tree animation

[polygonner]

is ther any way to animate a tree using max and vray?
like alex romans animations

[pressenter]

Alex used onyx tree storm, look into that.

[m-arch]

Alex used onyx tree storm, look into that.

Actually, I've read in an interview that Alex did not use Onyx TreeStorm for the wind animation. He did use Onyx for the tree modelling however.

His wind method still puzzles me, he won't reveal it apparently.

Any clues?

[bakbek]

Actually, I've read in an interview that Alex did not use Onyx TreeStorm for the wind animation. He did use Onyx for the tree modelling however.

His wind method still puzzles me, he won't reveal it apparently.

Any clues?

ohhh, but he did actually

"One of David’s more inspired moments was to go out and shoot video footage of some tree canopies outside our studio. We comped these over the final exterior night shot, added some depth-of-field and color-corrected to match the render and BG plate. It looked so successful that we used some of these tree footage files through windows in many of the still shots."

It is on The House Article - Making of 'The House' 3D Mental Ray Animation by Alex York

Hope this helps.

[m-arch]

Thank you dear Ronen, the video footage idea is nice for sure, but we're talking about 3rd7th's Alex Roman, and why would he lie in an interview?

I quote:

"It was extremely important to me that the vegetation had a lot of life, so I absolutely had to introduce wind in all of its elements. I started to experiment with OnyxTree’s wind system, but it wasn’t very efficient in terms of memory and performance, so I ended up developing my own system, one which allowed me to generate hundreds of very detailed trees with different wind patterns all at the same time and in the same scene. That’s why I had to model and animate almost everything by hand. Yep, it was crazy."

Original:

"En este caso era muy importante para mí que la vegetación tuviera vida, de modo que tenía que introducir viento en todos sus elementos. Empecé a experimentar el sistema de viento de OnyxTree pero no era muy eficaz en términos de memoria ni rendimiento, así que terminé por desarrollar un sistema propio que me permitiera generar cientos de árboles muy detallados con distintos patrones de viento a la vez y en la misma escena. Por ello, tuve que modelar y animar casi todo manualmente, una locura."

So, I'm still wondering!

[bakbek]

My bad I just jumped in thinking about Alex York's work instead of Roman's

Not sure about what he refers too but it there might have been GrowFX involved. Even though he probably could I don't think he modeled and rigged all the trees one by one. The craziness is got to stop at some point, no?

[pressenter]

Ah, sorry, my bad, i didnt mean treestorm, i ment just onyx. You can export from onyx to *.3ds file format an object with premade animation sequence.

P.

[m-arch]

Ah, sorry, my bad, i didnt mean treestorm, i ment just onyx. You can export from onyx to *.3ds file format an object with premade animation sequence.

P.

Sure, but TreeStorm lets you keep your trees in a parametric, native to Onyx, mode.

My bad I just jumped in thinking about Alex York's work instead of Roman's

Not sure about what he refers too but it there might have been GrowFX involved. Even though he probably could I don't think he modeled and rigged all the trees one by one. The craziness is got to stop at some point, no?

Well, considering the work of this particular gentleman, I don't think the craziness is ever going to stop. I would gladly share a room with him in this mental institution we call archviz so I can pick his brain.

I don't think GrowFX was used at all. Those Fuji House trees are all Onyx. Not only Alex said so himself, they look like Onyx all around, branch defects included.

He also said in another interview that the Fuji House scene used only 5-6 GB at rendertime. Is that possible?

I can't figure it out... Unless he's actually lying and he did use TreeStorm, but somehow I doubt it. Besides, why would one make VRay animated proxies out of TreeStorm animated trees, when they already are quite light resourcewise, being parametric and all?

So, back to square one: "his wind method still puzzles me".

...

[surferdude]

I think he has animated manualy each branch and duplicated them to another trees and has created huge amount of same and different animations at the same time. If no, why has he done so many vrayproxies on one tree ?. I think it's simple and genius as everything done by Alex Roman.

[m-arch]

Nice images surferdude... Although I can't really agree with you 'bout this being simple!

By the looks of it, could it be that the leaves, and the leaves only, were exported as vray proxies, not the branches and trunk themselves? So maybe the branches are indeed manually animated, and the leaves just follow the movement, all linked somehow? This could look unnatural, but not if the leaves are divided in small enough groups.

One could do this with a couple of trees, and then populate the scene with lots of instances, changing the size, position and cycle of the animation. Right? Don't forget, this was rendered with pretty standard hardware, maybe a quad or two, and 8 GB of RAM at the most (according to Alex).

This is probably the most efficient way to deal with dozens of animated trees, i.e., separating its elements. Consider that exporting only one tree as an animated proxy could result in a very heavy mesh size wise (depending on its length of course).

What do you guys think?

PS: Not to dissect Alex's work of course... Although, why not? I just love to learn different techiques... And don't we all? That's why we're here. There are lots of gallery forums around, let's talk about the technical stuff for a change.

...

[metrocubicodigital 3d]

Very interesting discussion.

Reading your last post makes me realize that might be rly the key.
Branches are animated (maybe only with an animated FFD modifier might work) and then you would have to select-link the group of leafs to each branch.

All the trees dont need to be completly animated i suppose.
Only some branches, and their instances, placed carefully.

[annkos]

I just see this very simple but nice teqchnique

r a m y h a n n a . c o m: Blow Trees Blow!