Tree from SU
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Hi all! Just wanted to share this epic first convincing tree render I made in Indigo after an export from Sketchy. The worflow is still a little puzzling but something I can stand if this is the result
The main passages are:
- Tree making with Tree[d], a well known free tree generator by "frecle" http://www.frecle.net/index.php?show=treed.about; export in .x file format
- Import into Deep Exploration (I used the 30 days free version n.6, don't know about other versions)
- A little messing around in Deep Exploration to split foliage from trunk/branches
- Exporting directly to skp format
- Opening and preparing the materials for the render
I stumbled upon this after having read an old post by Solo (who I thank for the support, though on holiday) who suggested Deep Exploration to open .x files and save directly skp files. Leaf mapping is preserved in this last operation, and that is the main feature I was looking for.
The trees come out something about 10/15MB each, so quite heavy to handle. Indigo and SkIndigo have this super instancing tool though, which allows you to have simple sticks in your scene (very light) which will be subsituted with the Hipoly tree(s) during the rendering.I find it to be a good way to have nice trees inside SU renders without using clip planes or postpro tricks (which give excellent results, btw, but which I hardly find to match my rendering philosophy). The only challenge now for me is..memory usage!
Here is the final result finally. Let me know what you guys think.
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Quite interesting indeed.
(And of course, the tree looks great - the "interesting" part is the workflow). Makes me think a little bit of creating some trees myself.
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Hi Gaieus. Thanks for your feedback!
I must re-warn you that the trees will be 10/15MB each, so quite unuseable, if your aim is to populate a plain SU view and keep it handleable. If you plan to make a render instead, and your app supports instancing AND dummy components, THEN it all will make more sense.
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Yes, that's what I am thinking about. I have some(not too much) experience with Kerkythea which supports instancing (also I hope to have some experience with Thea once I have the money to purchase and that also supports instancing).
Only the trees should be exported to these apps, materials and all tweaked and saved there as "models" if I fully understand the process.
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That tree DOES look good.
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Hi Pibuz,
The tree looks really nice indeed
. I've tried to make some convincing Trees to a while ago. I exported them from Vue as OBJ and Imported in SU with Obj Importer. It worked , but resulted in a 15 to 20 mb tree 
. So I gues my quest also ends where yours ended. If you ever find a way of decreasing file size, please give me a shout Greetz Twan
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Sure Pugz!
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I'm interested to know - how big (pixels and image size) is the leaf image, and can you reduce it? What is the model size once you've done that? Another trick is to remove the image and just stick a green colour on the leaves. How does the render come out after that?
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Hi, this could be interesting for you:
a) I created simple tree object in frecle tree[d] - http://www.frecle.net/index.php?show=treed.about
b) Exported it via obj format
c) Opened obj file in marvelous program called Meshlab - http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/
d) Saved as 3ds
e) Imported into SU and did some quick rendering test ...Meshlab can save and open .dae files as well, but SU imports them without textures ..
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Thanks for sharing your workflow Starling
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I tried that frecle tree program but I get an error message "unable to create 3d scene" when it starts and immediately crashes out. Any ideas why? Looked on their forum and noone else seems to have suffered the error.
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@cadmunkey said:
I tried that frecle tree program but I get an error message "unable to create 3d scene" when it starts and immediately crashes out. Any ideas why? Looked on their forum and noone else seems to have suffered the error.
http://www.frecle.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=433
Not directly about treed but try look at it .. -
Yes thats the 1 post I did read, but its from 2007 I think and I dont have a dual monitor setup OR an old graphics card. Its a standard Nvidia 280GT. Ive made a post on the tree[d] forum about it, hopefully it will get some response. Thanks for trying to help anyway.
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@cadmunkey said:
Yes thats the 1 post I did read, but its from 2007 I think and I dont have a dual monitor setup OR an old graphics card. Its a standard Nvidia 280GT. Ive made a post on the tree[d] forum about it, hopefully it will get some response. Thanks for trying to help anyway.
Try to fiddle with your graphics card driver configuration - DirectX 3D hardware acceleration etc ...
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Low poly and it renders great without any editing in Kerkythea
How long did it take to do?
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@rob d said:
Low poly and it renders great without any editing in Kerkythea
How long did it take to do?
[attachment=0:2533a4jr]<!-- ia0 -->Tree render Kerkythea by RobD.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2533a4jr]
You can create highpoly tree as well
tree design time - depends on you
export/import/export/import time cca 5min
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Hi Starling!
Your workflow is much easier than mine! happy to hear this! And the result is less heavy too.
I guess I'm going to change mine with yours
I'm downloading meshlab now: importing as obj and exporting as 3ds, you say.
Gonna give it a go, definitely!
Thank you so much for such an important information!I hope many SU users will start doing good trees and share them in the warehouse.
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@pibuz said:
Hi Starling!
Your workflow is much easier than mine! happy to hear this! And the result is less heavy too.
I guess I'm going to change mine with yours
I'm downloading meshlab now: importing as obj and exporting as 3ds, you say.
Gonna give it a go, definitely!
Thank you so much for such an important information!I hope many SU users will start doing good trees and share them in the warehouse.
Thanks.
Actually I tried it yesterday after reading your post and it was my first attempt to "make" tree ..
Treed obj exporter created obj + mtl files but didn't add the texture files. I had to copy them manually from treed texture folder...Meshlab is still beta, there could be some issues too.
The 3ds exporter seems to be limited up to cca 65000 vertices ...)Leave message how it works for you.
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That is exactly what i was about to report. But it doesn't seem to be a software bug, but a 3ds format limitation. I usually export 3dsMax models to sketchy and I remember that sometimes I couldn't, due to geometry weight (number of polys).
This single drawback is something making your workflow faulty: you cannot export ALL the trees you make.
If one wants just a simple tree, then your workflow is good. -
@pibuz said:
That is exactly what i was about to report. But it doesn't seem to be a software bug, but a 3ds format limitation. I usually export 3dsMax models to sketchy and I remember that sometimes I couldn't, due to geometry weight (number of polys).
This single drawback is something making your workflow faulty: you cannot export ALL the trees you make.
If one wants just a simple tree, then your workflow is good.I can export ALL the trees I make using collada format. There is only one small problem now, SU imports plain geometry without textures..
Don't know whether it's Meshlab, Sketchup or somewhere between them issue ...
%(#FF0040)[Well BS Contact trial shows tree exported from Meshlab via collada format perfectly. Conclusion is - SU should do better
]
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