COLLAB2021 - If You Wanna Have Some Fun - NATURE FG

Thanks wardred  I felt the same. The reason I'm still looking into the alpha planes option is that it may possibly offer better performance given that the goal for the final environment is to run it in real time. But for this week's submission, I'm going with the leaf geometry option.

aartifact I don't know how much geometry you're going to save.  A simple hexagonal leave is only 6 verts, 8 if you have a couple running down the middle.

A square with a cross running down the middle is 9 verts.

It gets a little dicier if you're going for more complicated leaves, like maples, or adding depth to the leaf or the stem.

wardred I agree. The bushes themselves, even with modeled leaves, are unlikely to cause too much of a problem with performance. Still, given the real-time aim of the project, I feel it necessary to explore every option I can get to make the asset as performant as possible in Eevee.

This is what I've ended up with. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the look and feel of the bushes at this block out stage. 

And quick rendered with basic materials:

danitufi Great work on the FG tree.

The leaves. . . it looks like your clumps are a single image with transparency.  That's a cool approach.  Mostly I've been messing around with individual leaves, and that creates. . . an abundance of vertexes.

I realy love the bushes!!

 I think it will look great on trees as well, how optimzed is it?

would you mind sharing the proccess?

Thanks danitufi 

No, I don't mind sharing the process at all. I tried to optimize the base geometry I used to distribute the leaves as much as possible, and I managed to get that down to 170 faces.

To get the rough shape of the bushes, I started with metaballs. Once I had the shape I liked, I used the Remesh modifier to get an all quad mesh with roughly even quads. Next I decimated it with the Decimate modifier to lower the polygon count while retaining the overall shape and form. Then to get that to an even lower vertex count, I made a quick retopology manually using a combination of vertex snapping and the shrinkwrap modifier.

The leaf/twig model too is quite simple. I just needed a "good enough" leaf profile for this block-out.

It looks like this from top-view:

Then all that was left to do was use a very basic GN node setup to distribute the leaves over the base geometry:

Thanks, I will defently give it a try!!!

Your welcome, mate!

Geometry Nodes sound great, I will need to experiment with this technique. I will upload the offending .blend file for you to play with. It is a strange thing, but I found adding the particle system while still in edit mode had better results.

I'm using same method for my MG bushes, just instead of modelling leaves I use transparent PNG , with green dots and round cube for the base. Today Ill try Your way @artifact. and Ill model some leaves :) This join geometry node at the end is not necessary. Good job with Bushes, I like how they look:)

Thanks, spikeyxxx I will send over the link to the file. It is a strange phenomenon to be sure. I think I have a workaround for the issue and was able to grow leaves on the branches finally.

https://we.tl/t-hjoB7oJwu8

Thanks dyoc ! Seems I forgot to remove that join geometry node I got the leaf distribution I liked. My bad!

ullreym I can't get it to crash Blender:

Tried without and with the Vertex Group, Adding the Particle System in Edit and Object Mode... all worked fine.

I think it was Ingmar, who also had crashes...when selecting things with LCS....

I am using a 9 year old Linux machine....

But the Particle System is quite old and maybe it's a system or OS related bug...( I guess your drivers are up to date?)

Maybe try Geometry Nodes, as it way easier to control and randomize the leaves there.

But if you've got a workaround...

aartifact Really nice. This looks so good. How lowpoly is it? i have 2500 verts per bush.

I did a similar leaf setup, but instead of geometry i use a handpained leaf texture with alphamask.

Your shader looks aready good too.

Thanks benkroft  It's quite low poly: the leaf/twig geometry has 224 verts and the base geometry for distributing the leaves has 189 verts.  Like you, I also looked into using alpha mapped planes, and I'm still researching that technique incase it proves to provide better performance in Eevee. The leaf shader is a really simple setup I used to visualize the bush at render time:

Check out my WIP thread for an extremely light solution for bushes. You probably can use more polys than I can though.

Thanks for giving it a try. It was a frustrating experience to be certain. I’m using the 2013 Mac Pro that looks a bit like a rubbish bin you’d find in the Death Star. The OS is up to date, but some of the graphics hardware stopped working with Blender 2.8. 

I will certainly look into the Geometry Nodes. 😃

Hi everyone,

I'm super late to the party due to some internet trouble. I signed up for some flowers, will catch up this week. I was wondering if any choice has been made as to location and season of the setting? I would like to model flowers that would actually bloom in the specific place and time of year.