[aitraaz]

what I usually do is converting all the leaves in rough geometry that looks like the texture's outline and then map it with a plain diffuse.

sounds nice, but how the crack do you convert all the leaves from opacity mapped quads to rough geometry?!

[rivoli]

how the crack do you convert all the leaves from opacity mapped quads to rough geometry?!

there's a very useful script by John Connel that saves a lot of time and it's a great help. I basically do this: model a raw mesh over a xfrog's leaf texture following its shape (usually a low poly one, but anyway it's much better to have more polys than alphas), then apply the map as diffuse, adjust it to fit the new mesh and collapse the stack in an editable mesh. once I have my new geometric leaf and it looks ok, I run the script that automatically replace the xfrog's leaves (on a id basis) with the new ones. you may have to play a bit with pivots and stuff, but it's really worth it. I had a plant that took 2 mins and a half to render and after the conversion only 38 seconds, and the two of them looked almost identical.

here you can find the script:

http://www.joconnell.com/view_stuff.php?view=4

don't know how maxwell will handle clipmaps, it may be that it renders just as fast, but with any other raytracer it makes a lot of difference.

[daros]

Thanks Tom and A-Team!

[aitraaz]

how the crack do you convert all the leaves from opacity mapped quads to rough geometry?!

there's a very useful script by John Connel that saves a lot of time and it's a great help. I basically do this: model a raw mesh over a xfrog's leaf texture following its shape (usually a low poly one, but anyway it's much better to have more polys than alphas), then apply the map as diffuse, adjust it to fit the new mesh and collapse the stack in an editable mesh. once I have my new geometric leaf and it looks ok, I run the script that automatically replace the xfrog's leaves (on a id basis) with the new ones. you may have to play a bit with pivots and stuff, but it's really worth it. I had a plant that took 2 mins and a half to render and after the conversion only 38 seconds, and the two of them looked almost identical.

here you can find the script:

http://www.joconnell.com/view_stuff.php?view=4

don't know how maxwell will handle clipmaps, it may be that it renders just as fast, but with any other raytracer it makes a lot of difference.

cool, will try it, cheery

[VisualImpact]

Tom,
has the vignetting problem been solved.

[rivoli]

will try it

it doesn't always work, and it can be awfully tedious, but anyway.. hope you'll find it at least a bit useful.