tree creator tutorial – PUBLISHED

make sure you read this thread about optimizing performance of your trees:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/138929-batching-trees-%96-and-speed-up-rendering

lars

 

hi there,

just a small update here:
finally i managed to manually edit trees created with the tree creator and optimize their shape and bending.
so now i am able to create high poly trunks and fix all problems as far as the bending is concerned.
manually edited trees are fully compatible with the tree creator shaders and work perfectly within the terrain engine supporting bump mapping, specular lighting, translucency and the advanced bending.

some images do not show up in chrome/safari – but firefox!


high poly trunk [right click to view full size version in new tab]




Fixed connections between branches and leaves planes [right click to view full size version in new tab]




Much nicer bending [right click to view full size version in new tab]




lars

 

image links fixed...

 

Started playing with Tree Creator and it's really quite awesome, thanks so much for the tutorial, wiki etc. I'm trying to recreate a palm tree in Tree Creator that I've already modeled in a separate application. Below is the picture of the asset I already made, but am trying to make a Tree Creator version of:



The trunk isn't too tough to recreate, nor are the palm leaves because I can just reuse my already modeled, textured and uv'd leaf mesh.

My issue is: the area above the main trunk, but below the leaves (looks like pineapple sort of). The problem is that it expands out whereas almost all trees taper off towards the top (and thus Tree Creator doesn't seem to have an obvious solution to this). That area also requires a separate texture of course.

My initial thought was to make another branch on top of the main branch, but it seems impossible to get 1 branch to go DIRECTLY over another branch, it's always sliding along the side of the branch, never on the "cap" as Tree Creator thinks of it. It also seemed impossible to get a shape that much wider than the base trunk.

Any suggestions?

I can get a basic trunk + leaves going, but can't figure out how to get the "pineapple" over the main trunk but before the leaves. Also, is there an easy way to get all the leaves to start from a single area, rather than up and down the branch nodes? For example, in the above pic, all leaves there come from same height, not up and down trunk. I can manually edit them to put them together of course, just wondered if there's another way. Thanks so much for the work you've put in.

p.s. you should really highlight Free Draw for people, it's freaking awesome and how I can very easily recreate the trunk.

 

hi skeptika,

my first thought is: model the "pineapple" as leave mesh!
that’s the only way to bring in predefined geometry (just the whole "pineapple").
you will have to "displace" the pivot of the pineaple as a leave mesh is always positioned at one side of the trunk, but that really should not be the problem.


lars

 

Cool, I thought of the possible "leaf" solution today at work, glad it looks like I had the right idea, I'll definitely give it a shot. Oh I see, so by defining the pivot in a non-standard place, I can get it to effectively be on top of the tree cap. Clever, I like it. I'll give it a shot! Thanks again for all of your work (tree, terrain, all of it, I've used several of your contributions before). I'm willing to be a lot of people use your stuff, just not everyone stops by to say thanks!

Dan

 

just let me know if it works for you.

lars

 

Hi Lars,

I'm making my first mesh leaf tree and I used Blender to make my mesh. As per your tutorial, I made one mesh, duplicated it and flipped its normals. When I imported it to Unity, it made a nice leaf, but the tree has twice as many verts as tris -- 3184 verts to 1496 tris. I assume this is because of the doubled mesh.

Edit: Wrong assumption. Sorry Lars, never mind. The problem is that my Blender meshes are coming through to Unity with over twice as many verts in Unity as they have in Blender. It's a Blender problem I'll have to figure out. Thanks

Zaffer

 

Hi to all,

The thread is a bit old so I hope to receive a reply from someone...

I need to create the gloss, translucency and shadow textures maps to put into the slots about the Nature/Tree Creator leaves shader but googling on the net I cannot found nothing.

Can help me anyone with a suggest? I use GIMP and ShaderMap to create textures.

Thanks in advance!

-IndieDevDad

 

Hi Lars,

I really would love to take a look at the tutorial, but the link is broken (or the site is down) Do you have an offline version or another link for the tutorial?

Thanks a lot
Ingo

edit: Found something...is this your tutorial? http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=TreeCreator_Tutorial

 

jepp, that is the tutorial.

 

Thanks for the answere and the tutorial

 

I understand this is a really old thread, but I'm having problems with the built in tree creator in Unity.
First and most annoying- LOD seems to disable leaves completely leaving very bad looking, "naked" forests in the distance and some very obvious popping in. Any way to address this?

 

Thank you for the tutorial!

I have been having issues getting a tree in my scene to fade. I believe it is a problem with the shader. I am using the recommended "Nature/Tree Creator Bark" and "Nature/Tree Creator Leaves" Shaders. Do you have any suggestions? I would really appreciate any help.

 

The tutorial site linked in the description gives me a 404. Any chance anyone know where an archive of it is?

 

http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/TreeCreator_Tutorial

 

Wonderful thank you!