realistic Trees in unity?

News & General Discussion
1

Basicly, the question I can’t come up with an answer is, how to do realistic looking trees in unity…

Now that there is the Tree generator I played around with it, and after some really long hours of getting to know all the sliders and options and finally getting trunks and branches that look faintly like they belong to Tree that really exists, I’m back to step one with the Leaves… they just don’t look right.

I’m trying to make a Fir Tree, and the First Problem was how to get the Branches to face the right direction. While I was able to achieve the right result for the first level of branching, The Second Level doesn’t work anymore as they face up and down instead of left and right when I set the distribution to opposite. Is there any option to tell the tree generator that the branches should be facing to the sides and not up and down from the last branch level?

With the Leaves, apart from the Problem that the Flat Leaves just don’t work as well as I wanted (maybe my mistake, it would surely help if the would align better with my chosen (fixed) viewpoint. When I add a normal map to the leave texture material, the bump map doesn’t seem to be applied for some reason… the leaves look the same with and without. What am I doing wrong?

I really like the Wind effect of the trees, but I’m a little bit frustrated how little I could achieve given the time I spent with trying to get my head around this tool.

Is there any good resource with some good examples that explains how to use the tree generator, and, most important, how to generate different tree species with the tool?

Alternatively, is there any good 3rd party tool that can create realistic trees ready to be used as tree models for unity? Can these be animated by wind zones?
I tried treemagick, but I couldn’t get it to run under Win 7. Is there a version for win 7?

Thanks for any help, I’m a little lost here…

Gian-Reto

2

TreeMagick is a Blitz3d application. for me it runs fine on win7 64bit ultimate, no problem. all you need to do is disable DEP on it etc

But it wouldn’t help as the trees are not unity targeted and you basically lose it all.

As for tutorials: not that many, the tree editor etc were introduced with 3.0 in oct 2010

3

Thanks for the quick answer.

Okay, so I might need to try again. I could install treemagick, but I couldn’t run it afterwards. Maybe I got the wrong version. Does that mean that treemagick trees couldn’t be used as unity trees with wind zone animation and all?

I was able to solve the problem with the normal map, it seems the material wasn’t updated automatically on the trees when I changed the material itself. Good to know, you need to change a parameter on the trees so every materials get loaded again.

About the tutorials: Thats what I feared. Well, back to experimenting then.

4

Correct, treemagick trees if not further processed in modelling are just static models or animated models but they won’t react to wind etc.

Also, there is no wrong version if you own the 3.x version, it was the last Aliencodec did before vanishing (and selling of to TGC). As mentioned ensure that its in DEP exclusions and ensure that UAC is disabled / its not in program files

5

I also have a weird problem with plant life, I can’t even install it, because the Installer detects my win 7 OS as an unsupported Windows version. The Version seems to be 1.0.0.17 though.

6

have plant life working here without any problems either

got both from the “super compilation” disk thing TGC offers or offered for $50 or so so unsure on the version

7

I’ve used the tree generators in Bryce. Worked fine.

8

Cool, need to give that a go then too. Any information on special steps required RHD?

9

There was a specific process in Unity. I found some details somewhere on the Wiki I think. To do with getting Unity to recognise them as trees and bend in the wind etc. Sorry to be vague, it was a while back.

10

ah that part. yeah I think I know what you talk about, the material naming etc

11

Actually don’t rush out and buy Bryce, i might have been something else. I’ll try and remember and report back. It made nice trees though: http://web.mac.com/hayesdavies/Portfolio/oceanbuild1.html

12

I already own it and the older versions are free for anyone to use (at least they used to :))

13

It’s an older version I’ve got. 6 I think the problem was I couldn’t export them. I’ll have to figure out what I did.

14

Half year later and still nothing. Unity documentation team works really hard!

15

If you want really impressive foliage and trees you will have to use SpeedTree. It is by far the best procedural tree generator with best results.
Afcourse it is also very expensive.

16

There’s a middleware similar to speedtree, don’t remember the name now, but the price is something ridiculous as 195$ (without any per-title restrictions) and it’s multiplatform. I’ll see if i can find it and post the link later.

[EDIT] Here is:
http://woody3d.com/features/

Woody3D Software License
Terms of the Woody3D Software License
View Full License Here

  • Release with an unlimited number of applications. No per product licenses.
  • If a product grosses over $250K you must pay a commercial license fee.*
  • Woody3D logo and copyright must be placed in app’s splash screen or credits.
  • Downloadable distribution only unless you pay the commercial license fee.*
  • Install on up to 2 PCs per Developer seat.
  • The Commercial fee is $5000. It is a one time fee which allows unlimited distribution methods and unlimted gross sales of your products using Woody3D version 1.x. You can pay the fee any time by logging in to your developer account.
17

You mean that “Ambient Occlusion” string in tree directory name, or something else?

18

This looks like you have to write down your exporter using their api. There is no default option like export to 3dsmax…

19

Well, Woody3D is a middleware (tree engine), not just a plant editor creator like TreeMagik and PlantLife.

20

This looks really impressive!