Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

A place to show off your latest screenshots and for people to comment on them. Only start a new thread here if you have some nice images to show off!
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

@Crashy - That's for the article link as I do find it interesting. I have normals being calculated, but it's not all correct yet, so this is good to read. Once I get some more features implemented on creating the mesh itself, lighting is next on my list. :wink: I'm planning on adding in light controls where you'll be able to drag light sources around in the editor to see how things are lit and for shadows.
User avatar
duststorm
Minaton
Posts: 921
Joined: Sat Jul 31, 2010 6:29 pm
Location: Belgium
x 80
Contact:

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by duststorm »

This is totally and completely awesome! :)
Are you going to release something of this to the community? It would be christmas come early (or late) ;)
Developer @ MakeHuman.org
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

@duststorm - Thanks for the positive feedback. Yes, I'm planning on releasing something. If I don't open source it, it'd be shareware or something so the community can play/use it.

As you probably picked up on a few things in the earlier posts, here is my minimal todo list before making a download available:
  • - Need to rearrange some UI elements (for ease)
    - Need a "toolbox" for paint / erase tools
    - Need a set of properties for the paint brush (intensity / size / etc)
    - Need lighting tools in the editor and to turns normals on the leaves and see how they look
    - Need fleshed out window for drag'n'drop of materials/textures for trunk and leaves changes
    - Need some kind of edit widget for "how" leaves are attached to the trunk (ie - where the stem is on the image)
The last thing is something you probably didn't see... It's the weirdness of drawing 2D points on a 3D surface. Right now, when you click to draw, I do a raycast on an invisible plane that sits where the tree is (and the plane moves with the camera orientation). Where the raycast hits, I draw points within a sphere shape with the collision point as the center. This works really nicely....BUT....if you turn the tree, you'll see it is a bit like a pancake (only as "deep" as the sphere). :roll: So, I need to find an intuitive way to better help this. You can paint, then turn the camera, and then paint from another angle to get a "full" tree, but I still feel like the interface to do this is a bit awkward. I may need to post some pics or video to better illustrate this...as I need to get some other developers input on this. :)
Crashy
Google Summer of Code Student
Google Summer of Code Student
Posts: 1005
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:15 pm
Location: Lyon, France
x 49
Contact:

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Crashy »

Have you considered to make the sphere visible and sculpt it ala zbrush ? This would help to see the foliage volume.

Another possible option would be to import a pre-edited mesh and let the tool fill the volume.
Follow la Moustache on Twitter or on Facebook
Image
drwbns
Orc Shaman
Posts: 788
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 6:06 pm
Location: Costa Mesa, California
x 24

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by drwbns »

I was thinking along the same lines. Maybe have some predefined paint shapes that show the visual volume in the viewport and maybe some user-defined shapes later.
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

I do have a brush sphere now. :) Attached an image showing it.

@Crashy - What do you mean by "sculpt it ala zbrush"?

I could have paint method like I'm doing on a plane and also could you a gizmo control to drag the sphere around to paint. A little awkward but more precise.

Another thought was drawing a shape in 2D with the mouse and creating a 3D mesh on the fly for it (it would be symmetrical of course then) and filling the volume with a specified number of points or something. Thinking this could be done using the 2D shape drawn and then using Ogre Procedural's Lathe method to extrude the shape around the axis to make it 3D. Then you could always switch back to a fill or erase brush to tweak that.
Attachments
brush.jpg
Crashy
Google Summer of Code Student
Google Summer of Code Student
Posts: 1005
Joined: Wed Jan 08, 2003 9:15 pm
Location: Lyon, France
x 49
Contact:

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Crashy »

What I meant is to have a kind of subdivided (geo)sphere as a starting basis, and then displace (even etrude it, why not) it using a brush.

Doing that, the user can immediately see what the final foliage shape will look like.
Follow la Moustache on Twitter or on Facebook
Image
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

Ok, yeah, that makes sense. It would be fairly easy to drop in some primitive shapes and scale them and prompt the user for the number of point to fill the initial shape as a starting point. I think in the end, I'll just have to have several methods to "paint" and see how they develop and what people think of them.
v1r0x
Gnoblar
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2013 4:46 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by v1r0x »

This looks really impressive! Would love to use it. :)
Are you still working on it?
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

Yup, still working on it. :)

Been a little slow for awhile though.... A big job has been pausing the algorithm work and re-doing the interface. It's kinda like creating a stripped down Ogitor to make this thing... Anyways, I've made an Entity system for all the scene objects with property and tool meta data that tie to the screen. So, changes from the backend show up on the screen and vice-versa. That was a big job! :roll: Getting close to actually focusing on the trees themselves! Here's a new screenshot of what the interface is looking like.

Image
User avatar
c6burns
Beholder
Posts: 1512
Joined: Fri Feb 22, 2013 4:44 am
Location: Deep behind enemy lines
x 138

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by c6burns »

Such cool work on this project ... and yes very ogitor-y :D
v1r0x
Gnoblar
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Sep 21, 2013 4:46 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by v1r0x »

Herb wrote:Yup, still working on it. :)

Been a little slow for awhile though.... A big job has been pausing the algorithm work and re-doing the interface. It's kinda like creating a stripped down Ogitor to make this thing... Anyways, I've made an Entity system for all the scene objects with property and tool meta data that tie to the screen. So, changes from the backend show up on the screen and vice-versa. That was a big job! :roll: Getting close to actually focusing on the trees themselves! Here's a new screenshot of what the interface is looking like.
Great to hear that!
Looks very nice! :)
User avatar
Zonder
Ogre Magi
Posts: 1168
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2008 7:51 pm
Location: Manchester - England
x 73

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Zonder »

Keep up the good work it's looking great!!
There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't...
User avatar
Gaiha
Gnoblar
Posts: 24
Joined: Thu Feb 04, 2016 7:05 pm
Location: Canada
x 1
Contact:

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Gaiha »

Heya Herb!

This project looks amazing so far... that is so much more work than I'd want to do myself. I'll stick to what I know, lolz
I may not be perfect... but parts of me are Excellent!
frostbyte
Orc Shaman
Posts: 737
Joined: Fri May 31, 2013 2:28 am
x 65

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by frostbyte »

glad to hear you're still working on this( was begining to wonder myself about...)
its one of the coolest projects around here, just be careful not ending up creating unity3d by mistake (-:
the woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
and miles to code before i sleep
and miles to code before i sleep..

coolest videos link( two minutes paper )...
https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos
User avatar
Herb
Orc
Posts: 412
Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 3:21 am
Location: Kalamazoo,MI
x 38

Re: Herb's Tree Studio - Procedural Trees

Post by Herb »

Thanks for the encouragement everyone! Here's a video showing off where I'm at with the editor. Enjoy! :D

[youtube]7wYOdg4jZIk[/youtube]
Post Reply