Tree shape

[PutraenusAlivius]

Okay, so I'm making a tree for my custom story. Now, I'm going to make the trees like the Autumn season. But I don't know the shape of the branch, sub-branch, and trunk. Can you guys elaborate?

[Rapture]

If you mean a 3D model, just take some real-life pictures for inspiration.

Examples...

Tree 1 (3d model)
Tree 2 (2d Art, with some nice branches)
Tree 3 (Good trunk view)
Tree 4 (Very good)

If you want a decent looking tree trunk (Up to 4k tris if you go crazy retopolgy; But 1-1.5k would be a good estimate if you do it carefully; Without leaves.) spend a lot of time sculpting. Get the curves, bumps and everything. (Tree Picture 4 would be a good example.)

But if you want a really quick dirty one, do something like Amnesia's.

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I did a crappy one a long time ago, and I went overboard with retopology. But here is my attempt, I need to do another soon...

My Tree

[PutraenusAlivius]

Well as it turns out modelling a tree is pretty tough. So I'm using tree[d] to generate the branches (Just the branches. That means no leaves) and Blender to generate the leaves since I have the texture already.

[EDIT: Nope not possible. God damn it]

[Rapture]

Are you Sculpting>Enable Dynamic Topology? That makes your life about 1,000,000,000,000,000 easier. And it's like sculpting a rock, just put a bunch of random cool looking shit and you got something that you can pretend that is a "tree".

[PutraenusAlivius]

Are you Sculpting>Enable Dynamic Topology? That makes your life about 1,000,000,000,000,000 easier. And it's like sculpting a rock, just put a bunch of random cool looking shit and you got something that you can pretend that is a "tree".

Yep. It makes the poly count to skyrocket.

[Rapture]

You know you can retopogoly it?

[JonnyAnomaly]

I think the best way to make low poly trees that are sub 1000 polys is to make a cylinder for the trunk, say 8 sides, and just use intersecting planes with an alpha texture for the branches. In Photoshop its just a black background, and the branch is selected and made into an alpha channel, and saved out as a DXT5, then I just use the same file in the alpha slot in the material editor. As soon as you start to make the branches in 3D, the poly count will skyrocket if you end up modelling a lot of them. Here's a tree I made, its a bit crap but its poly count is only 300, you could probably do a lot better with careful placement of the planes. It would be a fair bit less without the broken twigs near the bottom too.

[PutraenusAlivius]

I think the best way to make low poly trees that are sub 1000 polys is to make a cylinder for the trunk, say 8 sides, and just use intersecting planes with an alpha texture for the branches. In Photoshop its just a black background, and the branch is selected and made into an alpha channel, and saved out as a DXT5, then I just use the same file in the alpha slot in the material editor. As soon as you start to make the branches in 3D, the poly count will skyrocket if you end up modelling a lot of them. Here's a tree I made, its a bit crap but its poly count is only 300, you could probably do a lot better with careful placement of the planes. It would be a fair bit less without the broken twigs near the bottom too.

Adding the leaves is a similar process right?

[ExpectedIdentifier]

I think the best way to make low poly trees that are sub 1000 polys is to make a cylinder for the trunk, say 8 sides, and just use intersecting planes with an alpha texture for the branches. In Photoshop its just a black background, and the branch is selected and made into an alpha channel, and saved out as a DXT5, then I just use the same file in the alpha slot in the material editor. As soon as you start to make the branches in 3D, the poly count will skyrocket if you end up modelling a lot of them. Here's a tree I made, its a bit crap but its poly count is only 300, you could probably do a lot better with careful placement of the planes. It would be a fair bit less without the broken twigs near the bottom too.

Adding the leaves is a similar process right?

Yes. If you want leaves I would say use a diffuse texture that has branches and leaves together. I would recommend something similar to what Jonny said, but model some of the branches in 3D, just keep them as low poly as possible and only do this for larger branches, then use planes for smaller branches coming off of them and for leaves. Also don't forget to duplicate all the planes and invert the normals. If you don't do this you will be able to see through the back of the plane and it won't look right (I guess this depends on the angle of your planes though).

[JonnyAnomaly]

http://www.cgtextures.com/

There are some good free textures there of branches and leaves if you look under nature/branches, and they're already cut out from the background and include masks and things.