A collection of broadleaf trees that I made in onyxtree and further modified in 3dsmax. I’m currently looking at investing in growfx as well, seems to have a bit of a steep learning curve but might eventually suit my workflow better than onyxtree.
Large Sugar Maple
Ash
Young Sugar Maple
Sugar Maple
White Oak
I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with Onyxtree, but does it have a some script allowing it to modify the trees between Vray proxies (like VRayScatter), so as to create a forest with enough variation. If not, what makes this package more interesting than for instance the free Arbaro, cause i see Onyx has quite a hefty price tag?
You can change the ’seed’ of the tree and it randomizes it to some extent. I normally make 2 or 3 variations of each to bring into 3dstudio. I also find that the same tree just rotated a bit looks surprisingly different, so you can actually make a fairly convincing forest without having to make tens or hundreds of unique trees.
Are they quite poly heavy? I’d be interested in seeing a mesh.
C
Also… I should say that the Ash is absolutely beautiful.
Thanks Chris, The ash is my fav too.
I knew they would be poly heavy, but I must admit I didnt quite realize just how many polygons they would be. The ash on this page weighs in at a quite staggering 17 million polygons!
The main reason is that I have been replacing the leaves with modeled 3d leaves, in the case of the ash, each leaf was quite detailed:
I’m working on a scene just now that has 8 unique trees, instanced many times over, will be interesting just how many polygons were in use when I finish it.
Onyxs are nice. Got few in my library too
I might be wrong but it looks like you don’t use textures for leafs. Am I right?
Anyway, they tend to look even more realistic with alpha mapped treetop.
I am using geometry leaves with a texture as well, but its maybe not so easy to see in these renders. I think the vray2sidedmaterial (transparency slot) could do with a map to define the leaf’s structure better (so that when it is backlit you see the veins). Here is a close up, and the maple leaf texture I am using:
Yeah, I was doing a project with lots of trees 2 weeks ago and had some problems with balancing materials well. Went to the park to make a little research and found out that in most cases back side of the leaf is much brighter than the front side (not taking scattering into account). Also, the back side was much dryer, more rough, so I guess the best way would be to assign a different material to the back side. I think it’s possible with vray2sided (?).
I was strike how strong leaf scattering is, even with fully overcast sky. It’s strange that I’ve seen trees so many times in my life (I have a couple on my backyard, near my window actually) and still had problems with proper leaf material
What I miss about your renders here is specularity/bump/normal maybe.. They all look too dry, uniform.
I was thinking I would keep the shininess down unless I do a after-the-rain type shot, but maybe I do need to crank it up a bit
Some good tips there Pawel, I do indeed have separate front/back and specular maps. I think in the little cropped view above you dont see much specularity as the sun is behind the trees. It seems to be a balancing act between shinyness/translucency with the vray2sidedmaterial: too much translucency and you lose the shinyness (makes sense I guess).
With the vray2sidedmaterial you can define a map to control how translucent it is, I think that would give some needed definition to the leaves, so the dont look so flat (especially as seen in the top right corner of the crop above).
Photo from flickr:
Nice reference material. I’d love to see some tests with translucent maps.
This might be helpful btw: http://www.mapzoneeditor.com/?PAGE=DOCUMENTATION.IvyLeaf
Nice trees, I’m learning onyx too but its complicated to understand all those parameters
I’m your big fan Peter 
Great trees. I always have the problem with good looking trees. Whenever I try to put trees like this in a scene (as vray proxies), lets say around 100 trees the render time shoots up into 50 hours or more just for light cache. Is there some kind a trick that I should know about?. What kind of machine (or machines) do you use?
Thanks.
p.s. Everything in this blog is simply FANTASTIC!
Hi hcgstudio, sorry for taking so long to reply. Its probably a memory issue, if you have plenty of RAM, make sure you increase the dynamic memory limit sufficiently. (I have 13gb ram and normally set it to 9000mb)
Peter, these are great looking trees. Could you share some tips on working with onyx. I find it VERY cumbersome, and i have a mental blockade when i try to create my own, or modify the ones that come in the library. How would you compare these to the braodleaf library? Do you increase the density of leaves or branches? What about the materials used? How many different tints of leaves do you use in one tree?
The blockade being “Wait these guys are biologists and they made these trees, what more can i do to them as a layman… but theirs sure don’t look very good, and i need to do something.”
Man, great stuff! I too, like pailhead, would love it if you could share some more tips on setup. Are you replacing every leaf with your own geometry? That must take forever! I saw the shaped leaves, but are you mostly using planes? Thanks so much for your site, it has really helped my own work!
thanks Shirak, I used to convert leaves to geometry but don’t do it that way anymore (see post on tree materials) - it took too long to do!
@pailhead, I really need to learn more about onyx before I give any advice! I generally start with one from the library and tweak away…
I believe that the onyx presets need to be made more dense. Now this may sound a bit… odd prehaps, after having all this info about materials and models themselves presented, but, could you write something about your render settings. I find it very very hard to get the proper contrast when rendering trees. Seems to me that the deeper you go into the crown, the darker it gets, but still the lit parts are pretty bright. When working with 2.2 gamma, i find it impossible to make such a setup, especially when i introduce 2 sided materials. I’ve made elaborate materials with multiple textures (b/w translucency maps, opacity, bump, reflection, different diff for back and front) but they end up looking quite weak and flat.
So you get too much contrast? sounds strange if you are using LWF…
I use linear workflow with reinhard color mapping for all renders, usually add a slight s curve to the vrayFB as well.
On the contrary, I find it hard to achieve contrast. I realize I wasn’t clear in the comment above, i meant to say that the trees are generaly very contrasty when i look at photos.
Hi Peter! Your work is really amazing! I can say that you and Alex Roman are my favorite 3d architectural artists!
I have a question though. It seems pretty hard to find tutorials about texturing the Onyx trees, especially the trunk. I don’t get what a trunk texture should be. (Those on the net seem to be very small and to me don’t cover the whole trunk) Can you give me a link on the ones you’re using or at least what a correct tree texture looks like?
And what’s your technique for mapping the whole trunk and even the branches? And how do you deal with the Onyxtree’s junction with trunk / branches?
Your work is really inspirationnal. Love the Farnsworth house.
hi peter,
i have a question too. Im using the version 7, but a cant edit the leaf to make them planar. Can u help me? tks
(sorry my bad english)
@felipe Hi, what do you mean by the version 7 ?
@christian thanks! I normally just photoshop a photo of a tree trunk so that it is tileable, then use the same thing for branches. I’m still waiting for a decent tree modeling program, all of the currently available solutions come up short on the trunk/branch junction front.
hy, just wanted to ask if you import trees via treestorm or export to max in 3ds?
p.s. it`s really great what you do here, apriciate it!
normally obj, as i dont have treestorm!
and just one more.how do you map the branches?can`t seem to get it right.I`m able to map leaves and trunk and thats about it.everything else goes wild
I normally copy the material from the trunk and just adjust the tiling till it fits
hi Peter,
some nice trees you have there !
I am struggeling with onyx right now. not that I can´t build decent trees, but I need really large ones (about 20m) and i don´t succeed in doing this in onyx.
All their presets are also very low trees (max. height about 7m)
when i try big values for the height, I even don´t get the trunk to be of reasonable width (max. value used )
Is this a problem of some english units transferred to meters, or am I doing something wrong here.
cheers
Michael
hello peter. trees look amazing. could you add some pictures of the settings in Onyx, perhaps large sugar mapel? for all of us it will be very useful. thank you
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