Grouping, assembly and duplication of relatively complex obj

We need to make this landscape with many trees.

I have a trunc with around 40 branches.

I want to easily duplicate and move the trees around to create a a forest.

I tried grouping the trunc and the branches... but when I do that I do not see my tree anymore.

I tried making an assembly... same problem.

If I set all the branch as hiarchical child of the trunc then I see the tree correctly but then I have to duplicate each branch when I create a new tree...


What is the best and easiest way to do what I want?


Thanks

For performance (unless you have very specific reasons) create a single mesh, 'Attach' all branches to the trunk (select the default material id option to keep the materials)

Select the trunk and click on 'Attach List' in the edit mesh modifier

There doesn't seem to be any "default" option here... which should I take?

Those are the default options

Ok... you still haven't told me which should I take.... I can pick any?

Which is the best and what are the difference between each?

is there a way in 3dsmax to "place on the ground" each tree? I have to manually place them all, this is long and tedious. Is there a way to duplicate an object and it immediatelly fall on the ground?

Thanks

The options as selected in that screenshot are the defaults

There is a plugin (and some maxscripts) that are specific to this, i will review if i have the link. It was very useful for automated forests, you simply select the base tree and it auto places instances (with different rotation and scales) over the terrain (can use a painted bitmap for the areas that will contain trees)

Have you found the link?

Is it this one? http://www.itoosoft.com/english/menu.php?id=download


I am reading the description and I am unsure if it can place my tree everywhere... it seems like it creates trees from a simple texture plane... hard for a newbie to be sure if it is going to work with oFusion...

The options as selected in that screenshot are the defaults

There is a plugin (and some maxscripts) that are specific to this, i will review if i have the link. It was very useful for automated forests, you simply select the base tree and it auto places instances (with different rotation and scales) over the terrain (can use a painted bitmap for the areas that will contain trees)

just a quick question, can oFusion save the current scene from within ogre? Because I keep the objects rough and then run the physics for a bit to settle them naturally. So I'd like to save it out again so I can start the real app with frozen objects.

Yes, that is a useful tool for what you need, there are others too, you can search scriptspot.com for more

You can use the "Clone" and "Glue" plugins (free) to create parametric variations of your trees and to place them in your terrain or surface

They are free plugins so you can download and test them

Vectrex, do you need to save the current scene in your application?

Vectrex, do you need to save the current scene in your application?

yep, only to permanently 'settle' the physics objects, basically for quick loading. Otherwise there's a few second pause while the objects settle and each time is slightly different which is bad.