my tree is ugly

[frell]

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/6682/treeh.pngHeres the simple texture:
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/8689/treek.jpg

Heres a better look at the tree mesh:
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/8775/tsfdghjk.png


Can someone assist me in making the leaves render better? If you need to know a material setting just ask.

[SanderDL]

Did you properly unwrap this with a 2nd UV channel? Doing a 2nd UV channel did wonders for my trees.

[frell]

What do you mean? I followed a tutorial where you make a tree from 3ds maxs foliage thingy and just exported it and made a material. I just want to so they dont look like plates in the tree.

[Cap]

What SanderDL is talking about is unwrapping your object with a 2nd UV channel with no parts overlapping or outside your uv space so your mesh will be lit correctly in UDK. 3dmotive has a tutorial on this process (right on the front page), and its also free.

[frell]

What SanderDL is talking about is unwrapping your object with a 2nd UV channel with no parts overlapping or outside your uv space so your mesh will be lit correctly in UDK. 3dmotive has a tutorial on this process (right on the front page), and its also free.
I dont see it :s

[tommywomble]

http://3dmotive.com/product.php?pid=1002

[Ninjas]

don't use quads, use tris-- you will get twice as many planes for the same budget. If you insist on quads, you should bend them in the middle

[frell]

I made the 2nd uv channel just a fatten map of every tree leaf thingy and it looks better now but still a little like plates
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/4306/trreee.png

[Rhinokey]

cause your texture is terrible, and your planes are aranged poorly look around hte forums at other tree models, someones doin a blizzard diamond mine model wiht a tree, theres also many others

[frell]

This is what i used: http://www.game-artist.net/forums/support-tech-discussion/11251-trees-beginners-3ds-max-tutorial.html

The texture is crappy i know

[Bibendum]

Try using less leaves in your texture and simply add more leaf planes to your model to fill it out to the foliage density you want.

The lack of editable normals is going to make your leave planes look really obviously planar in UDK, the only real solution as far as I know is to use a less dense texture and more geometry.

[frell]

Normals? What do you mean? They're flat planes why would they need normal maps?

[Ninjas]

I am not a UDK expert, but you can paint your normal map so the leaves face random directions-- since a tangent space normal map only stores stuff up to 90 degrees, it ends up looking pretty natural. Here are some trees I used the technique on:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/10/prototype-assets/

[Bibendum]

Normals? What do you mean? They're flat planes why would they need normal maps?I was talking about vertex normals, not normal maps. Using vertex normals is pretty much the go-to solution for fixing tree lighting, unfortunately afaik UDK doesn't supported edited vertex normals.

Ninjas advice is good though, you should try that.

Edit: Also, "They're flat planes why would they need normal maps?" You answered your own question there. *Everything* in 3D is a flat plane, that's precisely why they need normal maps.

[moxy3d]

Specular maps do wonders for trees and foilage, btw.

[pior]

So, you want the leaves to not look like flat planes stuck in a tree. What about, not modeling them as flat planes stuck in a tree ?

And yeah if unreal does not support edited vertex normals, you surely can hack that using a tiny texture.

[Xoliul]

I am not a UDK expert, but you can paint your normal map so the leaves face random directions-- since a tangent space normal map only stores stuff up to 90 degrees, it ends up looking pretty natural. Here are some trees I used the technique on:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/10/prototype-assets/

Hey Ninjas, how did you go about doing random tangent space directions per leaf? I can't really think of a way to do that other than baking, and that just sounds like a lot of trouble for something so simple.

[divi]

dodge and burn on a few leaves in the r and g channel?
would be the first thing i'd try.

[Ninjas]

I color pick from this:

http://aubreyserr.com/images/TSNormalGuideSphere.jpg

and paint over the leaves on a different layer and put that layer at 50%-- obviously this tones down the existing normals, so I usually crank those up extra high in CrazyBump when I make them. You can also play with blend modes light hard light and overlay to see if you can get results you like.

[Em.]

I don't have much time, so I hope this all reads right.

This is much less an issue of UDK and more an issue of improper tree/canopy construction.I would rethink how you're doing your texture for sure. You should make a few branch variants and leaf clusters instead of that one massive thing(it looks more like the structure of a whole tree rather than a branch).

Think about how trees grow and construct it thus, a giant cluster of criss-crossed planes is going to read exactly as what it is. Try extruding out some branches from your tree and then plugging the smaller branches and foliage clusters into those, as they are in nature. From a texture with a few branch variants on it, you can construct a few clusters of canopy bits and use those bits to plug into your 3d branches. I doodled a very quick example of how you could set-up your canopy sheet.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa3/emilyogle/canopy_sheet_examp.jpg

Using something like that you can create more natural canopy shapes and get more variation with the same amount of texture space. The small bits you can plug into the edges of your canopy planes to soften the silhouettes of them and add more variation. I hope that all makes a bit of sense, I wish I had an example to show, but they're all under NDA.

[3DRyan]

One thing you can do to greatly help the look of the tree is to give your leaves more variation in color toning. The color is very flat right now. Unless you're awesome at painting in PS, I would use photos instead. Try cgtextures.com.

[Xendance]

Also, you could try using the non-directional lighting model for your branch material, instead of phong. You can't use normal maps (and specular too?) with it, but it's useful if you can't smooth the lighting otherwise.

[Hatred]

I am not a UDK expert, but you can paint your normal map so the leaves face random directions-- since a tangent space normal map only stores stuff up to 90 degrees, it ends up looking pretty natural. Here are some trees I used the technique on:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/10/prototype-assets/

in UDK you can use such a tweak to "paint" normals up to the sky http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1225475/2010.03/shader.jpg

but then the shader stars being heavy a bit

[myles]

Just a heads up to you guys, you can now import Custom Normals with the June UDK release, so you should be able to get consistent lighting now.
I believe this is only for the FBX importer for now.

[AsaNYC]

I am not a UDK expert, but you can paint your normal map so the leaves face random directions-- since a tangent space normal map only stores stuff up to 90 degrees, it ends up looking pretty natural. Here are some trees I used the technique on:

http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/10/prototype-assets/


Thanks a lot for this helpful suggestion, Ninja. Filing this away in my process-junkie cortex!