Foilage in landscape?

#1 If you can make a 3d model of a plant it can be placed in your map.

#2 hehehe, sure that would work ;)

However.. If you are wondering how to code those in.. well thats a much longer answer. however here is a trick you may use:

Check the code that uses the editor to load a single tree, then put this is in a loop and place the trees in random values around the terrain at initial load, to make them look a bit more realistic, move their scale and rotation so they are not equal. then relight (or do this before lighting the terrain) to do this faster you could do an outside program (in visual basic per example) that creates this random trees position and saves them in a mission file for you.=)

To optimize your trees, you would have to (need to) use a vey low polycount, very simplistic collision box and a small texture per tree type, also the lesser level of detail should be a simple picture of a tree (a BOARD texture? I forgot the term, anyway you can see how to do this in the new exporter doc =) ), instead of a 3d tree. Oh.. something else that might help (at least in flats) is to model patches of foliage instead of individual trees. (but this wont look too good on slopes so you would have to put this manually or calculate slopes by yourself)

Now.. by using that technique and then taking into consideration the height of a piece of terrain (you can calculate this on script), and then adding more kinds of trees per kind of terrain (or per height) and even some modeled grass, the results may be realistic enough. =)
(specially if you use relight so the foliage produces is own shadows)
note: lighting would take a while, since you would have lots of shapes to calculate.

You can even have some of it animate by the wind, using some animated shapes at some locations. =)

Remember that your foliage does not have to be very tick to look realistic, it just needs to be in the right spot. 50-80 trees and patches of grass and plants scattered around should be more than enough. Specially if you add water plains to save on trees =) (they do not grow on water)

Of course this is all theory, but this is how Im planning to make it myself, I may even put up some screenshots, so you can see how it looks once is done =)

I hope this helps! hey, at least is better than putting all the trees by yourself. =)

#3 we need to work on a prefab section, i know i would make some trees etc for it.......
I dont kno how protective everyone is of there media, but im sure a range of quality generic bits and pieces would make life a lot more interesting,

obviously everyone is going to hold onto their "hero" objects. but hey.... anyone want a camera(hasselblad xpan)? ive made some puma trainers (old school) too, and a laser pointer (standard keyring type)

just a thought.

#4 Hmm.. well Im not sure if we actually need a prefab kit for torque, I mean they are lots of tree models around in 3d if you look for them and they are even programs to create them automatically in 3d packages like 3ds max or maya.

Check this link to see more about this subject

#5 Thanks for the replies:) I'm considering buying the engine and creating a team of enthusiasts to work on a project, a realist military sim. Foilage, trees etc would be very important for obvious reasons. As I said, I have no programming knowledge so I'm just trying to get a rough understanding of what the torque engine can do. In Operation Flashpoint, foilage and trees seem to be of a 2d texture type. Would it be possible to recreate this? Delta Force had the holy grail of foot solider games, long grass :) I know that used a voxel based engine, is there anyway of achieving a long grass effect that you guys know of? (probably a stupid question, plese be gentle :) ) Anyways, thanks for your replies, much appreciated :)

John

#6 If there is software for creating tree models and plant models, could someone please post the names of the software and the links?

I thought I remember seeing an advertisement for a 3DS MAX plug-in that could build tree models that would animate. It would be really great if any tree/plant modeling software could let the user choose how many polygons are preferred for the model.

Are there web sites that have a collection of trees and plants to download? If so, could those links be posted by someone? That would be helpful.

Maybe we should make an upload/download section on the Garage Games web site for sharing tree/plant/weapons/etc... models with other Torque users. Could save us all a lot of time in hunting around for models on the web or creating a lot of the same models our selves. For example, let's say we want to decorate our rooms by hanging pictures on the walls, or putting some chairs and table in the corner of room, or placing some cups/plates/forks/spoons on the table, it would make sense to share these models so we all don't have to waste time re-inventing the wheel each time.




Thanks,

Chad
___________________
Chad Coulliette
chad@caltech.edu

#7 indeed, thats what i was thinking.....
i think they (gg) are pushed for bandwidth as it is though,
if it was to happen it would probably be restricted to torque owners only..........

#8 Here are a few tree and foliage software packages

Treemaker. New version out soon capable of making low-poly trees for games. Old version is freeware.
http://www.treemaker.50megs.com/

Other programs like XFrog and Treedruid are expensive and are plug-in based, so you're out of luck unless you own a high end 3d package like lightwave or MAX. But they are very powerful with built in animation and can provide incredible results.

Here is X-Frog's website.
http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenWeb2/Templates/start.html

Treedruid's site
http://www.dynamic-realities.com/products/treedruid/

You can also buy trees off of the turbo-squid site if you want.