Welcome to the official Alpha Trees discussion thread!
This is a tool for automating the process of making and using alpha mapped trees, which allows you to render massive forests of hundreds of thousands of particles in a fraction of the time and memory cost of using full 3D tree models.
You can get the addon here:
Info:
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The general process for making these trees is shown in this great video by Zacharias Reinhardt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtUS8QTsVZAThough I have made quite a few improvements and updated it for 2.8
For example, I split the models into a trunk and leaf layer and I also add a layer for masks:
This allows a lot of extra control in the materials and for winter/dead trees.
Overall, using the original method, it could take around 15-20 minutes to produce the maps for one tree, which this addon lowers to almost zero. It is only limited by render time, which usually takes around 30s to 3mins depending on settings.
How to use:
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Check out the documentation to get an in-depth guide to all the features of Alpha Trees
Or watch this tutorial:
https://youtu.be/jG3YfyfBjT4
Releases:
📅
v1.1 - 19/01/21
- New controls for height offset and width for particles. Makes it very easy to make bushes for example.
- Added camera tracking for single trees.
- You can now select materials for single trees, allowing them to share materials.
- Improved material setting copying. You can now modify the tree materials without worrying about messing up the addon.
- Improved tree icons to accurately reflect material settings. Improves readability drastically.
- Plus way more! Check out the release post for a full list.
v1.0 - Initial release - 04/01/21
Gallery:
If you have any questions, bugs or problems don’t hesitate to ask me on this thread
Hopefully, this can turn into something great!