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Author Topic: Can "any" forest geometry be converted to a Billboard?  (Read 988 times)

RobH2

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Can "any" forest geometry be converted to a Billboard?
« on: March 18, 2019, 11:22:39 PM »
I'm probably mistaken but I thought I read once that any Forest objects could be converted or turned into Billboards. I have some grass and changed the 'Template' to 'Two Planes' and that's what I get, two planes of green. There is no alpha so, therefore, no plant shape.

I need to render reflections of trees and grass in a river surface but don't want to render the forest object in high resolution. The renders are about 15-minutes each.

If I can't set the forests to render as Billboards, is there a workflow that I can use to get the plants reflections without having to do the really long renders?

ForestPack Pro 6.3.1, RailClone 4.2.13, 3ds Max (Max 2024), GIGABYTE X570 AORUS x570 Master Motherboard, RTX4090, Ryzen 9 3950x CPU, Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler, 128 GB G.SKILL Trident Z Neo DDR4 Ram, Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 M.2 drives

Rokas

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Re: Can "any" forest geometry be converted to a Billboard?
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2019, 02:15:42 PM »
There is no such option to convert Geometry to 2d billboard in Forest Pack.
ForestPack Pro comes with some 2d Billboard library. I hope they are enough for Your case:
Rokas

RobH2

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Re: Can "any" forest geometry be converted to a Billboard?
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2019, 02:44:14 PM »
Thanks for your comment. I assumed I was mistaken about that. I do know about the 2d assets and went ahead and used them. They did work out for me well enough. Since the 'noise' I was using broke the surface up, I was able to fake the reflection believably and keep my render times way down.

Thank you again...
ForestPack Pro 6.3.1, RailClone 4.2.13, 3ds Max (Max 2024), GIGABYTE X570 AORUS x570 Master Motherboard, RTX4090, Ryzen 9 3950x CPU, Noctua NH-D15S CPU Cooler, 128 GB G.SKILL Trident Z Neo DDR4 Ram, Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 M.2 drives