Tora_2097

Like this for example:

Hi Eduard, In the meantime I managed to get a mesh that was ok by varying the face size. Sometimes a larger face size will get rid of this, sometimes a smaller. Some artifacts are very hard to notice until you converted the object to an edit poly and check for open vertices, coplanar faces and similar stuff. I encounter the following often: The mesh result from the metamesh builder looks fine but after selecting "elements" under Edit Poly, I notice that instead of only one continuous mesh it consists of one larger and a couple of smaller elements which are not welded in place and sometimes even intersect wildly into the remaining mesh.

I am having trouble getting meshes out out of metamesh without any errors or flipped faces. Increasing the density does not help in my cases. I also noticed that it can create really messy geometry with isolated faces and open or missing parts. These issues are very time consuming to fix afterwards. Playing around with different settings for the mesh building can also take a lot of time on more complicated generators as the process does not run multithreaded. Any tips on this? Kind regards, Benjamin

thanks everyone! @mentor thought about it, but for now there are just stills.

Very good, especially the texturing.

My latest work. 20 different plant species forming a large area resembling the amazon river. In addition to GrowFX I used the ForestPro plugin to scatter the plants in 3dsmax.

Hey, yes the trunks are looking a lot better I think, the leaves seem a bit thin and wispy though. Maybe you can consider using the displacement funtion on the trunks to increase the gnarled look. Concerning your earlier question about the correct number of sub-branches and twigs I'd say that there is really no "correct" number. Use as few as possible and as many as necessary. The higher your number of paths the more control you have over each aspect of the tree, but it can become tedious after a certain point. Also some effects that can be seen on real trees like the continuous raising of density while simultaneously shorten the length of each branch like this: are hard to do with a higher number of individual paths only, you'd use the "Level" function here together with the "Affect" dialog. Usually -but not always- a mixture of both is required for a convincing result. Here is an example for this: https://exlevel.com/tutorials/HowToCreateASimpleTree2/ although I guess you know this one already. Regards, Ben

Hi Scott, It's not bad, but your geometry concerning the twig structure is too simple. I goggled for some additional reference images and thin that you need at least one more path distributor on top of your "LeavesStem". The lack of it makes all leaves look very evenly distributed. I added it along with other parameters for the leaves and this is the result. I did not change anything on the larger branches although they could of course be further improved. I can refine it further when I return home. I also noticed that you did not yet made use of any of the "Affect Parameter" dialogs. While it is possible to build trees without it you can get much more intricate and realistic designs done when you learn how to use it. I know it can be bit much at first! As a general rule I recommend gathering as much info as you can on the type of plant that your are trying to create and then decipher how you can translate that into GrowFX. Stuff like if the leaves are growing in pairs, are they opposite each other or set up in intervals, are they bunched up or evenly distributed, are the the branches curly or straight, do the have a tendency to sag or not etc. etc. Break it down into smaller individual problems and tackle them one after another. It's also seldom possible to copy a phot reference exactly, matching the general appearance and volume definitely is though. Keep on it! Ben ironwood_test4.gfx

Hi Massian! Looking good in terms of volume and outline but I think it can be improved further. First thing is to add some more obvious specular reflections and vertex colorization to the leaves, they appear quite dull and uniform. Is the geo for leaves bent in any direction? If not, it could help, although birch tree leaves are quite flat in reality as well. I cant be sure but it seems the middle stem reaches the very top of the tree, I found it increases realism if the main trunk splits of into different sections at some point along the length, although there are of course trees like you did it. Thirdly, I can see a texture tiling problem in the stems circumference, there is a brightness/detail disparity. Regards, Benjamin

If you can provide the gfx file instead of 3dsmax I could take a look for as well. Ben

Hi Jamie, The vegetation is looking very good as always! My critique would be to change something in the rendering and/or postprocessing since the images seem way oversharpened. Everything is too crisp everywhere, it is a little tough on the eyes. Also the water is looking a little metallic and uniform in its ripples/waves. Ben

My most recent models used in a more complex scene. GrowFX, V-Ray and Multiscatter. Palmtrees and/ or complete scene are available on my turbosquid account.

Looking very good for your first models. My critique would be to spend some more time on the bark as its looking a little flat at the moment. Maybe some normal mapping or even better displacement could help. I also see some stiff larger branches sticking out with a pointed tip. You could - for example use a "Path position distributor" on the end of your larger branches to further divide them. Good work on the color variation though. Ben

Looking very good Jamie and I also came to despise modeling by pushing vertices for hours on end. You probably know this, but alpha clipped surfaces render a lot faster if you disable filtering all together in the map settings (only for the alphamap). A real mesh will still be faster though. Ben

One more piece: P.S. I wrote you a message Eduard.