How are other doing on the conifer tree topic? Is there an advantage to going with modeled needles vs. image plane needles? I’m having a rough time with modeled needles, and they never seem to be thick enough:
Forests in maya mental ray.
arkanoid
#563
Suppose you already know thorns on Pfx if you use them… but they’re thin too…
Something like a modified rice summer pfx preset, or just create a new super-light pfx preset with “flat” (depending on the distance).
Fur should be good to the case too, and you can configure thickness. I doubt that an fx like this could be light anyway.
InfernalDarkness
#564
Some good ideas, arkanoid, but it would be difficult to paint PFX thorns onto this Onyx mesh. Well, there are two trees there, in that render. But I hear what you’re saying!
The needles in that model are simple long rectangles, split into exactly two triangles… I need to find a way to scale them all with an origin precisely halfway across the bottom edge (between the two bottom vertices), which would be simple if there were only one, or a hundred maybe. Perhaps it’s time I started learning MEL or Python, finally!
There’s the UV’s, and here’s what they look like:
But I need 'em to be wider, basically, so they actually show up in the render. Any help would be wonderful, or ideas on which way to go?
arkanoid
#565
If you don’t want to paint by hand you can check out Paint Effects>Autopaint>Paint Grid and/or Paint Random. Use Grid Smear and Smear Frequency to randomize.
Make a copy of the faces you want to cover whith needles, combine all those, then (you can) smooth to have a denser mesh. Apply Auto Paint and hide the hi-rez mesh.
Off course it’s based on UVs so check that before. And check the scale of your brush before applying.
It’s a matter of seconds, and if it doesn’t work you’ve lost little time. :shrug:
TinyCerebellum
#566
Hmm, that’s a tough problem, Infernal. I can see how a script could be written to look at the pine needles, take each needle shell one at a time, recreate a new needle with the same dimensions, rotate it and place it in the same spot as the original needle, then do a uniform scale on the local coordinates in just one plane to make it fatter. At the end, the script would collapse all newly created needles into a single mesh.
Unfortunately I don’t script on a regular basis, so it would take me a long time to write this, but someone in the Mel Script forum might be able to help.
arkanoid
#567
Try this: select all the pine needles and Combine; then select in UVEditor the two UVs on one of the sides; that should select all the UV couples on the side of the needles. So convert your selection tu vertices. Then use Move along Normal (not Average Normal). It’s in the Move Tool options. That should work moving along U or V. At least here it works…
EDIT: no, sorry it doesn’t work. It works only with separated objects with a proper local axis.
DutchDimension
#569
You know ‘OnyxTree Conifer’ has a parameter to control needle width right? Tops out at 10mm, which would be thicker than any needle you’d ever want.
InfernalDarkness
#570
You know ‘OnyxTree Conifer’ has a parameter to control needle width right? Tops out at 10mm, which would be thicker than any needle you’d ever want.
Bam, you nailed it! One has to double-click the Needle Length box to get there, which is how I missed it previously… Thanks a billion!
Edit: you were also right about 10mm being too wide, and even 8mm looks too wide here up close, but will work well for my distance renders at least:
Try this: select all the pine needles and Combine; then select in UVEditor the two UVs on one of the sides; that should select all the UV couples on the side of the needles. So convert your selection tu vertices. Then use Move along Normal (not Average Normal). It’s in the Move Tool options. That should work moving along U or V. At least here it works…
I actually tried something similar, but at 300K needle polys, it hung up a core and grinded to a halt. I lacked the patience to try it more than three times, having to force-crash Maya each time… Good suggestion though!
arkanoid
#571
Hope it helps a bit when you don’t want to go through all the endless thread.
Not too much smart since it doesn’t work in many ways… :rolleyes: The DutchD one is! 
I’m also interested in a way to automatically rebuild a local rotation axis on multiple objects based on some sort of averaging. Strange there’s no script out for things like this.
Nothingness
#572
I wish i learned this thread much sooner.
Learned some stuff too that will sure be helpfull.
Although,
For the moment, i’m on my laptop on osx and seems i just can’t use mental-ray’s proxy.
It just renders out black.
So i exported to an mi file like it should, and when i enable the proxy and select the file, it actually scales the object to the bounding box of the mi file.
But when i render, it turns up black. I also have the render proxy enabled.
I’ll have a check on my workstation, but i doubt any more luck. I tested on both 2010 and 2011 and all the same.
Cheers
heavymetalfox
#573
some Onyx grass models have little leaves attached to them, is it possible to export them as planes just like onyx tree leaves?
Gabba
#574
Hi guys, I’m following this thread from the beginnig. I’m an XSI user so don’t know if you want me there =P (XSI thread are not so exciting and populated =)
The tree it’s done in t-gen a very powerfull XSI tree generator. The only thing that this plug-in it’s missing it’s sky sensitive leaves (I’ve tried to talk to the programmer to get it but with no luck, maybe with those tests…) so I’m trying to get them to be sky sensitive using ICE.
I have a couple of problems to solve but I think that I’m on the right way, what do you guys think?
(on the left the raw render on the right the photoshopped version (adjusted brightness and contrast and chromatic aberration))
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Gabba
#576
Beacuse are not what I’m on. I’m trying to get a way to get leaves behave “correctly”. The trunk and the branches will have some treatment later in time
But know that you told me… maybe it’s better to get those textured. The white in the middle can influence the behave of the leaves…
The next steps I’ll show will have all textured, I promise =)
arkanoid
#577
Nice looking leaves! About texturing the adjacencies, someone earlier in this thread (or was it another?mmm…) showed the different results when rendering leaves with and without the terrain, even when it is not visible from camera. I think the same should be considered with the sky.
Hope that halp. 
Gabba
#578
Yes, I got what you say, it’s in this thread! Thanks for the suggestion!
For the ground you are right but the sky it’s simply skipped for the final result (it’s simply set to “background” so I would get a black background, I was testing the amount of leaves that had the top face facing to the camera and I didn’t get all the things back ;). For final gather and reflection it give it’s contribution
You can notice that the shadow are slightly blue!
Gabba
#580
Here is another test. I still have some problems with leaves (in the bottom I have all the leaves on some branches that are flipped…). But I’m quite happy with the result.
Next week I’ll try to implement the trees in a more complex scene.
