Cypress, experiment

Retro Lad

My "tumbleweed"post was a success, so now the new challenge is making decent looking Cypress Trees. I was going to buy, whenever it was on sale, Predatron's Pred Pack - Cypress Trees, but the item seems to have been pulled. What happened.

Well anyway, I posted a Cypress Tree making question in the Bryce Forum a year ago or so. One Brycer came up with a pretty good Bryce Cypress Tree, but again Carrara has better features in the plant making department.

I made a Bryce Cypress Tree but it in was "stinko".

I  attached some pictures I found of Cypress Tree from the Web.

MarkIsSleepy

That's not an easy one to do. I gave it a shot though.

My model is attached to this post as a zip. Anyone is welcome to use it for any purpose you could normally use Carrara generated trees for.

You might want to play around some more with the branch lengths and the curve for the custom tree shape. I had forgotten that custom tree shape curve setting was even in there until I saw it in Selina's tumbleweed in the other thread, but it's super useful for trying to get shapes like this. For the best result you will probably need to model the cypress tree leaves yourself - I used the pine needle group that comes in the Carrara content for mine.

.

Quick scene I threw together using the tree model above:

Diomede

Great job, Mark.

 

At one point, I spent a good bit of time exploring the Carrara plant editor.  Of course, I've forgtten most of it since then.  However, people might be interested in a series of posts that begin at this link.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2413676/#Comment_2413676

One tip that people offered me that is pretty important to anyone intending to model and render their own trees is that the UV map for the trunks and branches should be tiled with a 3:1 ratio  (I think).  In other words, if you take your own pictures of a trunk, create your own square tileable texture, and you apply it flat without correction, it will be distorted 3:1 (I think).

 

MarkIsSleepy

Diomede said:

Great job, Mark.

 

At one point, I spent a good bit of time exploring the Carrara plant editor.  Of course, I've forgtten most of it since then.  However, people might be interested in a series of posts that begin at this link.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2413676/#Comment_2413676

One tip that people offered me that is pretty important to anyone intending to model and render their own trees is that the UV map for the trunks and branches should be tiled with a 3:1 ratio  (I think).  In other words, if you take your own pictures of a trunk, create your own square tileable texture, and you apply it flat without correction, it will be distorted 3:1 (I think).

 

Interesting reading - I know I've poked my head into that thread in the past and found lots of interesting stuff, but I somehow missed your tree experiments. Wish I'd read your notes first, because I didn't start with the tree shape and ended up having to redo a bunch of settings.

Thanks for doing all that work and posting your results!

Diomede

I forgot so much!

I even had a post specifically on the tree shape editor that Selina used for the tumbleweed.  I'm trying not to despair.  

UnifiedBrain

Diomede said:

I forgot so much!

I even had a post specifically on the tree shape editor that Selina used for the tumbleweed.  I'm trying not to despair.  

Thanks, I feel better.

Diomede

UnifiedBrain said:

Diomede said:

I forgot so much!

I even had a post specifically on the tree shape editor that Selina used for the tumbleweed.  I'm trying not to despair.  

Thanks, I feel better.

LOL - at least I can help spread joy indirectly.  

 

Mistara

huuh??

i ooked up the Predatron Silver Birch Trees  from my product lib and there is no link to store page ???

MarkIsSleepy

Mistara said:

huuh??

i ooked up the Predatron Silver Birch Trees  from my product lib and there is no link to store page ???

Yeah - I have about a dozen of @Predatron's tree products and none of them have store pages anymore. Maybe he(?) pulled them for some reason?

Bunyip02

MDO2010 said:

Mistara said:

huuh??

i ooked up the Predatron Silver Birch Trees  from my product lib and there is no link to store page ???

Yeah - I have about a dozen of @Predatron's tree products and none of them have store pages anymore. Maybe he(?) pulled them for some reason?

Same here, flower & tree products.

WendyLuvsCatz

It is odd and we cannot speculate the reason either, thank god Carrara has its own tree modeller so we are ok while the DAZ studio users weep as we cannot share our Carrara trees with them either unless they actually buy Carrara and export full detailed mesh.

We should create and share botanical forests of Carrara format trees, make a Carrara tree repository 

Retro Lad

Thanks for your helpful posts.

Don't despair too much Diomede, I attempted to make a tumbleweed today from scratch and ended up giving up in an hour, or was it an hour and a half. I bought the pro version of Carrara 8.5 years ago and just loaded it up once and a while, to learn the basics. So it's work, work, work now, until the Carrara control options become second nature to me.

MDO2010,

Your Cypress Tree model looks like a great start to me, and thanks for the zip file and your demonstration scene of rows of Cypress Trees.

WendyLuvsCatz

another thing you can do for any tree is drag a plane primitive into the leaf browser

then add that as a leaf to a tree and use a alpha image like a png of any leaf or flower rotating or flipping as needed

evilproducer

I will say though that actual geometry (limit the polygons) will cut down on render times as opposed to the billboard method Wendy described. It takes a lot of light calculations, and if you used soft shadows it will slow to a crawl. Shadow buffers won't work as they don't do transparency.

WendyLuvsCatz

evilproducer said:

I will say though that actual geometry (limit the polygons) will cut down on render times as opposed to the billboard method Wendy described. It takes a lot of light calculations, and if you used soft shadows it will slow to a crawl. Shadow buffers won't work as they don't do transparency.

Octane Render 

I did do that with the native engine though

TangoAlpha

I remember woodland renders taking a week or more when I played with transmapped leaves. Replacing them with modelled leaves cut the render time to mere hours! (although then you're faced with the 2 million poly tree!)

Diomede

There is a free tree program called Arboro.  It can export as obj.  You need Java.

http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

and here is a youtube explaining usage of Arboro.

https://youtu.be/cx_Lv06Zbtw

 

Mistara

pinecones? or berries? 

somehow pinecones cansometimes  smell like cinnamonnee

 heard the trees can have 2 types of leaves on em nowadays.

shoe tree?

WendyLuvsCatz

Mistara said:

pinecones? or berries? 

somehow pinecones cansometimes  smell like cinnamonnee

 heard the trees can have 2 types of leaves on em nowadays.

shoe tree?

yes I added 3 of my planes to my tree and used 3 different png images with alpha transparency 

objs can be dragged into the leaf browser too but can only have one shading domain

WendyLuvsCatz

I tried making berry canes after seeing Martin Frosts ones in store,

best buy those,

mine are horrendously high poly obj as leaving them as leaves and plants crashed Carrara or made the UI crack up

WendyLuvsCatz

I struggled to even upload a single berry for your dessert

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/uploads/FileUpload/65/fcee0940a3cd89bd250d862ac1724d.zip

3 texture choices, you may need to flip them

 

WendyLuvsCatz

and a video of my canes

3DAGE

Nice clip wendy,. ;)

you got me playin again

Try this little berry...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hgeedy1felvjzdh/Berry build.zip?dl=0

there's a Low and higher version ,. but i prefer the low,. the UVs layout is better ,. ..messing around and experimentaling again. 

the texture is just a simple gradient shader,. but you could use whaterver maps you have, ,.. :)

>>> added a couple if texture maps to the zip

 

to make this I used the surface replicator to places the hemisphere (berry bit's) on a basic husk,. then made those bit's real instances,. and deleted the replicator.

Export that Group (berry and bit's) out as an OBJ,. then imported it back into carrara to UV and texture,

hope it helps :)

 

3DAGE

my feeble attempt to make a blackberry bush

edited to add the correct carrara image.

evilproducer

If it is just for Carrara. I would just make the leaf one or two polys and if they are N-gons, so be it. Then use the leaves in the plant editor. Since the leaves are then basically replicated, the resource hit is pretty low.

 

TangoAlpha said:

I remember woodland renders taking a week or more when I played with transmapped leaves. Replacing them with modelled leaves cut the render time to mere hours! (although then you're faced with the 2 million poly tree!)

 

WendyLuvsCatz

lovely berries 3Dage, will be on my PC tomorrow and grab your fruit, mine was actually a bunch of replicated spheres too originally which I created a unified skin in zbrush for and zremeshed so actually pretty low poly