Need help with low poly tree models

[Galileo]

I am looking for a kind person with some experience in making some simple low poly tree models (.mu i think is the format i need them in). i need them for these textures.

https://imgur.com/a/84QJW

I don't have any experience with blender or part tools and i have failed miserably and I'm now at the point of outsourcing for help.

Of course, when i implement these into something I'm working on you will get full credit for the work.

hope to hear back from someone soon

Im no stranger to hitting the donate button if you need more incentive.

thanks!

 

 

Edited December 7, 2016 by Galileo

[Shadowmage]

For 'high' poly trees, there is a blender plugin -- https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Curve/Sapling_Tree  Uses some interesting algorithms to grow organic-shapes based on input parameters.  Can get some very nicely detailed stuff out of it.  Never did manage to get those models working in a game setup very well; most were too high poly for the uses I had in mind... but they did look nice.  (Few other blender plugins exist for tree creation as well, but most are also higher-poly solutions)

However as you were inquiring about 'low poly' trees -- have you tried simple billboarded quads with the texture mapped directly to the quad with transparency enabled?  (super old-school, and would need plugin handling to do the billboard rotation; not a direct drop in of the .mu file) 

The next step from that is to not use billboards, but use two quads in a X shape (or three or more in a star pattern) (like crops in minecraft).  Next up from that is creating an actual three-dimensional trunk, but using simple quads w/alpha for the branches and leaves (I think this is how the stock tree scatter does it, but haven't looked recently).  Either of these methods should work fine when compiled into a .mu model file.

Are those textures you linked the -final- textures you are wanting to apply (as those are intended for flat quads), or are they renders of someone elses' tree meshes using the textures?  If it is the former (what is shown is what is available to be used), I would highly suggest using the crossed-quads method above; simple to implement, and a single model could be turned into different trees merely by swapping the texture (and perhaps applying some vertical scaling).

[Galileo]

59 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

For 'high' poly trees, there is a blender plugin -- https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Curve/Sapling_Tree  Uses some interesting algorithms to grow organic-shapes based on input parameters.  Can get some very nicely detailed stuff out of it.  Never did manage to get those models working in a game setup very well; most were too high poly for the uses I had in mind... but they did look nice.  (Few other blender plugins exist for tree creation as well, but most are also higher-poly solutions)

However as you were inquiring about 'low poly' trees -- have you tried simple billboarded quads with the texture mapped directly to the quad with transparency enabled?  (super old-school, and would need plugin handling to do the billboard rotation; not a direct drop in of the .mu file) 

The next step from that is to not use billboards, but use two quads in a X shape (or three or more in a star pattern) (like crops in minecraft).  Next up from that is creating an actual three-dimensional trunk, but using simple quads w/alpha for the branches and leaves (I think this is how the stock tree scatter does it, but haven't looked recently).  Either of these methods should work fine when compiled into a .mu model file.

Are those textures you linked the -final- textures you are wanting to apply (as those are intended for flat quads), or are they renders of someone elses' tree meshes using the textures?  If it is the former (what is shown is what is available to be used), I would highly suggest using the crossed-quads method above; simple to implement, and a single model could be turned into different trees merely by swapping the texture (and perhaps applying some vertical scaling).

Those are the textures I want to use and my goal was to make 3quads into a star shape but I cannot figure out blender or the part tools thing. I figured it would be simple but I could find a decent tutorial and I don't have the time to figure it out by playing around atm due to school, work and kids.  I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually but at this time I would rather pay for someones time and effort

[Shadowmage]

Ahh, that shouldn't be too hard to put together for someone familiar with blender + part tools.  No guarantees, but I'll see what I can do about putting together some simple models for you using those textures and 3x quads each (or 6 quads, as you probably want them double-sided and viewable from either direction). 

Any particular size/scale you are looking for in the base model?  The textures are 3w:4h ratio, so a 3m x 4m quad would fit the textures appropriately, or even 0.75m x 1m might be easier to use, can rescale in-game to desired final size)

(I'm one of those modders who does.. everything.. coding, models, art... and sometimes I don't take into account that others are often more specialized)

[Galileo]

3 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Ahh, that shouldn't be too hard to put together for someone familiar with blender + part tools.  No guarantees, but I'll see what I can do about putting together some simple models for you using those textures and 3x quads each (or 6 quads, as you probably want them double-sided and viewable from either direction). 

Any particular size/scale you are looking for in the base model?  The textures are 3w:4h ratio, so a 3m x 4m quad would fit the textures appropriately, or even 0.75m x 1m might be easier to use, can rescale in-game to desired final size)

(I'm one of those modders who does.. everything.. coding, models, art... and sometimes I don't take into account that others are often more specialized)

Oh thanks so much for the help!  

Yeah I'm pretty basic when it comes to modding.  I can do 2d textures all day..  I just haven't needed to learn blender or anything like that in my endeavors.  I plan to during my holiday break from school in a few weeks. 

[Galileo]

0.75m x 1m is fine.  I can rescale them in game like you said

Edited December 7, 2016 by Galileo

[Shadowmage]

Using 3 quads/planes each (6 when you count the back-sides), they don't look too bad at all.

Working on moving them through PartTools right now.  Textures and models will be named, imaginatively, 'Tree1', 'Tree2', etc (as the names of the textures as downloaded through Imgur are random strings of letters/numbers).  Will put together a zip file (including the .blend) with all of the assets as soon as it is done, and likely upload it to dropbox for you.  Will release the models as 'public domain' unless you specifically request otherwise; texture licensing is a detail you will have to figure out

Give me 30 mins to an hour and I should have it all packed up for you.

[Galileo]

32 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Using 3 quads/planes each (6 when you count the back-sides), they don't look too bad at all.

Working on moving them through PartTools right now.  Textures and models will be named, imaginatively, 'Tree1', 'Tree2', etc (as the names of the textures as downloaded through Imgur are random strings of letters/numbers).  Will put together a zip file (including the .blend) with all of the assets as soon as it is done, and likely upload it to dropbox for you.  Will release the models as 'public domain' unless you specifically request otherwise; texture licensing is a detail you will have to figure out

Give me 30 mins to an hour and I should have it all packed up for you.

those are fantastic! yeah when i finish what im working on everything will be public domain as well so that works perfectly.

How difficult would it be to make a mesh that makes a small plot of trees? like this:
 

Spoiler

Not nearly as big... maybe enough for like 15-20 trees.. if its too hard don't bother. Either way, link a donation page and ill make sure to show my appreciation 

 

Edited December 8, 2016 by Galileo

[Shadowmage]

Trees package is now available:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/phka781tijj6bd0/Trees.zip?dl=0

Includes one .blend file, one Tree.fbx file, 5 texture files, and one .mu file for each tree with textures preassigned.  Tree origin is at the base of the trunk, with Unity Y+ pointing upwards.  They currently do not have any colliders; I wasn't sure of your intended use and is easy enough to add simple box/capsule colliders through plugin code when you are placing and scaling the models -- let me know if you do need them though, I could easily add some colliders and re-export the models if needed.

Have included a brief license releasing the model assets into public domain; do with them whatever you would like, no attribution or anything else is needed.

I do have a donate button located at the bottom of the SSTU thread OP ( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117090-sstulabs-low-part-count-solutions-orbiter-landers-lifters-dev-thread-01-30-16/ ), but I'm not expecting anything.  Glad to help out your modding efforts if I can

 

Grove of trees -- would be fairly easy if you can give a distribution plot (x,y coordinates of each tree in the grove).  I'm terrible at arranging things while keeping them 'randomly placed' looking; they all end up looking hand-crafted and too organized no matter what I do.  As with the single tree, the same base mesh could be re-used for each texture.

But, if you can plot the coordinates/offsets, you might as well do the distribution and clustering through plugin code (clone the same model, place it multiple times; I believe you can even 'combine' meshes in plugin code) -- the resultant game objects vs. a single mesh would have about the same performance impact due to Unity's batching (or should, in theory).  Slightly more complex code, but keeps the assets to a minimum.  If you want to go that route and need help on the code end of things, please let me know.

[Galileo]

14 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Trees package is now available:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/phka781tijj6bd0/Trees.zip?dl=0

Includes one .blend file, one Tree.fbx file, 5 texture files, and one .mu file for each tree with textures preassigned.  Tree origin is at the base of the trunk, with Unity Y+ pointing upwards.  They currently do not have any colliders; I wasn't sure of your intended use and is easy enough to add simple box/capsule colliders through plugin code when you are placing and scaling the models -- let me know if you do need them though, I could easily add some colliders and re-export the models if needed.

Have included a brief license releasing the model assets into public domain; do with them whatever you would like, no attribution or anything else is needed.

I do have a donate button located at the bottom of the SSTU thread OP ( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/117090-sstulabs-low-part-count-solutions-orbiter-landers-lifters-dev-thread-01-30-16/ ), but I'm not expecting anything.  Glad to help out your modding efforts if I can

 

Grove of trees -- would be fairly easy if you can give a distribution plot (x,y coordinates of each tree in the grove).  I'm terrible at arranging things while keeping them 'randomly placed' looking; they all end up looking hand-crafted and too organized no matter what I do.  As with the single tree, the same base mesh could be re-used for each texture.

But, if you can plot the coordinates/offsets, you might as well do the distribution and clustering through plugin code (clone the same model, place it multiple times; I believe you can even 'combine' meshes in plugin code) -- the resultant game objects vs. a single mesh would have about the same performance impact due to Unity's batching (or should, in theory).  Slightly more complex code, but keeps the assets to a minimum.  If you want to go that route and need help on the code end of things, please let me know.

Well im just terrible at coding as well.. Im a graphic designer designer irl and only really recently started learning how to make a ball rolling game in unity lol other than the really simple stuff, im kind of useless.. I would love to go the direction of a plugin however, i don't want to burden you.. But if you decided to go forward with it, i would be happy to fund the work  
i hope you like coffee

a donation has been made.. thanks for helping out

Edited December 8, 2016 by Galileo

[Shadowmage]

I'll take a look at doing some tree-grove models.  I realized that while I'm not good at hand placement, I can certainly throw together a couple different randomization methods to do the work for me.  I even have a bunch of perlin, simplex, guassian, brownian, etc. generators around from old games and mods I was working on.  Would mostly be a matter of setting up some input parameters (after I find the code, its been awhile...).  Depending on what you are looking for it might even be much simpler.

A few bits of info that would help out:

• How many trees in a group (15-20?)
• What kind dimensions/bounds for the group(s) at default scale (5m^2 for 15-20 trees?).  I can probably run a few tests to see what looks good for a given # of trees.
• Do the groups need to be tile-able
• Clumped towards the middle, or randomly distributed throughout the bounds
• Single or mixed tree type(s).  Mixed requires multiple game-objects (one for each material/texture), but can still put them in a single .mu model.

Probably wouldn't be able to get to work on it much until the weekend, but that would give time to help clear up the details, and time for me to find my old code if needed.  From there it should mostly be plugging some scripts into Unity Editor to duplicate and combine some meshes from the randomization data, and exporting new models from those meshes.

[Galileo]

The scale sounds good. 15-20 trees is also good.  

Having them more toward the center of the bounds would be ideal I think.

the mixed trees would be good if you keep the pine trees together as one option and the palm trees as another as they don't mix typically. I don't know what to do with the oak tree  

You may also want to look at how kerbal konstructs allows you to add statics. That's how I was adding the trees but if your plugin allows to "paint" trees into the game, that would be way more efficient 

 

 

[Shadowmage]

Yeah, I probably wont' be doing any custom plugin work for this; I was under the impression you were already using a custom plugin to place the models, where it would be pretty easy to add some additional code for random distribution.  But as I am unfamiliar with how KSP deals with terrain (or anything other than parts and vessels), it would probably take me a few days/weeks to get up to speed with that end of the KSP code before I could even get anything working.

Pre-built models though are certainly an option, one that should work with the KK method of placing them.  Will put together a few of them for you over the weekend with various layouts and tree combinations, and you can see if they will work out for you.
 

(Sorry for not responding sooner, has been a week of hell at work this week, and I've barely had time to do much of anything not work-related)

[Galileo]

41 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Yeah, I probably wont' be doing any custom plugin work for this; I was under the impression you were already using a custom plugin to place the models, where it would be pretty easy to add some additional code for random distribution.  But as I am unfamiliar with how KSP deals with terrain (or anything other than parts and vessels), it would probably take me a few days/weeks to get up to speed with that end of the KSP code before I could even get anything working.

Pre-built models though are certainly an option, one that should work with the KK method of placing them.  Will put together a few of them for you over the weekend with various layouts and tree combinations, and you can see if they will work out for you.
 

(Sorry for not responding sooner, has been a week of hell at work this week, and I've barely had time to do much of anything not work-related)

Oh lol it's all good!  Yeah I'm in the same boat with work and school, while trying to juggle a marriage and a three-year-old so I don't have a lot of time to do much at the moment either. Don't feel obligated to do anything over the weekend. I'm not holding you to anything but thank you again for your time and help! 

[Shadowmage]

Sorry I wasn't able to get to these over the weekend; got sucked into balance updates and bugfixing for my other mods.

Should hopefully have a bit of time during the week to put together a few tree clusters for you.  Will try to put together some example renders first to make sure they are what you are looking for.

[Galileo]

3 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Sorry I wasn't able to get to these over the weekend; got sucked into balance updates and bugfixing for my other mods.

Should hopefully have a bit of time during the week to put together a few tree clusters for you.  Will try to put together some example renders first to make sure they are what you are looking for.

take your time. no rush here!

[Shadowmage]

Pack with a few tree grove models in it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qo25nzb0r5ejrhs/TreeGroves.zip?dl=0

Hopefully they are about what you are looking for.  Would love to see what you are using these for when its done

 

(sample of one of the tree groups)

[InsaneDruid]

You can get an better result with some custom normals on these trees. Currently, the different "cardboard pieces" all get lit like a pile of cardboard. If you surround the treetop with a sphere or a stretched sphere on the more prolonged trees, and  project the normals of these spheres onto the tree model, you get a much more uniform and  natural lighting (lighter on top, darker towards the underside of the treetop etc.

Some images: first, two of the trees as they are: you can see that one part is brighter than the other, creating an artificial and vertically split look with a very bright stem even directly under the treetop in the shadow.

now, with custom normals: more voluminal looking, with brightness gradient from top to bottom.

 

and the quick n dirty setup I used: (you can see the modifier settings on the other screens)

You can read more about it here:

http://blendernpr.org/lets-talk-about-normals/

 

[msnbcorp]

On 20/12/2016 at 10:31 PM, InsaneDruid said:

You can get an better result with some custom normals on these trees. Currently, the different "cardboard pieces" all get lit like a pile of cardboard. If you surround the treetop with a sphere or a stretched sphere on the more prolonged trees, and  project the normals of these spheres onto the tree model, you get a much more uniform and  natural lighting (lighter on top, darker towards the underside of the treetop etc.

Some images: first, two of the trees as they are: you can see that one part is brighter than the other, creating an artificial and vertically split look with a very bright stem even directly under the treetop in the shadow.

now, with custom normals: more voluminal looking, with brightness gradient from top to bottom.

 

and the quick n dirty setup I used: (you can see the modifier settings on the other screens)

You can read more about it here:

http://blendernpr.org/lets-talk-about-normals/

 

Hi !

I was just searching for low poly tree for some experiment when i run out into this post.

Does these works exist yet on the internet ? I would be grateful if i could use this

[BlackEyedPhantom]

Can't I create these trees whit Paint 3D? And in whitch folder can i find them?

Edited December 30, 2017 by BlackEyedPhantom