Modelling a bushy tree for rendering

#1

Hey, guys!

I did my best to search the forum but unfortunately haven’t found quite what I was looking for.
I am currently working on a rendering project that should have a cartoony but still detailed look.
There’s also a tree involved that should appear quite bushy. Someone else has already done the modelling of the shape of the crown but we’d like it to consist of seperate leaves so that they’re able to move as if some wind is blowing.

I considered trying to get them in shape as particles but I guess they would intersect with each other too much or have wrong rotations. Although it’s a cartoony style, it shoul still look somewhat realistic. Right now I’m experimenting with the “surface placer” script, but it doesn’t seem to be an ideal solution either. Paint effects looks like another interesting idea, especially since you can add some turbulance like wind, but I’m not really familiar with that feature.

As you can see below, I have added a quick painting of the shape that the crown should have (the awesomeness of this masterpiece makes it hard to believe that I’m mainly in the technical part of the project). To sum it all up again: The leaves are a custom model (just a plane put into shape) and should be somehow arranged into the shape of the crown (ideally using the existing 3D model of the shape). It should be possible to add some movement to them like wind.

So, if you’ve already come across this problem in the past and/or have any idea(s) on how to solve it, I’d be deeply grateful if you could share them with me. Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

Hello Njol,
You can always try to use pain effect trees and achiev some really good realistic resaults with that. if you are trying to achiev a tree like the picture you added to your post, you might be able to achiev it with the pain effect and you can use particels to add the leafs on the right places with the painting brush (combined with particels), i never tried to create something like that, but it doesnt seems to be hard to achiev.
i will see if i can get the time to quickly model that kind of tree and upload the file to this post
so you can learn the method.

Best Of luck,
Tal.

#3

Wouldn’t planes work? I mean planes with leaf textures and alphas around the leafs.

Similar to what most games do. It can be done in a cartoonish style as well, for example like in Battlefield heroes.

If you’re using 3dsm you can then use a plugin called normal thief to take normals from a object like a sphere and plant them on the canopies/leaf planes.

#4

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