[Released!] Custom tree importer

Benefits
Import manually modeled trees from Maya, 3ds Max, Modo or Blender and let them get adjusted to be compatible with unity’s advanced tree creator shaders and wind zones “automatically”.
Benefit from bark and leafs casting and receiving real time shadows, translucency and specular lighting and add your trees using the terrain engine or place them as independent game objects.

Limits
Please do not expect the custom tree importer to simply make any tree just work: You will have to spend some time tweaking your model.
First and foremost the custom tree importer needs trees to be imported as nested, hierarchical objects – like shown in the screen shoot attached.
You should be quite familiar with your 3d app and do have a basic understanding of the tree creator and things like “main wind“, “main turbulence” and “edge turbulence”.

Watch a simple demo
Get it from the asset store

The custom tree importer script works as asset postprocessor. It combines all submeshes into one and adds the needed vertex colors and uv2.
Bending is fully controllable on each level of the tree.

Hierarchical setup of the tree
In order to be able to calculate main wind and main turbulence for the trunk, the branches and leaf planes the importer script has to know about the different parts of the tree and their origins.
For this reason you will have to provide trees as nested, hierarchical objects like shown below.



Adjust bending
Adjust bending on each level of your tree using control tags which would let you specify its reaction to: main wind, main turbulence and edge turbulence.

Advanced rendering
Trees imported using the custom tree importer are fully compatible with the built in tree creator shaders and also any tree shader based on those like he AFS tree and billboard shaders, Skyshop or Lux.



lars

 

As always Lars you are awesome. Cannot wait to try this out. For complex leaf meshes can the edge fluttering be handled in the 3d programs?

 

well, to be honest: edge fluttering should be applied in your 3d app. the script simply copies vertex color green to the final mesh...

lars

 

Cool. One more question. For now. Will this script be able to place AO in the trees without editing the alpha vertex colors in a 3d app?

 

you will be able to bake ao within unity using a free script.

 

Awesome. Thanks Lars. Looking forward to it.

 

This is looking mighty!

 

heres a tree i made to test your script with
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19865679/tree1.unitypackage


instant buy for me, what will be the price lars?

 

Now this is game changer.......awesome as always lars

 

wo

holy S***! without having read the documentation your tree nearly fits the needs of the script.
i only had to rename the materials and it just worked!
i also added some control tags to add some variation in bending and quickly set up the needed textures: 5 min of work and your tree looked like shown in the webplayer attached:

http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...sertree/treeimporter_simpledemo_usertree.html

one might fine adjust the pivots of the single parts of the tree to make bending more accurate or add edge fluttering to the leaves but overall it is a nice result.

as far as the price is concerned: i am not really sure about it.
this is a very special script. most people will most likely stick with the built in tree creator trees or switch to speedtree when unity 5 is out. so it is only for people you really now what they do and want to keep their workflow using the 3d app of their choice to create trees. for this reason the number of potential clients is not very large and i think about charging $25 – 35. compared to other packages this might be rather expensive – but as i have written before: this script is very special and i do not expect any hobbyist to go for this asset but more or less only pro users who have a special artwork they want to get to work with unity. what do you think?

lars

 

well, let’s have a look at speedtree and unity 5 first ;-)

 

True, but well mostly i prefer working in 3d apps if it's possible

 

I think it's great, those with speedtree subs in U4 could get them into max and prepare the trees with this - even when speedtree comes to unity, if speedtree is using its own system and you want to keep working with wind zones, you can convert with a lil bit of work in a modeller, as well as possibly being able to repaint verts on the tree to suit you and that being quite controllable with Lars' work. I'd love to see what Lars' AFS could do with converted speedtree models when the IBL is compatible with both Lux and Skyshop off the bat.

I'm going to finish prepping Shader And Renderer Test Module Jr (Intending this to be something I test stuff like Lux out on amongst others) and then i'll try get a speedtree effort converted, since i've already chosen the tree and all

 

im glad it worked , im thinking not more then 30 euros, i had been looking for something like this just a week ago, and now u posted this i actually prefer making trees in a other app than unity, gives me much more control, cant wait for the release, u can use the tree i posted in your demoscene if u want lars

 

thanks mister d,
your tree will probably be a big help for people getting started if i include it in the package.
and $35 would be less than 30 € ...

lars

 

working on some trees to test the script with

 

That looks really nice! Never got the hang of modelling trees so hats off to you

 

Really awesome job Mister D. Looking forward to seeing them sway in the wind.

 

tnx, ive finished the small testscene for lars, now its up to the scripts to make the trees move

 

I really like that, i think i'll have a go myself, but give the tree rendering a go inside the new Jove

 

its not that difficult really, i used sweep splines alot so i got a clean vertical tilling uv map for the branches and for the leafclusters i used a single texture with 3 leaves variations in it. good luck

 

I'd never actually thought of that method for modelling the trunk and branches, yet it makes complete sense! Thanks for that! I was going to use a Speedtree example but maybe i'll have a shot at modelling a tree tonight, very much appreciated

Even if I give in and use a Speedtree example for this just for quick and easy, you just pointed me very much in the right direction. Which app is this in? I'm wondering if I could use particle flow in max to place twigs and leaves onto an authored trunk and branch arrangement

 

i made it in cinema4d so i dont know if u could do a sweep spline function in 3dsmax but there should be a similar function i guess

 

I'm imagining a sweep spline is a meshed spline with a controllable profile (like a lathe along a spline), im sure max has something like that. Actually i could try and be audacious and make it in-unity with Megashapes and some codey stuff to generate twig/leaf groups assuming the megashapes api has some relevant functions. Thats quite a neat possible project, cheers for the inspiration!

 

hi there,
i am not sure how i managed to corrupt the atmosphere but at least the trees bend in the wind.
here is a webplayer of mister d’s scene:

Webplayer

well, one could spend some more time on fine tuning the bending...

lars

 

I suppose it could do with fine tuning as to wind influence but it demonstrates your script working perfectly, great stuff

I'm trying to do too many things at once today but if i can fit in some tentative megashapes + vpaint + your script based experiments i will, sometime soon, seeing how your work translates to Jove will be nice too although there's no reason it wouldnt work, just showing people something is nice

 

looks cool lars! its probably cause i used some image effects on it

 

hi there,
image effects! of course...

and btw: if you model the leaf plane geometry you should rather think of triangles than of quads and model the geometry pretty tightly to your texture. otherwise you would waste a lot of fillrate.
even if it would mean adding some more vertices it is still worth doing so as fillrate will most likely become the bottleneck and not the vertex count.
but tris might even lower the vertex count as shown below.

lars

 

interesting ... ill make another one then(better leaf textures was allready on my list), is there more i need to consider?

 

apart from what you have already done:
- trees must be separated from the scene and saved as single file.
- the bark material should contain "bark" somewhere in its name, the leaf material "leaf".
- you should prepare the needed textures (albedo, normal, gloss, (translucency)).
- take care about the pivots.
- add vertex color green = something like 0.1 at the outer edges of the leaf planes to get edge fluttering.

lars

 

i understand most except the last, u mean i should give the leaves an outline like attached image?
edit
oh i think i understand , i need to paint vertex colors on the leaf meshes

 

yes, you should vertex colors. but i am not sure if cinema 4d supports vertex color painting by now. at least it used to do not...
blender, modo or maya however do.

lars

 

ive improved the textures, most of them r now handpainted
download the scene here https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19865679/treeunity.unitypackage

 

any ETA on release lars?

 

well, i have sent it to the asset store one week ago…

 

Cool. Cannot wait to try it out.

 

yeahh!
the custom tree importer has been accepted by the asset store.
get it here:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/21079

lars

 

hi there,

i have just updated the webplayer demo:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u...orter_simpledemo/treeimporter_simpledemo.html

it now includes three different custom made trees.

lars

 

Hei Lars,

But with this asset it is not necessary paint wind vertex color?
I suggest you to create a video tutorial also to boost sales

Thanks

 

some more custom trees

 

hey mister d,
wow! tose look nice.
but what’s about a webplayer to see them in action?

lars

 

sorry for my late reply – but i did not get any notification...
nevertheless, here we go.

using the custom tree importer primary and secondary bending will be added by script and can be controlled by user on each single level of the tree using "bending tags" – which are simply added to the name of the geometry like:
- trunk
- - branch_xt20
- - - leafplane
- - branch_xt15_xp08

you see e.g. "_xt20"? that will set the turbulence of that branch and all its child nodes to 2.0.
next branch only uses a turbulence of 1.8 but changes its phase to 1.5

however edge fluttering or edge bending is still controlled using vertex color which have to be set up by the user.
but that is pretty simple as you usually only add some vertex color green = 0.1 – 0.5 to the outer vertices of your leaf planes.

if you know how to bake ambient occlusion to vertex color alpha you can import it. otherwise the package ships with a free script that will add to the final mesh.

lars

 

tnx lars but im waiting for paypal transfer to be complete to buy your package, once i ve got it and i have enough trees and plants ill make a webplayer to walk around

 

This script is really amazing. When I get all my trees ready I am going to put a webplayer here.

Thanks Lars

 

hi lars im getting a warning in the editor "The tree treesmall1_afsTREE must use the Nature/Soft Occlusion shader. Otherwise billboarding/lighting will not work correctly." other than that its working perfectly

 

made a webplayer with some trees i got working with the script, mouse to look around wasd to move and space to jump

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19865679/Public.html (23mb)

 

Really beautiful scene Mister D. The trees are bending very nicely.

 

very nice scene mr d!
but when it comes to trees i think it is essential to add more variation in phase ("_xp") to the different branches of the first level. now they all sway at exact the same frequency, don’t they?

lars

 

tnx, yup it was just a quick import,i didnt do the naming part yet

 

oh, i see ;-).
btw: the leaf planes on the picture you have attached look pretty nice!