Simple realistic looking trees

Support Modeling
1

Been trying to look up forest modeling, but I ended up with either something really cartoonish looking (low poly), or something way too detailed (sappling addon). What I need is some way to model relatively low poly tree, but it should be a bit more than just 2 planes tree, or cartoonish tree.

Thing is, I won’t need too much details, since the forest will be displayed from above (kinda isometric strategic map), but it should still look realistic enough, if I decide to zoom up just a bit, or rotate the camera around.

Thanks in advance!

2

look up how to work with alpha. using a 3x3 plane with an alpha texture will probably do the trick depending on how close you want to go.

also depends on what type of tree it is.

3

This is the closest I’ve found to what I need, both tree kind-wise and distance-wise.

That would probably be the closest I’ll zoom in, perhaps just a tiny bit closer. On that one, to be honest, you can easily see those are just 2 planes trees, though it looks pretty nice.

4

use 3 planes then if 2 is not enough.

5

Gotcha.

Thanks, will give it a try.

6

Just realized it won’t work so much, since the camera will be nearly top view.

7

then have horisontal planes.

use the empty and the array modifier to adjust the look of the tree.

the lanes are intersecting, witch is on purpose. once you add the alpha texture i think it will work out quite nicely.

Attachments

untitled.blend (432 KB)

8

I actually wanna try to do something else.

Would it work, if I let’s say, create a tree with leaves with sappling addon, then take screenshots from different angles and then stretch the textures on a sphere or cilynder?

Not sure this question belongs to this forum, but is there any way to create such kinds of textures with blender?

9

so you would end up with a mesh with several textures? why would you do that?

i suggest you try out my method.

6b125091daedfc2605a9b1f49a8170eb.png428×628 212 KB


Here is something i made in about 4 min, including the time it took to find the texture. it has 500 vertexes, but you could get it down to 100 and have a really simular look.

10

It indeed looks very nice!

So you just applied a texture to one of the faces and then mirrored and arrayed it?

11

thats cool… did you do that with the normal edit modifier?

12

normal edit modifier? what?

i have a mirror modifier and array modifier, and the array is targeted throughwards an empty witch i move up to give the tree hight, rotate so it does not look the same all the way up, and scale to make it smaller throughward the top…

i used the blend file that you can find above, i wont bother making it again so try yourself.

tips:
texture cordinate (use UV)
mapping node
mix shader
transparent
image texture

put the image textures alpha as factor

easy setup.

13

actually blender saved it for me… here it is:

WARNING!! make sure to save the image AS A PNG! it has an alpha layer!

Attachments

untitled2.blend (481 KB)

Branches0014_1_S.jpg1024×1024 236 KB

14

Works like magic.

Thanks!

15

i just remembered this video:

at 16:… something

your tree looks realy good and thought you did it with normal edit modifier.

thanks for sharing that simple tree :slight_smile:

16

Wtf is normal modifier?

17

Here, look at the manual description of the modifier.

[video]https://youtu.be/AzeQRxxq3DU?t=15m[/video]

18

Ahh cool didnt know about that, ok everything makes sence now