The Blender Tree Generator

andybot · 2 Apr 2012, 01:03

michalis,

Indeed, trees generation in Blender is a revelation! It's very exciting to me too. Didn't know about the cycles proxy, I'll have to look at that.
Since you seem to be pretty well versed in the SU to Blender workflow, I'd like to ask a question about your experience with the OBJ exporter. I find that it breaks groups/ components into individual faces, which means that you can't use smoothing or the various modifiers correctly. Is there a way you recombine a mesh, or do you just not worry about it? I am finding that using SU's 3ds exporter works the best in keeping meshes as connected pieces.

Andy

EscapeArtist · 2 Apr 2012, 03:17

Wow. That is awesome. I have been wanting to do some more creative things with SU/Blender, this would really help out in the architectural and landscape department.

Thanks for sharing the find!

michaliszissiou · 2 Apr 2012, 09:03

Thanks for the kind comments.
About the skp file:
It looks heavy ~15Mb for downloading. It's not that huge though, I just don't use components.
I tested another skp tree, full of components ~400kb downloading. It behaves heavily in SU making rather impossible to load 10-20 such trees. It won't happen with the one a shared.
@andybot
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33448&p=372812#p372812
TIG's obj exporter thread.

SU exports non welded vertices as obj. Import in blender/edit mode, select all, delete double verts (under the [W] menu). This welds all verts.
The ruby addon, remove inner faces. Very useful to kill non manifolds at once.
be aware of the inverted faces in SU (the blue ones), you may fix it in blender but will mess the exported SU UVs.
SU uses ngons internally and exports triangulated meshes. Terrible topology for subdivisions, displacements etc. The funny thing is that new builds of blender 2.62/bmesh implemented these ngons too. You have knifes, push pulls, insets (SU F tool), arcs etc . And some terrible topology in the end. If you're going for displacements, subdivisions, sculpting.
So, don't subdivide SU meshes. Just render them, apply better textures, unwrapping, materials for rendering (cycles), bumps. But never subdivide, it's logically impossible. You may retopo all these but not practical for archi vis projects.
Components: Explode them before it's too late

andybot · 2 Apr 2012, 11:50

@michaliszissiou said:

SU exports non welded vertices as obj. Import in blender/edit mode, select all, delete double verts (under the [W] menu). This welds all verts.

nice, this sounds like the answer I'm looking for, thanks!

@unknownuser said:

SU uses ngons internally and exports triangulated meshes. Terrible topology for subdivisions, displacements etc. The funny thing is that new builds of blender 2.62/bmesh implemented these ngons too. You have knifes, push pulls, insets (SU F tool), arcs etc . And some terrible topology in the end. If you're going for displacements, subdivisions, sculpting.

I've found the Blender command to convert triangulated faces to quads works very well for providing good topology. Once I do that I can modify and subdivide at my leisure. The only thing it does funky is large planes, so I triangulate and make those more regular before exporting.

pilou · 2 Apr 2012, 16:46

Amazon---ing!

michaliszissiou · 2 Apr 2012, 22:27

Increasing transparent bounces in cycles.
It took 1:50 hour to render. A cycles render, right? Monet's paintings?

pilou · 3 Apr 2012, 14:58

Gorgeous!

michaliszissiou · 3 Apr 2012, 15:38

Another one,
Using particles/weight painting. A better technic and a bit time consuming.
But, render time ~2 mins

andybot · 3 Apr 2012, 15:42

nice work! Is this a blender file you can share? I am still trying to wrap my head around some of these concepts.

michaliszissiou · 3 Apr 2012, 16:42

Thank you pilou, andybot.
Of course, what file do you need? A tree?
Are you familiar with how to relink textures? Cycles is still under development.
Why don't you register in http://blenderartists.org/forum/index.php ?
Not very polite blenderheads , but you may find lot of help.

andybot · 3 Apr 2012, 17:27

Michalis, that would be great! The things that interest me are - how you are texturing the leaves, what setting you are using for the tree generator (all the branching parameters, etc.), and what settings do you have for cycles. I think I have a decent understanding regarding texture links, etc. If you have a file with a tree and the cycles setup, that would be

michaliszissiou · 3 Apr 2012, 18:43

@unknownuser said:

I think I have a decent understanding regarding texture links, etc.

This "decent" is what fears me
Cycles isn't that decent, you see.
Use the official blender 2.62
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Download it before it's too late, newer builds made things upside down
Watched the tutorial? http://vimeo.com/27668302
Here a blender tree (blend file, link the textures)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24090090/testBlendtree.zip
In recent builds, r45308 from http://www.graphicall.org/ , you don't need separate masks, a transparent png works fine. But, tree generator is broken.

About UV maps on foliage. Tree generator, when using rectangular leaves, has automatically generated them. Apply a shader in cycles node system, image (link it) and that's all.

andybot · 3 Apr 2012, 20:05

So is the tree generator a different plugin than "Sapling"? Looks like the tree is a mesh, not a curve. Is there something obvious I'm missing or is there anothter add-on that needs to be installed?

Edit - oh, never mind - it's just converted to mesh from a curve...
I guess I'd like to see the curve settings you have for your tree.

michaliszissiou · 3 Apr 2012, 21:15

No, sapling is the name of the addon.
Curves have to be converted to real geometry before unwrapping. Watch the tutorial! It's a good one.
Go to prefs first and enable it.

Ecuadorian · 8 Apr 2012, 15:50

Amazing.

Just wondering... Why do you prefer TIG's obj-out instead of Collada? I see Blender can now import Collada.

pilou · 8 Apr 2012, 19:57

About import obj
There is free one here (bottom page) some biggest than the Tig one ; (11 megas against 13 kb
But very more speedy, useful for the very big files!

michaliszissiou · 9 Apr 2012, 20:03

@Pilou
This is an obj importer, right?
Tig's exporter is very fast and works beautifully on very dense and complicated models.
For importing to SU, 3ds format, despite its limitations, works fine.
(max single mesh 64 K faces, max texture name 8 digits, it is also broken in latest SU build. I use SU 7 for importing)
Why to import? Using SU just as a modeler and export, is more interesting after all.

@Ecuadorian
Have you tried to import collada to latest blender 2.62? You'll get an empty space.

sepo · 9 Apr 2012, 20:35

Looks great and the rendering of instances looks amazingly fast.

michaliszissiou · 9 Apr 2012, 21:17

Thank you sid.
3 mins isn't great, it's a CPU render, using NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti, CUDA render, 56 seconds!

simon le bon · 10 Apr 2012, 10:46

Dear Michalis, dear all,

what amazing trees and work

As I'm finally learning Blender (!), I'm at the first level interested by this very instructive thread ++

(!)SU + Blender = war machine)

Re: The Blender Tree Generator
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=44345#p395545

@michaliszissiou said:

Thanks for the kind comments.
About the skp file:
It looks heavy ~15Mb for downloading. It's not that huge though, I just don't use components.
I tested another skp tree, full of components ~400kb downloading. It behaves heavily in SU making rather impossible to load 10-20 such trees. It won't happen with the one a shared.
@andybot
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=33448&p=372812#p372812
TIG's obj exporter thread.

SU exports non welded vertices as obj. Import in blender/edit mode, select all, delete double verts (under the [W] menu). This welds all verts.

The ruby addon, remove inner faces. Very useful to kill non manifolds at once.

be aware of the inverted faces in SU (the blue ones), you may fix it in blender but will mess the exported SU UVs.

SU uses ngons internally and exports triangulated meshes. Terrible topology for subdivisions, displacements etc. The funny thing is that new builds of blender 2.62/bmesh implemented these ngons too. You have knifes, push pulls, insets (SU F tool), arcs etc . And some terrible topology in the end. If you're going for displacements, subdivisions, sculpting.
So, don't subdivide SU meshes. Just render them, apply better textures, unwrapping, materials for rendering (cycles), bumps. But never subdivide, it's logically impossible. You may retopo all these but not practical for archi vis projects.

Components: Explode them before it's too late

I've experienced some difficulty to find the Wikii Inner faces Remover you are talking about.I was remembering this inner faces remover but too vaguely to be able to find it on the forums and have found it into my downloaded plugins repertory. It is not referenced as a normal plugin but it is a reply from Wikii to a Pilou's request.

So here are the links :

Pilou _ [Plugin] Internal surfaces
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=12668&p=92295#p92295

Wikii remove_inner_faces.zip
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=12668&p=92295#p92295

Simon