Xfrog Tree - Usage

Animation
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Hi All,

I am interested to know if anyone has successfully imported Xfrog - High-Poly trees into Unity and if you modified them to be suitable by means of Poly reduction (Decimation or Retopolgy i believe it’s called) and or what system you used to manage the billboards etc.

I purchased many a tree recently and fell off my chair when I was quoted on the work required, I was told it could take from 15 mins by one person up to 1 1/2 hours by another but basically around $100 a tree to have LOD also not sure on what else is required for WindZone to work with them… and by the way there is no way to get them into SpeedTree, I asked - so Unity Trees is the target format.

There is an Asset on the Unity store called Custom Tree Importer which looks useful, but in any case there needs to be some manual re-modelling first. EDIT: I was told this asset can’t do it by the creator, that is as they are highpoly and cannot be made as a Unity Tree.

FYI I have been informed by Xfrog that they plan to release some Unity trees on the Asset store, but this does not help me with the 300+ trees i purchased that are very specific species. Will be interesting to see the difference in appearance from 187,000 tris down to 2000-6000 isn’t the recommendation?

So, anyone done it? care to share your experiences? Mainly i think i need a Good Billboarding system, and a little movement for wind would be perfect.

Edit: There is probably no way to get these to meet Unity Tree requirements so a Custom Mesh it is. What i need is a way to do billboarding on them when they are being imported as Objects within TerrainComposer (or a standalone system) I guess. And or LOD if at all possible with the state of these trees!

Here is a wire frame view of the same tree looking upwards… crazy high poly and also a shaded wire frame showing one of the 3 mesh parts that make up this model having no logical connection. the roots and some of the leaves??

EDIT: I think i should add that I’m pretty sure Unity divided the trees into a few separate meshes to fit within it’s poly limit

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XFrog has their own decimator tool, XfrogTune. Right now it is on sale for 50% off.

http://xfrog.com/product/XA-09.html

Have you considered using that?

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Hmm, I must have known about Tune and forgotten as i have tried to acquire someone to do this work for me in whatever method they know how and have gotten very little response except to say it would cost a fortune and take a lot of work… I’ve also been conversing with an Xfrog employee about this and they were going to do a Unity game-ready tree pack that i would have first look at for testing and assisting in Asset Store readiness last year but then they fell silent.

So i’m not sure why this wasn’t really brought to my attention by them but so far I’ve found Xfrog to be dismal with requests for information or support in general. It really does look like the most obvious and best solution as it’s all ready to go for their format. Also then using a billboard/impostor asset for the mid to far trees should do the rest for an extra level of simplicity at range.

Thanks for pointing it out, I may just have to grab a copy and do it myself, looks like it can be done pretty quickly as well, may depend of the tree type on how well it will work but that’s just the way it is. I would still be interested in having someone with experience in the application doing a batch of trees for me if you know anyone let me know.

Cheers mate…

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Hey how to import tree from Xfrog to unity