1. The Ecosystem in Infinite is a wonderful addition, but I am disappointed in the Vue Infinite Trees. Close up they look awful. I am using the Demo and I only see the small spruce and was wondering if the full version includes a tall mature spruce that looks good close up (5 to 10 feet away). 2. Has anyone had any success using a detailed tree (X-Frog etc,) in the ecosystem? Will using an X-Frog tree in an Ecosystem bring Vue to it's knees? I want a tree look good close up and still work with the ecosystem. Am I asking too much? If anyone has used an X-Frog mature spruce/pine in an Ecosystem I would appreciate if you could post examples. Please show the tree closeup and far. Thanks

You should go to the Vue gallery and check out some of the landscapes there. (you can sort by genre) Quite a few of us use both Vue vegetation and XFrog trees in our landscapes. That should give you a pretty good idea. XFrog trees do tend to be "heavy", but you can save them as vob (Vue objects) and then populate your ecosystems with them. As far as the Vue vegetation is concerned, you can change the bark and leaf materials, and in the plant editor you can do a lot of editing to the plant shapes as well as increase the resolution, so they can actually look a lot better up close than it seems at first.

I have a pic in my gallery called a "cabins view", there are 34,000+ Xfrog pines in that scene. No crashes etc. Worked like a charm :)

I would like to add that it is not the cleverest idea to use the same high detailed models for close-ups and backgrounds. A waste of resources. I always prefer to have low res models for background (and mass) use and high res ones for close-ups. The mixture is the way to go!

Yep I agree, the Ecosystem is pretty much designed for medium to distant detail, and if used as such is incredibly powerful and effective. The high detailed models are fine for foreground use, but not really for distant use.

Message edited on: 09/23/2005 04:59

Wabe, Yes I agree with you. Distant = Alpha Planes or Ecosytem Close = X-Frog or Detailed Vue Trees I have posted a couple of examples where the trees are good in the distance and not so good close up.

This looks like leaf maps and transparencies aren't applied correctly. This image is ecosystem of modified Vue trees with new leaf and bark mats, available soon at C3D: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1005840&Start=19&Artist=Djeser&ByArtist=Yes This is ecosystem of XFrog trees: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=992655&Start=19&Artist=Djeser&ByArtist=Yes I think the Vue trees look great with the modified mats.

Djeser, Your examples are great. I like the X-Frog Example. You said: "This looks like leaf maps and transparencies aren't applied correctly." I just used the default tree in the infinite ecosystem, I didn;t touch the leaf map and transparencies. Could it be it is because I am using the Demo?

That's possible. The demo might have problems with large mapped images. You might want to take your leaf maps into Photoshop or whatever 2d proggie you use, and turn them into smaller jpgs, color and alpha separately, and then try those in the demo. This issues is fixed in the latest release of Infinite.