Modelling a tree in Max

[Prophecies]

Hey,
Do any of you have any tutorials as to how to model a tree in max?
Thanks!

[Eric Chadwick]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tree+max+tutorial
;)

[Progg]

I lol'ed at that site.

[Mark Dygert]

Just brute modeling or looking for scripts to help?
Brute modeling:
Polyboost/graphite modeling tools > Branch tool
Or, Sketchxtrude http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/sketchxtrude-0-95-beta

Scripts and separate apps:
Or, TreeMaker script http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/tree-maker
Or, Branchy http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/branchy
Or, Tree shop http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/tree-shop
Or, SpeedtreeMAX http://www.digimation.com/home/Software.aspx?sm=st
Or, SpeedTree http://www.speedtree.com/
Or, TreeStorm http://www.onyxtree.com/stormx.html
Or, Dryad http://dryad.stanford.edu/
Or, XFrog http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/news/newStart.htm
Or http://www.treegenerator.com/

[Shogun3d]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tree+max+tutorial
;)

Thats friggen hilarious ;D

Personally, I like to use Zbrush with zSpheres and then crunch it afterwards.

[Eric Chadwick]

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

Basically I was asking "what research have you done so far?" Read this (http://catb.org/%7Eesr/faqs/smart-questions.html#before).

[Prophecies]

Hi guys, thanks a bunch for the tutorials. Last night I was physically and mentally exhausted, so I didn't clarify at all what I meant. I am working on a japanese shrine environment, and I am wondering how I could achieve something like this background: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/23669657.jpg

I was thinking, instead of making a ton of leaves and leaf systems, I could try and attempt to make a roundish spherical-ish form and playing around with a well-done diffuse and Normal map. Of course, I will use some leaf planes, but I wouldn't be using that technique for the entire background.

What do you think?

[Tom Ellis]

Depending on how close you plan to allow the player or viewer to get, You could simply try some staggered planes with tree photo's/alphas, similar to how Arch Viz guys do background foliage. Obviously you'd need to play with the size/angles of each but it would be a whole lot quicker than modelling anything.

Alternatively, any of the methods Vig linked would work well too if you do want to have physical tree meshes in the scene.

I have this, which has some great Tree textures along with the relevant alpha maps.

https://shop.3dtotal.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=194&osCsid=s1ikhqdicb2tink3e905pk4c12

[serialkiler]

Just brute modeling or looking for scripts to help?
Brute modeling:
Polyboost/graphite modeling tools > Branch tool
Or, Sketchxtrude http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/sketchxtrude-0-95-beta

Scripts and separate apps:
Or, TreeMaker script http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/tree-maker
Or, Branchy http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/branchy
Or, Tree shop http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/tree-shop
Or, SpeedtreeMAX http://www.digimation.com/home/Software.aspx?sm=st
Or, SpeedTree http://www.speedtree.com/
Or, TreeStorm http://www.onyxtree.com/stormx.html
Or, Dryad http://dryad.stanford.edu/
Or, XFrog http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/news/newStart.htm
Or http://www.treegenerator.com/

Anything for maya ??

[Mark Dygert]

Some of those are stand-alone apps, SpeedTree, Dryad, XFrog, TreeGenerator.

You can also check creativecrash.com for scripts I'm sure they're around but I have never used any of them.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/c/search?search=tree&x=33&y=15

[Harito]

1+ for ZShperes. I do that too, it's just so perfect for making trees. Very easy.
For really realistic, or very detailed ones though, I would have to agree that your best bet is third party soft or scripts. My personal favorite was Treestorm, very realistic branching and dynamics.

[Prophecies]

For the trees I'll be making, I need to have them animated in a realistic fashion. I agree that 3rd party plugins or scripts would help. But I've tried tree'd, branchy, and various other programs and nothing truly gets the results I want. I had the chance to test out Speedtree with UDK, but since this is going into Max and not unreal (for now), I'm out of luck. What other free (speedtree-ish) programs do you happen to know of?