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Author Topic: intersections of trees  (Read 11651 times)

Klein

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intersections of trees
« on: August 24, 2006, 09:37:36 PM »
my current project uses a lot of trees (... in the alps) and therefore a dense
distibution. the camera can hardly  make a turn without making the trees
intersect which results in flipping   textures (the back tree flips to the on in-front). now i did try
to seperate them via parametric inputs as well as the distribution map - but so far
no  changes. the only solution until now is to decrease the tree count
which then results in a poor picture (of the forest). another thing i tryd is to use a costum
mesh (planes in a l-shape) without focusing the camera - but when using costum
shapes(with more than one plane)  it seems that i canot assign multi/sub materials
to them? anyway ill keep on looking for a solution (because i need the scene like this) an will
post results if they apear. though if anyone has a hint - please reply - thanks!



iToo

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Re: intersections of trees
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2006, 09:10:54 PM »
Well, when the problem is that the trees intersect when moving, the solution is... don't move them  ;)

With a very high density of trees, you may disable the 'facing camera' option because there are so much vegetation in the screen that you don't notice the effect of planar trees. Please, try this:

- Use a custom very dense bitmap (the dense.bmp included with Forest may be don't enough for this job)
- Disable 'trees facing the camera'
- Apply a random translation (about 30%), random rotation (0 to 360) and random scale
- A random tint may be useful too
- Use a dark texture for the ground, so you can 'hide' more easily the spaces between trees

You will get a very dense Forest, and the camera motion won't be a problem anymore for the animations.  I've attached a sample scene, verydense distribution bitmap and render image to show it.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

iToo

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Re: intersections of trees
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2006, 09:37:21 PM »
Sorry, i almost forget your second question:

Quote
but when using costum shapes(with more than one plane)  it seems that i canot assign multi/sub materials
to them?

You can use multi/sub materials with custom meshes, but not together with random material because Forest uses only a ID material by tree. For the next release i think we may fix this easily, including a new parameter to define the range of IDs in the random materials (1-2-3 for random 1, 4-5-6 for random 2 and so). We like to include multiple custom meshes too... but this is more complex.

Until these changes will be done, you can use multiple Forest objects overlapped with different custom meshes, to get diversity of trees.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

Klein

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Re: intersections of trees
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2006, 04:50:11 PM »
thanks!
it worked well with the static x-trees. i  worked out another solution with a curved
plane which hides the intersection a bit better (the planes dont flip  but dive into eachother-). heres some screens from the actual scene....
thanks again...