Countryside Scene
 

SwatSnipe and others have inspired me to try my own nature scene, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon.
Started with Maya Paint Effects for the trees and shrubs, converting to polys and replacing the leaves on the trees with double sided shaders. A lot of test rendering. I want to create a rich fern filled forest scene using mostly mr render proxies, I'm looking forward to pushing the memory limits.

Looking good so far. I'll be watching this. :)

me too havent seen a vegetation thread in a while. I always do enjoy them

Great Thread.

I can already feel some heat coming from your Cpu..:D

I am also working on a scene nowadays with lots of vegetation. Was wondering proxies is best way to go as you can't see the shading and changes in Viewport. weren't Instancing is a better option.(just my view..:)

Just to share i have use a creative crash script spPaint3d(http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/do...sc/c/sppaint3d) and it work like a charm.
and another one if you are not Animating the Vegetation then you can use this one too
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/do...scatter-script

Looking forward for some more progress.


-dushyant

This is also a nifty little script for tiling UVs and can be used on your leaves and also grass! Will be good to see this come together.

thanks! I look forward to using those scripts.

A great start mate :) Looking forward to seeing this! I love the shader for the rock. Is it done with mia material?

Btw, i would love to have the sp paint script! Would make it easier to make even better scenes. But i havn't gotten it to work in maya 2012 :(

I've used it in 2012 and now 2013. What does the error say?

Make sure there is a script that gives you random placement :)

Cheers bullet

Yes it's just a straight mia material with a mossy rock texture from cg textures. A slight bump too. To be honest the rock I showed previously is the new version because I had grand ideas of using high detail displacement on them from zbrush, but realised the detail would never be seen, so decided to remodel them simpler with sharper angles and no displacement. Got to keep the memory free for the foliage! I may keep the old versions for another scene someday.
Cheers

Gen: I type in "spPaint3d" and it says "result: spPaint3d" But nothing pops up :S

Btw toddster. What's your shading setup for the plants? Got translucensy in there?

Yes, translucency on the leaves, although it's a fine line between enough and too much. Also double sided shader with different coloured leaves seems to add more variance to the trees. I've searched a few forums for the best way to do this - the way I've done it is physically incorrect but seems to work alright when I turn the weight down on the materials so they don't get burnt out.

Ah, i See :) i could send you one of my scene files with leaves

@ SwatSnipe
All the files are there? There should be 5:

spPaint3d.mel
spPaint3dContext.py
spPaint3dContext.pyc
spPaint3dGui.py
spPaint3dGui.pyc

@ toddster
What are the leaf shader settings like? I've tooled around with piping the texture through a mult/div and into the translucency, got pretty good results.

Hmms, seems like i only have 3 files in my zip. Strange since i downloaded it from that link some week ago :s

Here's my shader setup:

Well let me know if you want them.

Hi Gen,

Could you Explain a bit how this multiply/divide node help in making leaf and vegetation shaders. I also read this on other websites but can't understand how it works.

I am also working on a scene with lots of vegetation.


Thanks
dushyant

It's easy to use the mult/div for making translusency. First of all make a mia_material_x. Under it's attributes make it "thin walled" and uncheck "skip reflections on inside". Under refraction you need to set a transparency value or it won't work. To make it easy say you put it to 0.25. Then go under the translusency tab of the mia material x and check "use translusency" and put the weight to 1. I'm assuming that your using physical sky. So now create a gamma correct node and make the gamma .454 .454 .454. Then under the value checker box choose your file. Now create a mult/divide node and plug your gamma correct into input 1. Now click on input 2 of the mult/div and type in 4 4 4. The reason for that is cause our refraction transparency is 0.25, and to make it work the number we put in the mult/div node has to equal 1. Now just middle mouse drag the mult/div node to translusency color on the mia material x

And now you have translusency ;)

Testing the ferns out on the ground plane. I made 8 different types for variety. Just using the paint scripts tool at the moment to get the floor covering. The ground plane texture will hopefully be covered eventually with other shrubs.

Essentially it's as SwatSnipe said, instead of using the translucency swatch or plugging the texture directly to the channel, you'd pass it through a multiply/divide node which allows you to control the strength of the translucency.

Now, back to lurking and not hijacking Toddster's thread lol :P


@ Toddster
Is that a temporary ground plane? I ask because it seems kinda small.

Thank you so much this was very easy and helpful Explanation...:)

Gen - yes, but the render will be from near ground level, which will help with the depth, although I can't make the scene as big and dense as I would like. I've created it in a sort of V shape following the camera view to minimise the polys.

Hey Genny You mind sending me those files I seem to be having the same problem. I can get it to work with Maya 2011 but not 2013

Sure no problem.

Here's my render, actually comped from a couple of renders because I overdid it on the polys. Quite a bit of post work to get it looking ok, I made another distance layer in Pototoshop to add more depth. The scale of the leaves on the left hand leaves are far too big and the stones don't really sit properly. Looking to revisit this to redo the textures and lighting.

Ohh that came out quite nice and I agree about the stone path. Perhaps the stone slabs could've been textured in a way that suggests they've been sitting in dirt or get an aggressive AO going on because they do look pretty clean.

looking great, but i agree about the stones as well they just look flat, need some shadow to bring out some bumpy stony detail . :) . the depth is good though

Hi,

Shader is looking good, but there is so much variations in grass. means in reality there is not much variations in grass at a particular place.It depend on places , areas and soil.



-dushyant

Here's another scene I've been working on.
The original idea came from this image:
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/p...sivelight.html

Have a good weekend.

I think to really get the mysterious forest feel, you'll want the trees bigger and more overhanging the path. It's feeling a bit serene and open in the first image, don't know if that's the mood you're after.

your visual are awesome. very pretty

i agree with stwert though, you should get fog some fog in there and get it all eerie, i think it would look awesome :)

Looks good mate :) how was the fog done? Volume primitives?