Regeneration time with lots of 3d trees

[Tom Krowka]

I have a client who wants to see the house on his lot, which has quite a few trees. Regeneration time, even in the 3d window is quite a while. It's slowing the whole program down, even when not in the 3d window.

Is there any way to make a tree a single entity, instead of hundreds of pieces, in order to speed up the process? Or any other way to beat the system?

[Karl Ottenstein]

If by "see" you mean via renderings or animations, then consider the bitmap trees in the standard libary: a single polygon per tree, rather than hundreds, but with a standard 2D symbol. When rendering, or rebuilding the 3D view, they will turn to face the camera. Being a flat billboard, they will cast odd shadows if the sun isn't hitting them at an appropriate angle.

In OpenGL you will see the tree .. but also the full rectangle around it, since the masking only happens during a render. So, not good for a 3D window dynamic walkthrough.

Next step up is the (free - gdlcentral) Gardenworks trees. There are some bitmapped trees that are merely 2 polygons: two perpendicular intersecting planes, so that the trees cast better shadows than the above and look "OK" as you move around.

Next step up from that is the ArchiBAM trees in the same Gardenworks library - elements of the trees are 3D geometry, such as the trunk and branches, and the folliage is bitmapped onto rectangles scattered here and there off the branches. Better shadows, better looking in animations and VR, but still cheaper than geometric folliage (which doesn't look as good anyway unless modeled to a degree so fine that the 3D would take forever).

IMHO

Karl

[Anonymous]

Another thought, which I saw as a tip somewhere.....

Setup your view where you want it....turn off everything but your landscaping and trees....render the scence and save it. Then turn on your model only minus the greenery and render it again.....

Then use a program like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro and put them together...

I like to keep something in each model as a reference point though, such as a slab or a post so I get it in the right place....

Of course this only works with stills....Better take a vacation if you do a walkthrough or 3D object.....

Oh, speaking of 3D object....did one, with trees, and it was great, took a whole weekend to do it....client loved to play with it...

[Aussie John]

You didnt ny say you wante to do a flyaround so you can always take a photo of the site and place rendering into it.

[Karl Ottenstein]

MPatrick wrote:
Another thought, which I saw as a tip somewhere.....

Setup your view where you want it....turn off everything but your landscaping and trees....render the scence and save it. Then turn on your model only minus the greenery and render it again...

This was Link's tip (a tip of the month, actually) ... but it only works for trees in the background. Foreground landscaping still has to be rendered. Even if it can be added in Photoshop, the shadows may well be needed on the site and structure.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Okay Karl, forgot about shadows......sheesh....

But yeah, that was the tip....