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[razgriz 53992]

Wow. That detail is amazing- if these are successfully integrated in a good LOD it will be stunning.

This project gets better and better. Will it be easy to apply this concept to all tree types, e.g the standard 2D trees being used now and more?

[angrypig]

How about movement of wind?
And what about other ground features? bushes grass and rocks? Also experimenting with this?

The wind will come later it is not priority now, this is just a generator tool build directly to engine. This generator can be used for bushes too, we will show some examples later when we finish tree rendering pipeline. The grass rendering needs a different approach and rocks is question for cameni.

[angrypig]

Cool! Since you've modeled each leaf separately, you can do your fractal magic and make autumn-colors version? Or slightly alter leaf colors like those pine trees? Or maybe even simulate shadowing and darken leaves inside?

We plan to develop procedural material system for leaves and bark that will be able to add irregularities and other effects like moss and etc. and a slight color toning to make leaves more unique.

Current implementation doesn't have shadows because I want to use lower LODs for shadow casting. Ambient occlusion is missing too there is only a darkening on branches that depends on density. Ambient occlusion is very important  for visual quality but currently there are more important parts that have to be finished first. I hope I will find some time for it soon.

[Michal]

Thanks for answer. Looking forward to next updates. It's going to be really impressive system.

[OGREMAN]

Fantastic... that is absolutely Brilliant AngryPig love it.... I know its not a finished version yet but even so its a great structure, classic deciduous tree model .... I suppose that the only non eye candy element comes from the absence of collars where the lower (thick) branches join, its these collars that blend the contours of one branch into another, just great tree form though .... I think that this model (5 branching points) would be capable of accurately replicating the characteristics of a wide range of tree species if you could easily selectively alter some of the parameters.
For example.... the model in the screenshots is a dead ringer for the ACER genus, but if you could have the angle of branching decreased to 10-30deg from the vertical and add approx 40-50% to branch length then (with the correct leaf shape) you have a "BETULA genus" or silver birch which is very common and would be perfect to compliment the lower slopes of the existing Outerra conifers.
Keep it going, sooo coool.

[Matt6767]

How about movement of wind?
And what about other ground features? bushes grass and rocks? Also experimenting with this?

The wind will come later it is not priority now, this is just a generator tool build directly to engine. This generator can be used for bushes too, we will show some examples later when we finish tree rendering pipeline. The grass rendering needs a different approach and rocks is question for cameni.

I look forward to seeing what the grass will look like.

[Jagerbomber]

My computer is scared of grass...

[ZeosPantera]

Fantastic... that is absolutely Brilliant AngryPig love it.... I know its not a finished version yet but even so its a great structure, classic deciduous tree model .... I suppose that the only non eye candy element comes from the absence of collars where the lower (thick) branches join, its these collars that blend the contours of one branch into another, just great tree form though .... I think that this model (5 branching points) would be capable of accurately replicating the characteristics of a wide range of tree species if you could easily selectively alter some of the parameters.
For example.... the model in the screenshots is a dead ringer for the ACER genus, but if you could have the angle of branching decreased to 10-30deg from the vertical and add approx 40-50% to branch length then (with the correct leaf shape) you have a "BETULA genus" or silver birch which is very common and would be perfect to compliment the lower slopes of the existing Outerra conifers.
Keep it going, sooo coool.

I know someone that must get excited come Arbor Day!

[Vicious713]

220K faces? Isn't that more polygons than Nathan Drake? *googles*

... ack, Nathan, one of the most detailed characters in games atm, is boasting only 37K polies.
 Lightning from FF13 is just about 30K.. Gears of wars characters are int he 20's..
Meanwhile, i think GT5 boasts 200K polies per car, and in Forza3, some cars hit 1 Million polies when in photomode, so i guess if systems from 2005 can handle that, then this tree shouldn't be a problem. But i'd like to mention that in GT5 you can have up to 16 cars on a track, and on Forza3 you can only have 8.

I guess i'm saying these trees are incredibly complex, i'm sure the engine can render them with the awesomeness that is Outerra's LOD, but how will something so abstract look from a distance?

We plan to develop procedural material system for leaves and bark that will be able to add irregularities and other effects like moss and etc. and a slight color toning to make leaves more unique.

Does this mean we can get multicolored trees?

[RaikoRaufoss]

Yes, please give us multicolored trees!  They'll give us a fresh splash of color.

[ZeosPantera]

the trees in OT are set currently to vary slightly in both color and size. Its just using one model.

[necro]

Mhh is it right that i cannot see any specularity on the leafs?

Unfortunately the branches are too linear, because of its procedural nature. But i know that there is no other chance for that without using 2*pow(10,10) unique treemodels, or increasing the level of iteration  ;)
Will you calculate each tree on the gpu? (the rendering of course, but i meant the calculationpart of each branch). I would guess that you are using recursive algorithms for that - i would. But as i know GPU-shader doesnt support recursive algorithms. So please tell me something about the techniques which you used.

[cameni]

Angrypig wrote that the shaders are just simple ones at the moment, so no specular.
The linearity of the branches comes from rendering simplification, it's not a shortcoming of procedural system. Slightly curved branches would require more polygons.

The calculation algorithm doesn't have to be recursive, in fact recursive algorithms wouldn't be optimal even if they were possible on GPU. You could run the algorithm on separate branch levels, so that the currently computed level becomes the source of data for the next one.

Not that we are computing the tree model on the GPU
That would be too much hassle for practically no gain. Only the resulting tree data are uploaded to GPU to be rendered.

[necro]

Thanks for the explanation.
I meant with shortcoming of procedural system, that a deeper iteration-level would result in more polygons - sorry for my bad expressions.


Btw. out of topic: It would be great if you would document your shader-work more. I'm very interested in this topic. And yeah i know - this would be very time-impressive so its just a please.

[angrypig]

LOD testing on branches...

-there is 400 trees in view
-24 automatically generated LODs per tree
-LOD0 has 15000 branches and LOD23 has 100 branches.