Benefits
Import manually modeled trees from Maya, 3ds Max, Modo or Blender and let them get adjusted to be compatible with unity’s advanced tree creator shaders and wind zones “automatically”.
Benefit from bark and leafs casting and receiving real time shadows, translucency and specular lighting and add your trees using the terrain engine or place them as independent game objects.
Limits
Please do not expect the custom tree importer to simply make any tree just work: You will have to spend some time tweaking your model.
First and foremost the custom tree importer needs trees to be imported as nested, hierarchical objects – like shown in the screen shoot attached.
You should be quite familiar with your 3d app and do have a basic understanding of the tree creator and things like “main wind“, “main turbulence” and “edge turbulence”.
Watch a simple demo
Get it from the asset store
The custom tree importer script works as asset postprocessor. It combines all submeshes into one and adds the needed vertex colors and uv2.
Bending is fully controllable on each level of the tree.
Hierarchical setup of the tree
In order to be able to calculate main wind and main turbulence for the trunk, the branches and leaf planes the importer script has to know about the different parts of the tree and their origins.
For this reason you will have to provide trees as nested, hierarchical objects like shown below.
Adjust bending
Adjust bending on each level of your tree using control tags which would let you specify its reaction to: main wind, main turbulence and edge turbulence.
Advanced rendering
Trees imported using the custom tree importer are fully compatible with the built in tree creator shaders and also any tree shader based on those like he AFS tree and billboard shaders, Skyshop or Lux.
lars
2 Likes
As always Lars you are awesome. Cannot wait to try this out. For complex leaf meshes can the edge fluttering be handled in the 3d programs?
well, to be honest: edge fluttering should be applied in your 3d app. the script simply copies vertex color green to the final mesh…
lars
Cool. One more question. For now;). Will this script be able to place AO in the trees without editing the alpha vertex colors in a 3d app?
you will be able to bake ao within unity using a free script.
Awesome:smile:. Thanks Lars. Looking forward to it.
heres a tree i made to test your script with
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19865679/tree1.unitypackage
instant buy for me, what will be the price lars?
Now this is game changer…awesome as always lars
wo
holy shit! without having read the documentation your tree nearly fits the needs of the script.
i only had to rename the materials and it just worked!
i also added some control tags to add some variation in bending and quickly set up the needed textures: 5 min of work and your tree looked like shown in the webplayer attached:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2322017/treeimporter/treeimporter_simpledemo/treeimporter_simpledemo_usertree/treeimporter_simpledemo_usertree.html
one might fine adjust the pivots of the single parts of the tree to make bending more accurate or add edge fluttering to the leaves but overall it is a nice result.
as far as the price is concerned: i am not really sure about it.
this is a very special script. most people will most likely stick with the built in tree creator trees or switch to speedtree when unity 5 is out. so it is only for people you really now what they do and want to keep their workflow using the 3d app of their choice to create trees. for this reason the number of potential clients is not very large and i think about charging $25 – 35. compared to other packages this might be rather expensive – but as i have written before: this script is very special and i do not expect any hobbyist to go for this asset but more or less only pro users who have a special artwork they want to get to work with unity. what do you think?
lars
1 Like
well, let’s have a look at speedtree and unity 5 first 
True, but well mostly i prefer working in 3d apps if it’s possible
I think it’s great, those with speedtree subs in U4 could get them into max and prepare the trees with this - even when speedtree comes to unity, if speedtree is using its own system and you want to keep working with wind zones, you can convert with a lil bit of work in a modeller, as well as possibly being able to repaint verts on the tree to suit you and that being quite controllable with Lars’ work. I’d love to see what Lars’ AFS could do with converted speedtree models when the IBL is compatible with both Lux and Skyshop off the bat.
I’m going to finish prepping Shader And Renderer Test Module Jr (Intending this to be something I test stuff like Lux out on amongst others) and then i’ll try get a speedtree effort converted, since i’ve already chosen the tree and all
1 Like
im glad it worked :), im thinking not more then 30 euros, i had been looking for something like this just a week ago, and now u posted this i actually prefer making trees in a other app than unity, gives me much more control, cant wait for the release, u can use the tree i posted in your demoscene if u want lars
thanks mister d,
your tree will probably be a big help for people getting started if i include it in the package.
and $35 would be less than 30 € …
lars
1 Like
working on some trees to test the script with
1 Like
That looks really nice! Never got the hang of modelling trees so hats off to you
Really awesome job Mister D. Looking forward to seeing them sway in the wind:).
tnx,
ive finished the small testscene for lars, now its up to the scripts to make the trees move
I really like that, i think i’ll have a go myself, but give the tree rendering a go inside the new Jove
