A quick request for some sagely advice from Vue users at Renderosity... I am looking at producing a reconstruction of a large landscape which is potentially heavily forested. I would like to use Vue for the task, but am also considering 3ds MAX with SpeedTree. How well does Vue handle huge numbers of trees? I have done some smaller models with, say, 50 trees, which were imported .obj files from XFrog, which were about 125K polys each. It virtually brought Vue to its knees, but gave impressive results. The trees needed to be quite detailed as the animation moved past most of them. Are trees created in Vue 4 Pro's plant generator much more efficient? Is there a way of making billboarded trees turn to face the camera (one of the attractions of SpeedTree)? Any advice would be warmly received :-)

What I can say is that Vue trees are much lighter than imported .obj files from X-Frog. also in Vue4Pro they can be edited and you can create some new species. They respond automatically to wind and breeze (customizable) Vue handles much better large amounts of its own trees compared to same number of imported ones.. hope that helps a little :)

Thanks for that Polax, I have a copy of Vue 4, but am looking at getting Vue 4 Pro, or Vue 5 Infinite if it's released early in January. How well does it handle hundreds of trees? I opened a standard tree (fir) and created 300 copies, and it coped well, but the landscape seemed quite barren still - and with a terrain it was 4.2million polys. I'm not sure if it would handle much more! Not sure if Vue is good for dense forestry...

Pro doesn't handle large numbers of trees (especially Xfrog) any better than Vue4 did. One way to get around this especially in large expansive scenes is to create alpha planes of trees to use in the far background. Technique works very well.

It can handle huge amounts of its own trees without problem and with native terrains/trees you can easily go over 100 million polys.. only, because of large amount of foliage to draw on screen, it is an absolute necessity in such cases to use layers and hide them once they are finished).. (not from render but from seeing them in ortho/main views) Of course, next release will certainly have more powerful features and you might want to compute the different advantages sidegrades/upgrades.. also the ratio price/power.. might be decisive in your choice

Thanks for the tip Polax! I've successfully created about 2000 trees and a terrain which Vue 4 reckoned to be about 250million polys (2.5Ghz P4, 1Gb RAM)! It's just a test at this stage, and looks pretty rubbish because I haven't varied the positions of the trees etc, just proof of concept. Looks like Vue is the way to go (considering the SpeedTree addon to my copy of MAX is of similar price as Vue 4 Pro now it's reduced). Probably best to get Pro and upgrade if I need to. Cheers for the tips - when the project is underway I'll post some images on the forum.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/tut.ez?Form.ViewPages=99

Are you trying to do an animation or still image ? If you are working on a still image, check out Thomas Krhan's tutorial for making very large forests with layers of alpha planes. It is a reference in forest making.

wessexarch wrote: Is there a way of making billboarded trees turn to face the camera (one of the attractions of SpeedTree)? Mark replied: I think you can do this by setting a plane to track the camera. Create an alpha plane and map it with your tree. With the plane selected click on the Animation tab of the Object Properties Panel on the right and select Track and set it to the Main Camera from the list. You can also reduce the number of polygons in a plant in Vue 4 Pro so if you have any that don't come close to the camera you can save a few polygons.

impish - it does have to be an animation - but I had no idea you could track an alpha plane to a camera - an excellent tip - thanks! And agiel - thanks for the tutorial link...

Render out some trees, then make 2D billboards out of them, than replicate to your heart's desire :) (this Lightwave scene has 108,000 trees in, ignore the ocean pic its all 1 picture)

Only the trees closest need be "real"

Message edited on: 12/24/2004 13:15

Does anyone else find that Vue4Pro doesn't handle billboards (alpha planes) very well? I have tried creating 1000 alpha planes scattered aross a terrain and it seems rather unhappy to say the least. Anyone been able to put 1000s of alpha planes in with no trouble? Cheers, Tom