Hi, has anyone an idea where to get low poly model trees (+ plants). 3DS format would be preferred but I can convert it anyway. Everything I found were trees with about 5000 triangles but this is far to much for use in a game. So, if anyone has a link or a selfmade model for me: Would be great if you could post that here. TIA, Flo

Getting a low poly tree is going to be very difficult, especially if you want it to look realistic. If you want it to look like a children''s drawing, it wouldn''t look hard.

My suggestion, and what they do a lot in games... is "billboard" them. This is something you can do yourself if you are decent in photoshop and don''t mind cutting out a tree.

Get a digital camera, find a nice tree against a plain background (either out in a field by itself against the sky, or against a plain wall or something), take a picture of it, and then cut out an alpha channel for it. Then, put the tree image with the alpha onto a flat plain, and you have your tree. You can either set it up in your engine so that the plane''s always face the ''character" so you never see the edges... or rotate the plane around in duplicates a couple time to create the illusion.

If you want something a little more lifelike, something similar can be accomplished by modelling just the base, and then using multiple planes assembled throuthout the tree. Just use the same process as above, except with a branch.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, the last thing you said is exactly what I''m looking for.
I want to have a simple base build of a trunk and several knots. This should actually not be made up of more than 500 triangles. The folios should be simple alpha blended textured quad faces that are someway connected to the knots. In the end there should not be more than 800-1000 triangles this way.

Actually this is very simple but since I''m more a programer than a visual artist this is pretty hard work for me

The thing is, that all model trees I found are very detailed and everything is made up of single vertices.

Billboarding drops out for me since billboarded trees look pretty "shitty" in near distance

So maybe anyone has already made such trees for a game or something and would allow me to use them for a none commercial project (a simple OpenGL Demo).

If you are prepared to burn that many triangles on a single tree why not go for a kind of christmas tree effect. Get a couple of different masked textures of coniferous branches and get you engine to attach loads (300 ish?) of them to your very thin pyramid ''trunk''. If you make sure that theyre stuck on pretty steep (75->89 to the vertical) it should look ok (i think).

I remember seeing a 3d tree generator to make low-poly trees and such a while back. Anyone know what I'm talking about?


[edit] I found it. Lowpoly tree generator You can use the demo, and there is also a purchasing option. [/edit]


[edited by - raymondo on June 2, 2003 3:53:50 PM]

quote: Original post by ZMaster
I want to have a simple base build of a trunk and several knots. This should actually not be made up of more than 500 triangles. The folios should be simple alpha blended textured quad faces that are someway connected to the knots. In the end there should not be more than 800-1000 triangles this way.

500 polys for just the trunk is not low poly. 800-1000 overall polys for a single tree is pretty high, unless you plan on making the tree a main center of attraction (ie. the tree level in UT2K3).

Any skilled modeler can get away with making a good low poly tree in under 400. 300 should be the goal for a *low-poly* tree. From there you can make an LOD of it at probably 100ish polys, then you can make a second LOD as a billboard (2 polys) -- or if your engine doesnt have the ability to support billboards, you can make a cross pattern (4 polys).

If you''re looking for anything more than 400-500 (at the very max) polys, then you''re looking more at mid-poly trees.

You''re right... 800-1000 is a bit much

I downloaded this tree generator program but unfortunatelly it''s not free and the demo version doesn''t support exporting the generated trees.

So I tried to model a tree with gmax, inspired by the ones, this tree generator makes. It''s pretty low poly now (200 triangles) and it''s simple. The trunk is build up of modified cylinders and the foliage is done by just using this cross pattern solution you suggested. It''s not that kind of eye candy now, but it''s low poly and that''s what my main goal was.
Since the application should be a graphics demo some day, I have to make every single object a main center of attraction

Thank ya guys for your support.

cya
Flo