We’re part of the UniTree project, and want to make some trees. But we’d rather not make them entirely from scratch. There are a few options we’re aware of for making trees, but were having trouble settling on one. Plus we’d like to know if we’re missing any.
Here are what we know about:
Bryce
Creates trees. Was ridicuoulsy cheap during that promotion. But you can only export billboards and not meshes of trees.
Utility: minimal
OnyxTree
Macpuncture has been experimenting with OnyTree, but it seems better suited for high-poly cinematic trees ([see this thread[/ulr]). No FBX support (OBJ and DXF are the only “universal” file formats, and we understand OBJ doesn’t bring in UV maps properly). It also costs $200
Utility: has potential, but…
TreeMagik
Outputs low-poly trees expressly for games. Cheap (only $50). But Windows only (Bleah). Also OBJ is only universal file format it exports.
Utility: Unknown
Anyone had experience with Treemagik? Does it work? Is there a workaround for the OBJ import issue? (If that issue still exists?)
there are some free MEL scripts for Maya at Highend3d.com that generate trees. Look for ‘L-system’ type of scripts. During my Lightwave days I had some L-systems scripts as well. Also I think C4D has similar plugins/scripts. So does Blender.
Slightly off-topic, but is there any chance those MEL/C4d/Blender scripts might have algorithms that could be adapted to be used in Unity’s mesh interface? Maybe we won’t have to rely on 3rd party apps at all?
The Blender L-system script is in Python and is open source, so I’d guess that some of it might be portable to Boo and Unity. I don’t have a link handy, but I’m sure the script could be found at blenderartists.org.
Another couple of possibilities:
Xfrog (Windows) has a game oriented plugin that exports low poly and LOD tree models. I’ve never tried it, but it looks interesting.
I’ve recently tried vue trees but the exported trees are not suitable, that is what kicked off the whole ‘make a nature system’ thing for me. I suspect that the only way to generate maximum optimised trees for Unity games is to build them from scratch. I’ve tried a few tree makers over time and I think they all generate masses of unnecessary geometry for this particular purpose. Of course I will be more than happy to be proved wrong so if anyone comes across stuff that’ll make the process easier and quicker then great
Cheers
Boxy
Edit: actually while we’re on the subject, is there a definitive list of UniTree members yet?
That’s been my experience as well. I just gave the Blender “Gen3” script a try and created one of the default trees (an aspen I believe). The resulting tree had about 117,000 poly’s. Then I ran the reduce mesh script at it’s default settings which reduced the mesh to about 48,000 poly’s. Attached is a screen shot from the Blender editor.
You might be able to use a script or application like this to create the trunk and then manually create the smaller branches and leaves as bitmaps and apply them manually. Would still be a lot of work though…
BigKahuna, thanks for giving the Blender plugin a try – I downloaded it, but hadn’t gotten as far as seeing if it still worked in 2.4.
The attraction of TreeMagick (enough to get us over the Windoze thing) is that it does billboarded leaves and supposedly will create a decent tree with around 1K polys. We may just have to bite the bullet and give it a try.
The thought of manually placing all those leaf billboards just gives me the heeby-jeebies!
I’ve been wondering if TreeMagik will work for Unity for quite some time now. I’ll be interested to see what others say…
With that said, I have another thought AlienCodec (the people that made TreeMagik) also sells pre-made trees. http://www.aliencodec.com/product_instatrees.php I assume these trees were made with TreeMagik. This is worth a look.
Well if someone is going to check this out please do report your findings. Also, I don’t know who makes the final decisions on UniTree but it seems pointless everyone else wasting precious time building trees if these ones are going to be acceptable. We may as well just buy a bunch of them off the shelf if that’s the case.
Guess there’s not much point making trees until we get some results and a consensus. I’d be very interested to see what you think of TreeMagik.
Cheers
Boxy
well guess it’s lunch time for me! going to check it out now. if i can get a file out of the demo that is. BUT… keep working on trees. looks to me like their license won’t let you distribute the models with unitree. you can use them for a game but not as examples etc.
edit… it’s the instatrees license i was looking at. bet you can use ones you make…
I can’t speak for OTEE, but there are a couple things going on that I am aware of:
OTEE does want to include some new trees in the UniTree Nature Rendering release. Obviously permission to distribute those will need to be granted by their creators, and we can’t just do that with the ready-made ones.
The InstaTrees come in these formats: 3DS, X, B3D and LWO. I get the impression that Unity doesn’t open these unless you have 3DS or Lightwave installed. We are becoming a Maya shop, so we can’t quickly use these formats. Am I wrong about X and B3D formats?
For our project, we have a need for quite accurate models of specific species of tree that we have not found off the shelf versions of yet. So we are looking for a way to make them.
The UniTree project is shooting for quality closer to Oblivion, etc (see the UniTree wiki. Looking for 2-3K poly trees instead of the 1K polys that the InstaTrees are.
So this is all to say we are definitely in the market for some new, better trees. I’m sure if TreeMagick is our last best hope or not.
Doc
No problem, I think my post came out with the wrong tone. Just meant it would indeed make more sense to use a quicker way if that way was acceptable and feasible. But I will keep going on this as per Pete’s instructions.
I imagine Maya will be able to open 3DS files. I know I can open 3DS and Lightwave in Cinema 4D and if the licence allows (probably not) I’d gladly convert those to .obj for you. Or actually you could possibly do the conversion through a freebie app like Blender?
Cheers
Boxy
yeah definitely fbx. i was planning on running though lightwave and exporting to fbx.
treemagik looks ok but not for unitree i don’t think. played with the demo for a half hour. couldn’t export so i don’t know for sure if it’s useful at all. i don’t see it as what i think the quality should be for unitree. the modeling method on the wiki is a better way to do it for wind etc (leaves are simple billboards in tm) but maybe it could be used for a draft that you further edit in a modeling app.
bigk… great find! some cool stuff there and pretty cheap! the tree textures look good but again they aren’t modeled as well for wind. but still they’re pretty nice. all of it looks pretty professional. i could certainly see grabbing the props and stuff.
hmm… otee, your next product could be a tree generator done right… i’d buy! in the meantime i don’t think there’s a quick solution other than good ol modeling.
I actually bought a couple of those models because they did look good. Downloaded them and discovered they were .max (not .3ds) and I don’t have anything that can open them. So that’s kind of a pain.
what are they? maybe i can convert em for you. [edit… whoops! just reread your post. i can’t do anything with max. didn’t they offer any other format?]
btw… treemagik does have a duckbill option for the leaves. i couldn’t see the polys. so can’t say how it’s set up. maybe good enough for base geo that you can edit in a proper app. might speed things up. guess i got to shell out 49 bucks to find out. i’m with stupid :arrow: me :lol:
Just had a look at the site. What I found really useful where the images of each plant/tree with the polygons superimposed - if you want some ideas of where/how to place polygons for the leaf textures they are a pretty good reference. For eample:
