Tree Image Plane Study

Artwork Works in Progress
1

I started off thinking of how to make a tree, and got hung up big time on the leaves. I saw how diablo 3 used multiple image plans for the branches with hand painted textures, but I just wanted to use photographs.

I’m hoping to come up with something eventually that I can use to decorate the surrounding landscape of a castle. So if they only look good from a very small viewing angle, I’m okay with that.

Spent most of my time tinkering in the node editor to get all the specular, normals, node groups to work, but finally ended with a comparison photo.

Left - texture + normal
Right - texture + normal + displacement (about 100,000 verts) + specular

tree study normal vs displacement.png960×540 833 KB

Any advice on how to make nice looking trees from a masked photo would be appreciated.

Tomorrow I plan on making the trunk and branches by hand and then putting on a bunch of leaves on image planes and see how that looks.

Edit:
Here’s it with a plain texture in the center. That probably is what I would go with, but is there a way to make it look better?

tree study normal vs displacement texture.png960×540 829 KB

2

It is the best plan of tree for study.You can use this plan to get better results. http://www.biseresult.pk/

3

Are you trying to have each tree be one polygon each?Try using Arboro or Sapling to make a few trees. Place them roughly where you want them with the correct lighting. Then render some images of those trees from the correct angles. This way you get the lighting to match.