further.

As a further heads up, Stu and other landscapers, Two of the best tree applications (for Photoshop work) I have discovered are Jungle DVD and Palm Paint From DigArts . These work on having hundreds of coordinated tree components, to enable you to build your own tree in about 10 minutes. The results are some of the best I have seen...and because you are making them from scratch, the variations can be endless; plus you can throw in extra elements of your own, like blossom. Well worth the near $200 for both. You are not allowed to use them to produce tree images which themselves are the main event (as opposed to being within an overall composition)...which is the only reason I don't use them.

Good for canopies too.

remus · 28 Nov 2008, 17:19

Just a quick question guys, i can get this to start up once ive installed, am i missing something obvious?

I did the normal install thing, tried running it as admin as well and that hasnt helped.

vista ultimate 64 bit, if it makes any difference.

BTM · 1 Dec 2008, 16:23

These are great and all, but I can't seem to find any for macs

pilou · 1 Dec 2008, 16:55

Funny of the prog is that you can put anything as leaves, trunk, textures...

Eulgrand · 1 Dec 2008, 20:38

Pilou, can you swear that no animal was hurt in the making of these pictures ?!

pilou · 1 Dec 2008, 21:25

@unknownuser said:

can you swear that no animal was hurt in the making of these pictures ?!

All are still living and wreathing in the wind !

Alan Fraser · 4 Dec 2008, 08:30

Another heads up. A few people were asking if it was possible to use Al Hart's plugin to generate actual 3D trees in addition to the billboards. I'm not sure whether that is possible, because of the Terms of Use of the original tree generator. However there is a little freebie called Arbaro that runs entirely in Java....so it runs from a folder on your desktop (any OS) by double clicking the arbaro.jar file. The results, though, are worthy of anything produced by XFrog or Onyx. It outputs in Pov and Obj formats.

Here is a link to a gallery page showing the results...the download link is near the top of the page.
And attached is a render of a model converted to 3ds, imported into SU (agonisingly slowly) and rendered in VRay. I needed to reverse the normals on the leaves prior to import, for some reason, but the whole model is separate groups, so that was no big deal.