[fv]

I am playing with the thinSSS_treeLeaf material supplied with v2.

I see that roughness and reflection settings are set to 1 and black to make sure that sss values are dominant over any other reflection effects on the surface of the material.
Now, when I render these leaves on a tree the leaves become very dark. When you change the material preview from leaf to default you can also see this effect happening. To refelct the rays back to the viewer when you are rendering a tree I adjusted the assymetry of the sss properties. Then the leaves render more vivid but also a lot less transparent making the trees darker behind the leaves.

Has someone a more effective way to render leaves in combination with sss that also gives good results in the overall tree rendering ?
When I raise the roughness from 1 to lets say 50 the leaves seem to burn or highlight to much.

I wish I had the time to experiment more..
Francois

[fv]

As I did experiment a bit more I found out to render trees with the sss thin leaf material its best to adjust the second surface properties bdsf for roughness and weight to also get a bit more reflection (brighter and more vivid color) from the leaves.

[tom]

Have you also seen the manual about it?

[fv]

tx Tom, I tried to follow the manual. A single leaf works out fine but an Evermotion tree seems a little more difficult.

The tree leaves do not all have the normals the same direction. I get the trees to render ok now. But I wonder in what sense a single sided leaf still has a different look on either side. I can set the assymetry to 0 to make rays scatter evenly in both ways. But the extra bsdf might make the leaf look different depending on the normals. I think I need an extra bsdf to have some kind of surface reflection to get a more natural look.

I understand its a bit difficult to help out here without examples of rendered trees.

I think you should let me experiment a bit more, I will post some results later on.
Francois

[Richard]

Funny I'm one of those who just seems to refuse to open the manual - think I'm going to have to with the thin SSS, took me about 2 hours of mucking around to find out the darn SSS settings are now on the longer form material editor!!

Francois - keep us posted with your results mate I really look forward to learning something from you on this one!! I'm a bit lost with SSS even after opening the manual to workout my recent issue with the editor on this one!

[fv]

I think Mihai wrote wisely on my evermotion tree questions to start with a simple clipmap and colormap. Then move on to transparancy and then to sss if needed.

The Evermotion trees are nice, not perfect but you get a lot for 120 euro. I find the sss settings to slow down rendering to unacceptable renderingtimes. But if you like its best to use the sssthinleaf example material by NL provided with v2. I just changed the image maps and was ready in a few minutes with a good sss leaf for my Evermotion trees. But you have to change the material preview scene to leaf to see your sss properly. The default scene will drive you mad .... My evermotion trees do not like sss very much though, the leaves for about 20% change in color or look weird.

I thought the material editor was buggy but it just crashes a lot when there is a rendering going in Maxwell. Rendering a material preview while rendering a job in Maxwell will crash the editor or Studio.

I think to have my trees render in most Archviz jobs we have here I am fine with the simple solution, a clipmap and colormap, maybe a little transparancy. If you are in close-up wih your trees sss will give better results. The Evermotion trees begin to look good at ten or 20 meters. In close up the leaves are slightly too big to cover for the slight lack of leaves.

[Richard]

Mate I eventually got a hang of Onyx! Does an amazing job!! Cant believe what one can create with it! Took me a while as I just couldn't get the leaf plates big enough! Then realised when it say trunk height in metres forget about that. Most trees here have a trunk height of about 8 metres, in Onyx for this tree you would have to start around 4.

Just an amazing application!!

[fv]

tx just bought Onyx broad leaves.

[numerobis]

Mate I eventually got a hang of Onyx! Does an amazing job!! Cant believe what one can create with it! Took me a while as I just couldn't get the leaf plates big enough! Then realised when it say trunk height in metres forget about that. Most trees here have a trunk height of about 8 metres, in Onyx for this tree you would have to start around 4.

Just an amazing application!!

is it possible to save a tree model with textured (clipped) curved leaves? i can only use single plates with textures...

[Richard]

Hmmm?

Mate actually I haven't tried to do anything but single plate leaves, anymore would drag my machine to a hault!

[big K]

is it possible to save a tree model with textured (clipped) curved leaves? i can only use single plates with textures...

yes this is possible in Onyx.

[numerobis]

ahh ok... i've found the button! it works!
thanks!

[fv]

some more tests,
http://homepage.mac.com/fillieverhoeven ... index.html

I replied in the Evermotion thread I started a bit longer.
Francois

[fv]

more tests,
http://homepage.mac.com/fillieverhoeven ... ndex3.html

now I think I got sss with single sided polygons working. Its not easy because you not only have the settings for 2 bsdf's, 1 for the sss and one for the surface properties but also the images to adjust to the right color and vividness and transparancies. You can easily mix something up or get confused on what does what really. Once you have read the manual several times and have tested for a few hours its not all that difficult anymore.

Francois