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Author Topic: Animate trees, how.??  (Read 7049 times)

Martin

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Animate trees, how.??
« on: May 20, 2012, 08:59:29 AM »
HI.

Is there a tutorial for animating trees with forest pro.??

I have seen you grass tutorial, but would like to see an example with a tree.

Kind regards Martin

iToo

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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2012, 09:37:27 AM »

There is not a specific method to animate trees, because Forest gets the animation samples from the Custom Object.

For example, you would use an animated GrowFX or Onyx tree (these objects include their own wind tools), or create your own animation applying modifiers to a tree mesh (similar to the grass tutorial).

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2012, 08:44:37 PM »
I've actually been looking into this quite a bit lately, and I'm surprised to say there are not any good options out there. It seems every software suite has severe limitations.

Basically, I'm are looking for something that satisfies most of these requirements:

-integrates into 3ds max (no Speedtree, no xfrog)
-comes with a wide variety of ready-made trees or offers a catalog of ready-made trees (no growfx)
-integrates with forest pro
-provides easy animation via wind force

Basically, I would love a plugin/program that I can choose from a large library of ready made trees (like HQ Plants), drop a few into my scene, animate with wind, and let Forest Pro do the proxy/scatter/render work. I have no desire to design or create my own trees, I just need something that can animate them a bit easier.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just can't find anything that accomplishes this.  Maybe TreeStorm does, but I've called Onyx and can't even demo the software.

iToo

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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2012, 09:49:02 PM »

No, unfortunately there is not an out of the box solution to animate wind forces. To generate a realistic result, it's necessary to define the physic properties of the trunk, branch and leaves. Probably this is the reason that each package that implement this feature uses their own models.

You would fake the wind effect applying some modifiers to the mesh, and animating them. I think our 3D artist made some tests using this technique... i would ask to him the next week if you are interested (he is out of the office until Monday).

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #4 on: June 12, 2012, 11:44:01 PM »
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Right now I'm just using bend modifiers for subtle movement (nothing crazy, just a bit).

thanks

yuv

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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2012, 09:10:27 AM »
Take a look to this technique, it's quite simple and can be applied to any mesh tree using only standard 3dsmax tools:

First apply a soft mesh selection picking the branches extremes, and over that an animated noise modifier. The point there is that 3dsmax uses the soft selection as strengths for noise, so you have a very nice control of the stiffness of each tree element.  

http://www.ramyhanna.com/2011/09/blow-trees-blow.html

After you have added the two modifiers, you use the tree in Forest Pack by enabling the animation settings. In addition you can save your animated mesh in .max files and create a Forest Pack library for it.
Daniel Quintero
Itoo Software
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Re: Animate trees, how.??
« Reply #6 on: June 14, 2012, 04:36:35 PM »
ah, thanks for that. I actually ran across that a while ago, but forgot to bookmark it.

I think the random pulling he is using looks fairly fake (I think his distances were too extreme), but I'm trying a variation of it right now using noise > xform > bend.  I'll provide a link if it looks nice

Thanks again.