I’m willing to throw in a large substitute tree for now. I saw one for sale at the Epic Market Place for almost $300. No thanks.
Can't make money without spending it first, broseph. BUY THAT TREE!
Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?
- Thread starter Huntn
- Start date
Can't make money without spending it first, broseph. BUY THAT TREE!
Hmm, $27 on sale. This is in Blender, I have no clue how hard it would be to bring into UE and to add animation to it or if the blender textures work coming straight into UE. Is something like this editable, like if I want to heighten the trunk? Thoughts?
www.turbosquid.com
Oak summer 5 tree 3D model - TurboSquid 1378925
Royalty free 3D model Oak Summer 5 for download as max, obj, c4d, fbx, and blend on TurboSquid: 3D models for games, architecture, videos. (1378925)
www.turbosquid.com
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Hmm, $27 on sale. This is in Blender, I have no clue how hard it would be to bring into UE and to add animation to it or if the blender textures work coming straight into UE. Thoughts?
Oak summer 5 tree 3D model - TurboSquid 1378925
Royalty free 3D model Oak Summer 5 for download as max, obj, c4d, fbx, and blend on TurboSquid: 3D models for games, architecture, videos. (1378925)
It could be done, but I'd check for trees on the Unreal Marketplace before hitting up Turbosquid. That way, you'd know it'd already be set up and animated.
Oak summer 5 tree 3D model - TurboSquid 1378925
Royalty free 3D model Oak Summer 5 for download as max, obj, c4d, fbx, and blend on TurboSquid: 3D models for games, architecture, videos. (1378925)
This looks pretty good. It's more expensive, but you also get a lot more trees.
Trees: Oak Forest - Vol. 1 (Extreme Realistic Wind) in Environments - UE Marketplace
A big variety of realistic oak trees with dynamic wind system
www.unrealengine.com
This looks pretty good. It's more expensive, but you also get a lot more trees.
Trees: Oak Forest - Vol. 1 (Extreme Realistic Wind) in Environments - UE Marketplace
A big variety of realistic oak trees with dynamic wind system
I have noticed trees are categorized as woods and field. The field trees are the big impressive trees with large low hanging branches. This is my target. This tree pack looks interesting though.
That pack does include a couple of the larger field trees. Look at one of the last images on that link, it shows every item in the pack.
...though for $125, it might be best to look elsewhere. it's a great pack, but rather expensive for a hobbyist project. But then again, think about how much model railroad people spend.
Think how much I spend buying tanks in World of Tanks, $125 is not that outrageous.
However I predict I’ll be looking into blender tree design, but this seems to be like a large edition to the work load. I may buy a tree for now.
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Think how much I spend buying tanks in World of Tanks, $125 is not that outrageous.
Hell, I spent half that on a character sculpting tutorial last week.
Check and see what their return policy is over at the marketplace, and if it's pretty flexible, then I'd say go for it.
One thing I’m learning is that regarding Unreal Editor materials there are seemingly dozens of ways to skin the cat. Converting hard core coding into GUI nodes impresses the hell out of me.
I have a material that seems to handle the tiling issue well enough, but now I‘m seeing in the default materials that either Epic or Megascans are putting out for surfaces include variable randomization nodes based on what equates to noise textures to mitigate tiling.
And in the current tutorial I’m following, the author is blending 2 different surface textures with noise to reduce the tiling appearance. This guy is an amateur, I think he is researching or talking to people with more knowledge, but that is just a feeling and I’ve learned some things from his series.
I’m currently working though his episode 7 on materials. He’s using a landscape material height nodes to auto fill in a river bed, but since the rest of the landscape relies on landscape layer painting, I can see it saves effort, but I would probably just manually paint this with one of the landscape layers, But it is good as a demo on how you would start to set up a height based landscape material.
I have a material that seems to handle the tiling issue well enough, but now I‘m seeing in the default materials that either Epic or Megascans are putting out for surfaces include variable randomization nodes based on what equates to noise textures to mitigate tiling.
And in the current tutorial I’m following, the author is blending 2 different surface textures with noise to reduce the tiling appearance. This guy is an amateur, I think he is researching or talking to people with more knowledge, but that is just a feeling and I’ve learned some things from his series.
I’m currently working though his episode 7 on materials. He’s using a landscape material height nodes to auto fill in a river bed, but since the rest of the landscape relies on landscape layer painting, I can see it saves effort, but I would probably just manually paint this with one of the landscape layers, But it is good as a demo on how you would start to set up a height based landscape material.
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Yeah, that's not too terribly difficult to set up. It's basically scattering and rotating the UVs across the mesh using a voronoi pattern, and blending the edges together using blurs and/or noise.
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on how a UE material should be constructed, there are other ways that I see coming out of Megascans. Megascans puts some of the following components in a “Presets“ folder.
Textures used to be placed in the material. Now I am seeing texture place holders used, Several material functions that can be reference by multiple materials, and the textures themselves are being placed in the material instances. The MI is what makes changing material setting convenient.
This tutorial series I am following, I said the guy is an ametuer, but he is certainly talking to experts in the know, as he is constructing a material which blends 2 textures togethe, say 2 variations of dirt then introducing noise to break up tiling.
And episode 8, he just covered the basics of virtual texture streaming. I’m not mind boggled, but impressed. This is where you have a landscape of one material, you introduce a rock mesh with a base where the base looks different than the landscape, and in the rock mesh material you can link that to landscape material texture, based on the exact position on the landscape the rock is located, so the landscape material is transferred onto the bottom of the rock mesh and blends with it up to a threshold you set.
Textures used to be placed in the material. Now I am seeing texture place holders used, Several material functions that can be reference by multiple materials, and the textures themselves are being placed in the material instances. The MI is what makes changing material setting convenient.
This tutorial series I am following, I said the guy is an ametuer, but he is certainly talking to experts in the know, as he is constructing a material which blends 2 textures togethe, say 2 variations of dirt then introducing noise to break up tiling.
And episode 8, he just covered the basics of virtual texture streaming. I’m not mind boggled, but impressed. This is where you have a landscape of one material, you introduce a rock mesh with a base where the base looks different than the landscape, and in the rock mesh material you can link that to landscape material texture, based on the exact position on the landscape the rock is located, so the landscape material is transferred onto the bottom of the rock mesh and blends with it up to a threshold you set.
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Contrary to popular opinion, 
I am starting to make digital progress on my project. Today I finished figuring out and executed the creation of a pawn with the ability to toggle walk-run, and zoom from 3rd person to 1st, and then I migrated it from the tutorial project to the actual project. Migration can be a real pain...
Yes, there is an actual project in work.
I am starting to make digital progress on my project. Today I finished figuring out and executed the creation of a pawn with the ability to toggle walk-run, and zoom from 3rd person to 1st, and then I migrated it from the tutorial project to the actual project. Migration can be a real pain...Yes, there is an actual project in work.
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Nice!
The only thing I’d suggest is that you desaturate and maybe lighten your dirt texture a bit. Earth is usually (though not always) that bold only when it’s wet.
Edit: though to be fair, this might be more about me pushing my personal taste of things, rather than giving any advice. You do what you like here.
The only thing I’d suggest is that you desaturate and maybe lighten your dirt texture a bit. Earth is usually (though not always) that bold only when it’s wet.
Edit: though to be fair, this might be more about me pushing my personal taste of things, rather than giving any advice. You do what you like here.
I always appreciate your advice. What you see is far from anything finished. Right now it’s just slapped down to provide a starting point.Nice!
The only thing I’d suggest is that you desaturate and maybe lighten your dirt texture a bit. Earth is usually (though not always) that bold only when it’s wet.
Edit: though to be fair, this might be more about me pushing my personal taste of things, rather than giving any advice. You do what you like here.
I always appreciate your advice. What you see is far from anything finished. Right now it’s just slapped down to provide a starting point.
Post up a shot when you start laying out some foliage. I wanna see it.
Post has been edited See end
@Renzatic, good ole buddy.
For the last month, maybe 2, I have been arguing with myself over which landscape material I should be using in my project. I thought I had one picked out but then ran into another that I really liked the guys textures. However it only has 3 textures, and while I could get by, I think a landscape should have 4-5 textures for variety in the landscape part. I've been playing with adding 1 or 2 more textures to material, which is not that hard, but it's possible I've overlooked something.
Anyway that's not the reason for the post, but it could be related to the issue, me editing materials.
There is one texture I really want to use it's a Rooty ground texture I used back when I did the Forest Road. When I insert this into the material and then apply it, it looks bleached out. And honestly when I used it in the original Forest Road project it looked like a nice chocolate brown, but if you look at the Albedo.jpg image it does not look as nearly as dark.
So I've tried playing with the material. This particular material does not have settings to add colors from a palette, but it does have darken settings. Yes they do darken but they also tend to make the image look more like night and monotone, instead of a richer darker brown. The other issue is that there is green weeds growing on it, and when I apply a color like dark brown to the entire image, this adversely effects the green in the weeds.
So I suspect there is a way to do this via a photo editing program. I almost started an Affinity Photo trial, but first I played with Graphic Converter a Mac program I usually use to change the type of photo such as .jpg to .gif, but it also has brightness and contrast setting, and so far my results are not that great.
I figured it would help I picked your brain first. I watched a video on
Dodge, Burn, and Sponge: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/301196403/. This might be what I need to do, but would like to get your opinion.
Please take a look and tell me what you think. These are 2k.jpg images.
original (megascans designator: tb3hfg2g_2K_Albedo)
My edits so far- not impressed...
What I'd really like is dirt and maybe roots with less red in them and I'm happy with the green plants, I'd just like to make the dirt and roots look more like a rich, chocolate brown. And see the roots look like they are on the dark side, this is because I have been applying bright and contrast to the entire image, not isolating just the say the roots or just the dirt and working on that alone.
Your advice would be appreaciated!
Update:
I went back and looked at the original material and damn, It is not chocolate brown, and the roots are gray.
This is not my goal.
The Rooty ground is where the roots are. There is grass painted around the roots.
There are seperate twigs scattered in this area too.
@Renzatic, good ole buddy.
For the last month, maybe 2, I have been arguing with myself over which landscape material I should be using in my project. I thought I had one picked out but then ran into another that I really liked the guys textures. However it only has 3 textures, and while I could get by, I think a landscape should have 4-5 textures for variety in the landscape part. I've been playing with adding 1 or 2 more textures to material, which is not that hard, but it's possible I've overlooked something.
Anyway that's not the reason for the post, but it could be related to the issue, me editing materials.
There is one texture I really want to use it's a Rooty ground texture I used back when I did the Forest Road. When I insert this into the material and then apply it, it looks bleached out. And honestly when I used it in the original Forest Road project it looked like a nice chocolate brown, but if you look at the Albedo.jpg image it does not look as nearly as dark.
So I've tried playing with the material. This particular material does not have settings to add colors from a palette, but it does have darken settings. Yes they do darken but they also tend to make the image look more like night and monotone, instead of a richer darker brown. The other issue is that there is green weeds growing on it, and when I apply a color like dark brown to the entire image, this adversely effects the green in the weeds.
So I suspect there is a way to do this via a photo editing program. I almost started an Affinity Photo trial, but first I played with Graphic Converter a Mac program I usually use to change the type of photo such as .jpg to .gif, but it also has brightness and contrast setting, and so far my results are not that great.
I figured it would help I picked your brain first.
I watched a video onDodge, Burn, and Sponge: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/301196403/. This might be what I need to do, but would like to get your opinion.
Please take a look and tell me what you think. These are 2k.jpg images.
original (megascans designator: tb3hfg2g_2K_Albedo)
My edits so far- not impressed...
Your advice would be appreaciated!
Update:
I went back and looked at the original material and damn, It is not chocolate brown, and the roots are gray.
This is not my goal.
The Rooty ground is where the roots are. There is grass painted around the roots.
There are seperate twigs scattered in this area too.
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Thought the people in this thread would appreciate this, a friend-of-a-friend's work ...
This is from Silicon Valley/Hollywood/Graphics Central while I'm up in the backwoods hollar trying to figure out how to draw a tree- a trunk, some sticks and scatter some leaves all over it..
So this: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zDv3gd is pretty amazing. We are approaching, if not already there the photo realistic animation of human beings. I know that they spent a pretty penny, turning old farts into youthful versions of themselves, and this may still be somewhat of a challenge because you are not creating just something that might pass for human, but something that emulates a specific human, but you can be assured they will get there.
Unreal Engne/Metascans now has meta humans, and maybe this is related to your link:
MetaHuman | Realistic Person Creator - Unreal Engine
Create photorealistic digital humans, fully rigged and complete with hair and clothing, in minutes with Unreal Engine's free online MetaHuman app.
www.unrealengine.com
You can see the image, but it does not hit you until you see the animation of the eyes.
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Your advice would be appreaciated!
Instead of dodging and burning the hell out of the entire image by hand, I'd suggest using a Levels adjustment layer over it, tweak the sliders until they're capturing only the points that are showing any spikes on the histogram, then slap a Hue/Saturation/Value adjustment underneath the levels filter, and tweak the colors to taste. You'll end up with something like this...
Making levels adjustments boil away the dead color space in your image, giving you more saturated, balanced results. It's something you should do with every albedo texture you have in your scene (with some tweaks to taste, of course.)
And speaking of trees, I've done a TON of work on my GeoTrees recently, and have reached a point where they're fairly realistic, and can be exported out to an external engine like UE without any problems. The only downside is that they don't animate yet, but hopefully soon, that won't be a problem anymore.
You can find them here. Version 0.675 is the latest version.
blenderartists.org
If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask either here or over at BA.
You can find them here. Version 0.675 is the latest version.
GeoTree: Procedural Trees in Geometry Nodes
It’s a little problem I’ve had to deal with since day one, and it’s either rereared it’s head with the addition of Stick Power, or I’ve just noticed again. I’m once again facing down the usual overgrown offshoots at the extremities of the trees, and I can’t seem to fix it without overly...
blenderartists.org
If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask either here or over at BA.
