xfrog plants
laverdet_943f1f7da1
Posts: 252
Hello!!! does some of you experiment importing Xfrog trees in C8 pro? NOT the billboard version sale on the shop, but real 3d models from xfrog (tropical trees)... once importing in C8, the leaves are, on some species, very very smalls... as I download also the cine4d version of the same trees, I have open the same tree in C4d, and the leaves were very correctly shaped... thank you for any idea to get a correct import (I post also on the xfrog forum), as I should prefer by far to do that project in carrara, than in cine4d!...
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From memory the transmaps in the alpha channel need adjusting - maybe they are flipped ? Been a while but have a play with them and that should solve the problem
alas, no, I don't think it's an alpha problem!!... I join a JPG, with exactly the same tree, in c4d, and in C8pro... you can see the leaves, but they aren't at all the same amount and size!!!
in fact, it's a problem either with C8pro, or with my installation of C8pro... I've tried to impoirt one of these tree in carrara 3 (old one!!), and, without the alphas, it's perfect...
* I have the same problem in C8 pro, when importing a plane, with a plane mapping... I mean, from Rhino, not a native plane of carrara... once imported, the mapping is destroyed... imported in Carrara3 (it's the only version I have on my computer, with C8 pro), the plane mapping is ok... did you experiment that?
I would certainly submit a bug report.
With Xfrog, as well as Ivygen, you need to change the default import from Vertex primitives to Facets Meshes to be able to see the leaves.
This is the same Xfrog tree - the one on the left was left at the default.
Are you choosing .OBJ format or the 3DS format when you grab your xfrog items. Just was looking at the free samples and the choices they give you to get.
Always the .obj format because of it's universal application :)
The problems I saw with the obj import for some xfrog plants were similar to what head wax said ...example the recent free palm tree
Carrara - the leaf shaders put the color map in the alpha channel instead of the alpha maps included in the xfrog folder
Poser - nothing put in the transparency node for the leafs..you have add the alpha/transparency maps included in the xfrog folder
Which palm tree would that be? The Jaggery Palm imports just fine for me in both Carrara 8.1 and Poser Debut. The Mediterranean Fan Palm is a billboard. Unless it's a very recent freebie which I've missed?
No Xfrog plants I've used have the leaves on transmaps - all mesh.
I was working with AS03_Caryota_Jaggery_Palm which they offered as one of their freebees in 2013. It comes with Billboards which are in another folder and 3d versions... It has 9 obj .... I imported the first one AS03_1.obj which is not a billboard but does have transmapped leaves... and if you look at the shaders at least for me in both poser and carrara the transparency map was not assigned (poser) which made the leaves have black squares around them or the color map was used in carrara which made the leaves sorta half invisible.
Thank you for your help!!! and, yes, I agree, importing the xfrog as faceted meshes, allows to see all the plants, but withour the alphas assigned... I had to manually assign the alpha, which is rather tedious on a 60 plants pack!, but it wirks fine... there is a tendancy, with the plants, to need more light than the rest of the landscape, as they turn quicly too dark looking... with a specific "distant light" assigned to them, it works fine!...
@MrPoser - My apologies - I see what you mean about the transmap. The leaves are rectangular meshes and the shape is painted. In my version of the palm - same as u are using - I don't get a separate alpha channel for the leaves; this is in the tiff texture, which Carrara reads correctly and gives the right shape.
Poser doesn't, so makes a black corner on the leaves. This I can only see in a really close-up render and it doesn't detract from the appearance in a normal-distance render.
I don't use Poser much, so have no clue as to how to edit the texture:)
So far I haven't had a need to load the alpha texture, but will bear that in mind for any future problems.
Yes, I have also found that they all do seem to need extra lighting.
@Roygee - no problem I know very little about the Poser material room or Carrara shaders except that they are both very powerful. and thanks for the import tip. @celmar glad you got your xfrog plants fixed..can be a hassle but ... hey... free is free...so thank you xfrog.
What a bummer!
Those packs are not cheap. Like, more than what I paid for Carrara... yet Carrara uses mesh-shaped leaves - not transmapped leaves. I prefer mesh over mapped.
Never mind the quality - feel the price, eh? :) Guess which is which!
Yeah, these are definitely meant for big production houses, architects with big contracts, etc.
Fortunately for us, Xfrog is very generous on freebees.
While on this subject - do pro's like Howie Farkes use modified Carrara trees, or make their own?
I've had some very nice renders using the included palm tree, The trick is that you don't use the default shaders. The advantage of the trees in Carrara is that they essentially use a type of replicator to distribute the leaves, so the the overhead is fairly light, whereas it sounds like the xfrog plants are all polys. You can also set animation parameters for the tress to rustle.
I think Howie uses his own leaves and uses the plant generator for the trunks. I know it seems like for every Howie scene you need to install leaves. No problem with that. The guy is a master at what he does.
The Fantasy Village Terrain that I give away uses Carrara trees and leaves as a starting point and then they are tweaked. For instance I made a fairly nice Weeping Willow by playing around wit the Burr Oak preset. You can see it peeking out by one of the buildings. I thought I had a better picture somewhere...
I cannot speak for Howie, but mine were done both ways - Start from scratch and build a Carrara plant from the ground up, and some started from a preset to get the basic structure started, and then change just about everything from there. Like ep says though, I made my own shaders for them.
I bought some X-Frogs billboards back when they first started selling them at DAZ 3D, 2010, I believe it was. Back then I used billboards a lot - along with using the Millennium Environment setup, which also includes a bunch of billboard stuff for plants and such.
Now I almost never use billboards. But they are an excellent way to get a lot of stuff into a scene... especially for distant background stuff, like you've pointed out with many of your awesome (Roygee) renders using the billboard trees. When Dimension Theory came out with his Ecomantics - Efficient Ecosystems, I was in between using billboards and getting away from them. That pack is an incredible expansion for anyone using billboards! The set come with a huge selection of stuff, and instead of only using single billboards, you get billboards of whole woods lines, complete surrounding woods, and then a selection of individual tress and shrubs. Then it also has walls, ground plane selections with various choices like grass and such... Very nicely done!
Well, here's what it say is included on the store page:
80 Separate Environmental Props (in both high and low resolution)
10 Bushes
10 Grass Sets (5 thick 5 thin)
10 Grass Groups from numerous Sets (5 thick 5 thin)
10 Panoramic Grass Sets (5 thick 5 thin)
10 Panoramic Grass Groups from numerous Sets (5 thick 5 thin)
3 Circular Ground Planes
10 Single Trees
5 Tree Layers
5 Tree Panoramas
5 Double Scale Tree Panoramas
2 Wall Types (flat and panoramic)
10 Preset Scenes (in both high and low resolution)
5 Planar Scenes
5 360 Degree Panoramic Scenes
DAZ Studio Scene Files (.DAZ)
Carrara Object Files (.CAR)
So I had a lot of fun with it, placing some of the woods lines out, and layering them back. Amidst them I would add some of the individual trees included, to add some more colors. Really easy to scale and place... a lot of fun.
With his individual plants, as well as my X-Frog billboards, I've found that I could make a duplicate of a tree and rotate the duplicate 90 degrees and then parent (drag it onto) the original one, and then they could be used easily in a surface replicator, and still give them random scale and z axis rotation.
Really makes for some light weight scenes!
It was then, when I bought mmoir's Mystic Gorge. I was planning to replace all or most of the trees with billboards - until I saw how quickly the thing renders! That product got me to start taking a closer look at using Carrara plants, real 3d props, even in the background, and so on. I kind of never looked back since. Howie's scenes take a long time to render, true... but the realism of them comes from an absolute total attention to detail - all recreated in 3d so well that you are not limited to a single camera or angle - but rather, the entire environment is like it's real, inside your 3d space of Carrara.
Using his scenes can be a very beneficial study into Carrara. If we want to use the setting that he creates, but cannot afford the render time - perhaps due to the need to render animations and so forth, we could set up our animation needs, and use the director's camera to remove everything that we don't need. He has a very organized method to his scenes, and they are very well constructed. His hand made models of plants and stones, terrain pieces, river beds, etc., are made very efficiently and yet are incredibly realistic looking. The man is a true Carrara master. The scenes are vast. And that truly helps to create the realism of the render because it really is as if you were standing there with a camera. But you can change that if you like, while still preserving the look of his amazing foreground.
For example, Stonemason's (another true expert) Enchanted Forest scene comes with a depth blurred panoramic globe for the distance depth of the fact that you're supposed to be standing in the woods. That thing can be used to create the border. remove everything outside of that, since it cannot be seen anyways. Set Howie's wonderful light dome to ignore that globe, and give the globe's shader a bit of a glow, by copying the color map to the glow channel, and turning the brightness of the image in the glow channel down to about 25 or so - adjust to taste.
Having Carrara, we're truly lucky to be able to jot around so easily. I forget how cumbersome DS and Poser are in these regards. Carrara lets us just zoom out as far as we want with no troubles and no time spent.
In doing such a thing to one of Howie's scenes will require some decision making. Some terrain and trees and so on, will be between inside and outside of the globe. If something cuts through the globe where the camera can see it, it might not look right - so you'll have to see for yourself. Some options might include some subtle movement and/or scaling of some of this stuff, or perhaps even inserting your own small terrain piece, give it the same texture as either Howie's terrain or the ground of Stonemason's, etc., and transfer the replicator and plants to it instead of Howie's... which will automatically change the number of replicated items.
I've done a lot of this sort of messing around directly following the release of Enchanted Forest. I have that wooded skydome along with the included ground pieces lit and saved as an empty scene preset for wooded scenes. If it's a character shot (render), just adding a couple to a few Carrara trees can make the whole animation possible. To simplify this sort of thing even more, I've also saved every bit of Enchanted Forest and all of my Howie Farkes purchases separately to my browser so I can use them any time I like. Howie's trees are available as presets within the plant editor, but they don't always come out the same as those found in his forest. He also has some that are used mainly for their trunks or mainly for their canopy... it's nice to disassemble these scenes and check them out - bit for bit.
I've used the Carrara trees a lot - even made some keepers and yes, you can get a good result with lots of massaging and replacing shaders with your own textures.
Just tried a quick test - 100 replicated Carrara trees in an otherwise empty scene with a realistic sky. Render time 55 seconds. 100 Xfrog trees of the same sort, same scene - 6 seconds. 100 Xfrog billboards of the same tree - less than 1 second - the timer didn't even register!