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Home ? Tips & Tricks ? HOW TO MAKE A LOW POLY TREE

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10/10/2016 01:59:32

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		I'm assuming you already know how to make the wooden part of a tree... combine a bunch of cylinders at various angles, making them smaller at one end, and everything gets progressively smaller as you go up the tree. Probably a hundred ways to do that. This turorial is about how to create the illusion of many leaves without having to create separate models for each leaf.

1) in a modeling program create a cone. Delete the surface on the round end so you have something that resembles a pointed ice cream cone

2) Select the edges around the round end, and one of the seams from the point to the round side. Make these edges UV seams (however your software does that)

3) unwrap the cone in your UV map window, and you should get this... (you may have to scroll sideways to see it all...)

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10/10/2016 02:12:07

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		now save the UV Map to a graphic that can be edited (however your program does that... they're all different)

In the graphic editing program, either draw leaves or find eaves online that have a transparent background (or start with any ol' leaf image and erase the background yourself... but it is important that the leaves have a transparent background, and that you save the image as a PNG (JPG and most other image formats don't preserve the transparent background). You'll end up with something that looks like this:



the gray part with the UVMap is on a different layer than the leaves... so once you have the leaves arranged to fill the UVMap, turn off the layer with the UVMap and you'll end up with something that looks like this (Except instead of a white background it should be a checkerboard style background indicating that it is transparent


save that as a separate file.. it will be used as the texture for your cone....
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10/10/2016 02:15:39

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		... back in your modelling program, apply the skin to the cone as a texture. You should see something like this...

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10/10/2016 02:24:40

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		Next step is to assemble a bunch of sticks into a tree however you want to do that.... and make a bunch of copy-pasted versions of your cone. Attach the point of the cone to the ends of your branches and try to make the leaves aligned to the branch so they aren't obviously crooked. But it's a fairly forgiving end result because the edges of the circle that make it look crooked in this environment will be invisible in Muvizu, so there will be no straight lines to indicate a lack of squareness. You should end up with something like this:

(Don't worry that you don't see the transparency yet... in the modelling environment it's helpful to see the edges for alignment purposes)

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10/10/2016 02:36:34

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		export the tree and cones as OBJ and then convert to ASE (ASE seems to handle this type of transparency better than FBX)

Import the resuklting ASE file as follows:
DON'T USE ID TEXTURES
MAP ALPHA TO: OPACITY MASK (NOT OPACITY!)
NO AMBIENT OCCLUSION MAP
DOUBLE SIDED

In Muvizu, the cones are invisible because the opacity mask only sees the opaque part of the image, which is the leaves. You should get something like this:

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10/10/2016 23:52:10

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		this is basically how i make my trees they are very simple to make its just one of those things that people have trouble getting their head around



I make the leaves and then import the texture and then create a plane with as few poly's as possible that would accept the texture without distortion if i unwrapped it out flat.

I didnt notice if they show how to unwrap the trunk but you can if you like put the leaves and trunk on one texture although I get lazy and use two a lot LOL. But you just unwrap and place on the texture as you go.

the leaves make a few sizes of planes and then once the texture is applied just you know duplicate the planes holding the leaves and arrange it on the tree in a pleasing manner.

I stopped looking at the tutorial after I saw him arranging the planes on the texture he made. A good source of leaf textures is your house plants. LOL most of my trees are really just using houseplant leaves that I may have altered a bit.

I might as well post this up here as it kind of goes with it.. once upon a time i used to make textures including seamless textures for things like that guy is doing using photoshop (or something like it) but manually making seamless textures sucks.. and times have changed so a few years ago now I switched to this thing

I dont know if i showed this to ziggy or not but if you use 3dcoat this is great for making smart textures/materials of all kind

https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/bitmap2material

I now use all these guys products but the first thing I got from them was bitmap2material. Substance painter is nice too and substance designer is very useful but its also not very user friendly (the substance designer that is.. the substance painter is easy to use like 3dcoat for painting)

Anyhow if you like automated processes you can make all your masks and easily make seamless textures with a few clicks of a button and using some sliders.
edited by urbanlamb on 11/10/2016
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11/10/2016 04:26:29

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		Nice tutorial! Thanks for expanding on the topic! I'd like to hear more from you, you have so much knowledge to share!
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11/10/2016 15:38:12

urbanlamb
urbanlamb
(Account inactive)
Posts: 1786 		I thougth i had given this info before but its just the leaves are on planes and unwrapping the tree is you create seams at the branch joints and then another seam usually under the branch so it unwraps flat. Most of this I have posted before somewhere here. I can make a video tutorial on making trees I suppose. Its just that there are a lot of tutorials on youtube on the exact method I use so if its covered I tend not to make my own video.
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11/10/2016 19:11:18

PatMarrNCMuvizu mogul
PatMarrNC
Posts: 1738 		There are also free and paid extensions for sketchup that automatically generate trees and other types of plants.

https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/search/site/3d%20tree%20maker
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Home ? Tips & Tricks ? HOW TO MAKE A LOW POLY TREE

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