Environment - Light trees for realistic ArchViz

[Equinoxx]

1st. read the following regarding threadnaming ;)
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=57917

2nd. you got a few alternatives.

theres

Speedtree from IDV Inc (http://www.idvinc.com/)
x-Frog from Greenworks (http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/products/productStart.htm)
natFX from Bionatics (http://www.bionatics.com/Site/product/indexc2.php3?Community=1&ProductLineId=9)

I haven't used them myself and I'm sur there are a couple of others i'm forgetting, but this is a start :)

cheers.

ps. don't forget to read that 1st thread i linked you to.

[sebakrembo]

Thanks Equinoxx

... that first thread i knew, and infact after i posted i thought that it was wrong using light in the naming , but i ment light as in Non-Heavy...:)
nevermind..

The x-frog i knew, i used to work with it in my old office , only that it is VERY heavy.. it is all polygons, just like building the tree yourself.

What i need is to create the illusion of 3D all while maintaining a minimum number of polygons, the billboard technique, which i saw that natFX uses, and which i used also in the past (as an architectual visualisation the green part is important), but i always had a FLAT shadow, and no ray-trace results, even when using the corispondant transparecy map...

Of course i am aware that i need to simulate ray trace, and that without poligons it will not be the same.. but that is exactly my question ...

The natFX would be perfect... if the trees wouldn't have costed 110 Euro ($) each, and i wouldn't have to simulate a botanic garden, with 50 types of trees......

Thanks again...

[Baldrick]

You can get bundle deals on plants with NatfX - if you know you're going to need 50 right off it might still be worth looking at.

[EricChadwick]

I seem to recall Speedtree using special shadow routines.

Yeah, looking it up it says this...

What is the purpose of the SpeedShadow plugin?
SpeedShadow works like the default shadow map system with the exception that transparent portions of leaf maps DO NOT create shadow regions in the shadow map. Standard 3ds max shadow mapping does not take opacity channels into account when computing shadows. SpeedShadow ensures that SpeedTrees cast correct shadows when shadow maps are used.

And they go pretty low too....

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