3DMK
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Plants Library
Posts posted by 3DMK
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Hi Eiji850,
You will need to create a Multi/sub object material to do this.
As an example try this -
Make a multi/sub material with Branches as Material ID 1, Leaves as material ID 2, Oranges [Fruit] as Material ID 3.
Make sure you put the correct ID [3] on your oranges when you create your custom mesh and also put the correct Material ID for leaves & branches in GrowFX.
Assign this material to both your GrowFX object & your custom Mesh object.
Kind regards
Jamie -
Thank you guys.
How do I know what size is good for the plant I am creating? Say the difference between a 2 or 3m vine and a 8m tree?
It was set to 10mm when I checked.
That's probably a bit small Terri.
I usually set it somewhere between 0.1 & 1.0 meters
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Hi Terri,
You can just to increase the Unit calc value in the Preference parameters rollout.
Please note, this value will also affect other density settings, for example in the Path Distributor.
Cheers
This is quite important Terri!
Try to use a value that is good for the size of plant/tree you are making, as too small or large a value will force other parameters [such as you describe ] to be really large or small.
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Thanks Eduard,
I tried this and its not working.
The leaves have a separate path for the stem, could this be a problem ?
Yes. You will need to use the same technique with the stem to affect itself & the leaf. In other words you will need two different Affects setups on the stem. One will control the length of the stem, & the other will control the length of the leaf.
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It there a way to stop the trunk's uvw mapping from slipping/sliding when animating the tree growing?
Have you tried using a absolute value for the UV's rather than the default setting? The default setting will stretch the UV's to tile one time along it's length, so this will change if you animate the length.
The absolute value will force the UV's to always stay the same length, independent of the branch length
Hope this helps
Jamie
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You may have to wait a little bit longer mate....It would already be done by now but users such as me [sorry] are constantly asking for modifications to be done and this has delayed the process a lot. Good news is that these latest additions are going to make huge improvements in Quality & workflow.
It's also possible that some of these additions to GrowFX will be added in another service pack to Version 1.9.9. so we are able to use them as soon as they are finished. [and not having to wait for version 2 to use them.
Hope your work is going well
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I have used Unwrella for a little while now. It's an easy one-click solution for Unwrapping models. Just make sure you put an Edit mesh modifier on top of your GrowFX before the Unwrella modifier as it needs that.
Hope this helps
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Eduard, can you give your point of view, do you think count rate% and chaos count% are working fine ? basically, i think there might be some code issues around the random functions,
I also believe the Chaos count% is not working as it should or rather, as we would like it to function. The input values do not give the expected results and it may need to be modified/fixed.
The child chaos option would also be nice although I think this can already be done using the affects panel with better results. The Affects panel can control the chaos% of children paths depending on their position along the parent path. [see attached example]
Currently there is no way to control this Chaos Count% value along a path such as you can do with Chaos Density%. It would be good to add the same path control for the Chaos Count.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Jamie
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Hi All,
Here is a little animation test of the WIND Feature in GrowFX.
Hope this inspires other to have a look at using wind if they haven't alreadyCheers
Jamie
3DMK - Treeline
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Heya Folks!
I've got a job with lots of growfx trees that have lots of paths in them. Is it possible to get maxscript access to the wind object "pick" button so that I can loop through all the trees and branches and set a single wind? In future it'd be great to have some kind of spreadsheet editor to be able to mass add modifiers and change their parameters - on more complex trees the display update can be a bit slow when changing between them all!
Cheers!
John
You will find that you still need to adjust the wind to suit each tree part [Trunk,branch,twigs,leaves], as achieving a good wind setting for your tree requires adjusting the wind setting for each different part.
If you have a look at trees in nature you will see that the different elements of a tree move differently in the wind. EG The trunk only move a little, the first branch a bit more and twigs moving a lot, etc etc.
The wind settings really rely on the length of the path so you will need different wind settings for different length paths.
Hope this helps
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Hi All,
I made a tutorial to show how easy it is for New GrowFX users to make common adjustments to the models I make at 3dmk - Treeline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FYsY8nkUhk
Hopefully it will get more of my customers to purchase the GrowFX version of our models & see how much more versatile they are in a parametric format.
Kind regards
Jamie
Treeline
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Hi All,
I did a short tutorial to show how easy it is to modify the shape of a tree by using Geometry & the Object Slice Modifier.
Hope this helps
Jamie-
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Have a look at this post which asks a similar question
https://exlevel.com/forum/index.php?/topic/679-offset-affects-question/I made an example in that post that you can download to see how it works [Max 2010]
Hope this helps
Jamie
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You could try using a second GrowFX object for the bark that uses a surface distributor on the trunk of the main GrowFX object. This may be a better way to get an even density over the trunk if the radius varies quite a lot. (Make sure you have convert to mesh = ON in your preferences panel for the main GrowFX object, otherwise it will not generate a mesh that the second GrowFX object can be distributed over.)
See this Tutorial for some more info on using the SURFACE DISTRIBUTOR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thgjnd10MhI
Hope this helps
Jamie
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Hi wallworrm,
I have attached a couple of examples of how to achieve what you you want. One example is using the path distributor & the other one is using a path position distributor.
The path distributor has a second affects link which uses a graph to offset the child path based on it's position along the parent path. This example is much quicker to setup as it uses only one distributor, whereas the path position example needs multiple positions that have to be entered manually.
Hope this helps
Jamie
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Glad to help
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As Eduard mentioned- The random direction modifier will probably make them go where you don't want them. This can be controlled by putting another modifier [The object reaction modifier] after the random direction.
If for example your trunk is 2 meters high & your branches start at the top, set up a object reaction modifier that uses a ground plane [use a GrowFX helper plane] & input a value into the Object reaction modifier. This will force the branches to stay at least 2 meters away from the ground.
That may seem confusing to a new user so I did a quick example to help you understand it easier
File is Max 2010Cheers
Jamie
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I had a look at your show-reel & it looks awesome...well done
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Well done! Looks great. So much better looking trees than what I have seen in games, especially anything made with Speedtree.
It would be awesome if you could give us some general info on the final poly counts of the trees & their Lod
Cheers
Jamie
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When I convert my tree to a mesh, and export as an FBX, it comes into Maya as one solid mesh. This makes assigning shaders difficult. I can export separate and FBX and combine in Maya but this is annoying.
Is there an easy way to send out my leaves, as one poly object, the rest of the tree as another poly object, but in ONE FBX file?
Thanks in advance!
Sorry if this is not possible [as I am not a Maya user] but can't you just select sub-objects via a material ID?
Just assign different material ID's to your GrowFX object in 3ds max before you export to maya [FBX supports material ID's as well as vertex colour]
EG. Make the leaves ID1, make the trunk ID2, make the branches ID3, etc etc
Hope this helps
Jamie
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Hi Jaime,
Couldn't you just use the cropping tools in the standard "bitmap" map ? It sounds like it has the functionality you are looking for already. You would still need multiple materials but you could use just one texture map.
Hope it helps
Thanks PTrain but I am looking for a solution that is not max specific as this puts limits on where the models can be used.
I am also starting to make real-time trees/plants & it's absolutely imperative to have it all in one map & one material.
Having a crop tool in GrowFX would also give more realism as you could use use multiple texture maps in the one bitmap. I have already suggested this for the leaf mesh as it would be even more awesome to have it in that as well.
https://exlevel.com/forum/index.php?/topic/558-texture-atlas-tools/
You wouldn't need to change anything about the current UV mapping in GrowFX, just the implementation of cropping the bitmap prior to the usual UV mapping.
Cheer
Jamie
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Hi Eduard,
Hope you're well,
I have been doing a lot of research again lately & I have come across an issue that I am trying to solve.
I have used a UV unwrapped mesh for the trunk & would like to put a tileable bitmap inside the Trunk texture for the GrowFX cylinder mesh to use.Is there a way to get the cylinder mesh to use just a certain part of a bitmap?? I have tried using the tile & offset value of the cylinder mesh but I can't seem to get it right, probably because my maths is really terrible. My tileable section of the bitmap is exactly 25% the width of the entire bitmap.
I was thinking it would be great to have the bitmap crop tool for the cylinder mesh as an option in the future
This would be a really great thing to achieve as it can make using the tree materials much quicker as there would only be one material instead of 2 or more.
I have attached an image to help explain.
Thanks for your time
Jamie
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Hi Eduard,
Hope you're well.
I know you are super busy.......but Just wondering if it would be possible in the future to get GrowFX to produce a version of the model to integrate into unity game engine & possibly other game engines. ?
For this unity game engine import method below . It basically imports the tree mesh as individual pieces so it can be setup in the game to be dynamic.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/21079
it would need to provide trees as nested, hierarchical objects with individual pivots. Then the GrowFX tree would have real-time wind in the game & physics collisions as well
I am guessing that GrowFX already generates this list when building the tree? So it may not be too hard??Cheers
Jamie
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Really Nice render
I have used a UV unwrapped mesh for the trunk & would like to put a tileable bitmap inside the Trunk texture for the GrowFX cylinder mesh to use.
Affect length by height on model (z axis)
in For technical questions
Posted
You could also try using a object slice modifier to control the length of the branches. Create a simple mesh of the shape you want and add the modifier to automatically slice/trim the branches when it hits it.
Have a look at this tutorial I did
https://exlevel.com/forum/index.php?/topic/690-using-geometry-to-shape-trees-plants/