I thought I would start a new thread for this.

Hi Uguel / all

I have been having a play with the treelab. I think the first and easiest change that can be made to the default foliage is to change the texture of these to an image. This setting is in the treelab:-



I loaded an image to check/ see the outcome,

image loaded:-



Results on render:-



I think certainly better than the defaults.

Good idea.
I might do that with the conifers too!

Looks like a lot better way to do it. A more natural look.

I found a freebie that looks interesting for brick/rock textures here, there are some free textures with bump maps there too.

Hi!

I just found more tutorials on trees here.
They are both by the same author.

Hero Trees
Creating Extra Trees

Also, I found a free program that allows you to create 3D trees.
Notice that I haven't tried it yet and cannot tell if it is good or not.
More info here
Tree Generator v1.2
...this is not a new program, it was release a few years ago
and they just had a new version released not long ago.... the new
version is not free. :no:

I gave Tree generator a try and I had hit and miss results.
...this is how the interface looks like




On the left of the workplace, you have the displacement and rotation tools in green.
on the right of the interface, are all the values that you can control such as the size
of the trunk, size of the leaves, tree rotation & bending, number of branches and number of leaves.

this is the first tree I made. Certainly not a conventional tree but
I found it has interesting effects in it.


....be careful when playing with the random settings, you might end up
with a broken tree like the one on your right.



I haven't played much with it yet. I just opened it one hour or so
I might obtain better result after a few days trial.
here's what I observed so far....

things I liked...


The program was stable on windows xp
low on resources and only 0,97.mb
we can resize the trunk and the leaves
we can bend the tree
we can make bushes instead of trees


things I did not like....

there is no undo button
You can neither *texture the trunk, nor texture the leaves inside the program
Tthere is one shape of leaf only...if you try edit the leaf, the option is very limited

* but you can texture the trunk and the leaves once exported inside Bryce.
...as for the leaves, there is a little window where you have vectors to edit the
leaf but it offers 3 adjustment points only. This is pretty much it for now.
If I find out more about it, I will let you know.

I gave it another try today and all things considered, it is not worth it. I compared the TG trees with
the Bryce ones, Bryce's trees are about 3 times better in quality. So do not loose your time trying it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

On a happier note, I had a try at making textures and could achieve interesting results
by selecting and copying areas from a tree trunk image and pasting it in empty
images after. All areas or parts I selected were selected with the magic wand,
I tried to be a bit "asymmetric" in my way of doing it in order to have a seamless
texture. After the images were filled completely, I increased the contrast, saturated
the colours a bit and sharpen it around 25 % for my textures were made bigger than
the original tree images I had. I tried them on Bryce's trees and they looked real good on them.

Here is what I had at first and the result I got....
All images were resized to 50 % approx.

Those look really good.

thanks!

I gave another try but with lattices this time. The tree shapes were drawn in a 2D
program and then, I exported the drawings on by by one in Bryce's terrain Editor
and stuck them to 3 lattices respectively. It is not perfect but it will do for now.

Hi Uguel, odidio, and all,

Uguel, your post#6, very good, nice the way you have used an actual image, then changed/edited/moved the image etc. I do like the output.
I myself, have given up on my attempts of the creation of trees, not good results, even with a number of "Tree generators" I have found on the net.

Regards to all,

Thanks you Stem.

well, I don't know if I had the best way to do it but it worked pretty well for me.
...maybe I could have tried the ''random mapping'' from the Bryce's texture editor too.


Now, here is the same gray bark texture, not previously tiled this time, just increased the size and shades, then applied
the Bryce's ''random'' mapping map for the cylinder to your left and ''object side'' for the tree and the cylinder to your right.
Not too bad, hey? The image was render with the default mode that's why it looks a bit grainy.

Would this be of use in that the generated files could be imported or files converted?

Arbaro- tree generation for povray
It's written in Java, so you can use it with any OS, wich is supported by Java.
It reads in an XML file with the tree parameters and writes out Povray, DXF or Wavefront OBJ files.

http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

Hi Chachazz,

This is one I have not seen, (thanks for the info/link),.. the output looks quite good. I will find some time to try it out.

Regards,

Hey, I did not know that one. I agree the output looks good
and it doesn't seem too hard to use either. Thanx!

...I saw another program the other day that allows you to create ivies or running plants. It looks pretty good too.
I do not have the link at hand right now but I will surely be able to post it soon.

Tree_lab re-visited.

I have been looking at a number of tree generators, but decided to re-look at Bryce.

I dont know if others have been getting any good results from this, but I am now starting to get better results than I have in the past.

A simple example




I will be spending some time again with Bryce, so I will get some more trees created and get a scene posted.

That's wonderful work Stem.

Found something interesting to play with:

Magic Garden
Magic Garden is an Artificial Plants Laboratory.

Create L-System plants, modify them in real time, play in the world of fractals, just have fun.

Works in Linux and Windows, should work on any other platform supported by Python/wxPython. Doesn't require any compilation and is very small to download.

(already have python on this windows machine, so...why not...give this a try...it has a nice tutorial on the site. The install an startup went perfectly well.)

Hi Chachazz,

A new L-system. It does make the process easier, its a pity there is no output for use of the models in other programs.

I have looked at similar programs before. Some good output can be got from L-system4 http://www.geocities.com/tperz/L4Home.htm but, the maths behind the construction can be heavy:

That looks great as well as your Bryce trees.

I haven't had time to use Bryce for a bit now but hopefully soon.

Hi odidio
I cannot take a lot of credit. The tress, well, it is just a case of playing around with the settings in Bryce. The above image from L-system, that is just a variation of one of the examples.

I have been the same for the last several months, but decided I need to chill out a bit, so have gone back to some CG.

I will post various trees etc, and if anyone wants the model(s), than I can upload (or post settings)

Hi Stem!

I'd like to see the settings you had for the tree. Thx!

Hi Uguel,

Nice to see you,
These are the settings for the above tree (post #18~ no foliage)





Regards,

Hello Uguel,

This is basically the tree from post #14

Without foliage:-



With foliage:



Treelab settings:



Regards,

I will try your settings, thanks a lot !

Hi Uguel,
Your welcome.

It can be unpredictable at times with some of the settings being changed, but am now finding some good base to this tree_lab.

I have been playing / trying to create a large old pine tree, the results are starting to show:-

With settings of:-



Result:-



Adding a few more Branches per segment (lower scale):-






EDIT:

I wont post any more pics to thread, as I dont want to cause lots of loading for anyone on slow connections.

Spotted a freebie, ngPlant - Open Source plant modeling package.

I don't know if it has been posted before and i haven't tried it, but it looks interesting.

http://ngplant.sourceforge.net/#licenseanc