Cycles Render

Gareth

@rich o brien said:

Resolution has nothing to do with it.

Did you recalculate the normals in Blender? CTRL + N

Also if you export the .obj without triangulating first then on import into SU you are playing Russian roulette as to what SU will do.

Nope.....I don't use Blender....is that a prerequisite ?

pilou

@unknownuser said:

I don't use Blender....is that a prerequisite ?

From what I understand SU can use Cycles Standalone if someone makes a little plugin inbetweener

Rich O Brien

@gareth said:

Nope.....I don't use Blender....is that a prerequisite ?

Well considering this thread was related to Blender I just presumed you were using blender. Obviously on re-reading it's clearer that it is the ngPlant that you are using.

So in ngPlant is there an option to triangualate the mesh on export? Or preferably to triangulate it on creation.

If ngPlant creates non-planar quads and you export non-planars quads to .obj then SU will spit it's dummy out.

david57

novena,
Thanks,I have to read that article on removing those fireflies.

Rich O Brien,
I dont think ngPlant has that option to triangualate the model.

Gareth,
Im using a ruby script called "lwo_export.rb" to export the model as
a light wave model. I use sketch up version 7 for that script.
I dont know if it works on all new versions of sketchup.

david57

I found more sketch-up plants to render and test. They are in the front
of this render. Also i made 2 leaves with blender and was curious to see
how the render. They are near the center of the render.

david57

...

Leaf tests.jpg

Gareth

Hi David,

Thanks for that.

You are getting some great results from ngPlants and Cycles.

You are correct in saying that ngPlants doesn't have a Triangulation function. I also find that Tig's Triangulation tool doesn't achieve much with these either. Having said that, I may be using it incorrectly (apologies in advance to Tig if that is the case..!!)

For most trees it probably doesn't matter too much, but last week I was modelling a Boab Tree, and the trunks are large in diameter and are often quite rounded....this means using a higher resolution to avoid the appearance of too many segments on the trunk face, which of course increases the number of faces and ultimately the size of the file.

The reverse faces issue has been solved....I used Thomtom's UV Toolkit and used 'Backface Material to Frontface" (which seemed logical to me..!!) instead of 'Frontface Material to Backface' which worked a treat.

PS Sorry for hijacking your topic David and taking it down the path of ngPlants, but I figured it was better than opening another topic at this point. Perhaps one of us (I reckon you should cos you are the most proficient..!) should open a Topic on ngPlants where people could show, share and maybe swap tree and plant models (?)

Here is my attempt at a Boab Tree (and quickly rendered in Twilight)

Australian Boab Tree