Speed Tree(Tutorial)

[Music] okay so i've opened up a blank scene in the generation editor i'm going to right click on the tree go to add geometry to selected and we're going to add a trunk so currently the height of the trunk is at 25 feet that's a little bit too tall for us so i'm going to drop this back to something around 7.5 feet and it's always a good idea to use the the human there as a gauge for the the scale of the tree i'm going to go to the skin tab and this is where we change the radius of the tree but there's this little blue line here i'm just going to lift this right up and that just basically means that the trunk has got the same radius from the bottom to the top so if i was just to scale this down so you can see it so so basically just means that the trunk isn't losing any radius as it moves upwards so it's looking very basic right now we're going to go over to the displacement tab and we're going to add in some flares before we do that i'm going to click control 2 on the keyboard which takes us into wireframe mode let's increase the radius flare the height i think something around that cool it's a little bit of pinching there let's add some angle yeah it's not looking too bad that looks cool what we're going to do now is we're going to split this trunk into two so we get two branches going off of this one trunk so i'm going to go over to the skin tab and this is where we do it under the splits uh tab here i'm just gonna drag the chance all the way up to one which splits our trunk into two it's a little bit of a weird way to do it but you sort of get used to it the more times you do it i think what we can do now is we can work on adding some roots to the bottom of the trunk so i'm going to do that i'm going to right click add geometry to selected decorations and we're going to add some roots that's looking a little bit mental we're going to add the roots to the trunk rather not to the tree so on the roots we'll go to i think we've got a generation first i'm just going to up this to something like six under the boundaries i'll type zero for the first one for the last looks like that like that which looks a little bit weird under the skin tab i'm going to reduce this upper scale should stop all that weird stretching decrease the lower scale just a touch as well slide that back down something around there under the generation tab i'm going to move the position of these roots downwards so in the minus just like that i think we have too many of them right now so i'm just gonna decrease this to something like two and three yeah i think that looks okay and the root twigs we'll go to the segments tab and they're looking a little bit primitive right now so let's add some radial segments so radial segments are these segments these edges here and length segments are these segments so one two three across so we'll increase the the radial segments first i'm just going to drag that up increase the length segments as well it's not looking too bad that looks okay let's add some branches to these splits on the trunk i'm going to right click add geometry and add big branches let's go back into wireframe mode control 2 control 1 if you want to go out of wireframe mode and sometimes you've got to sort of click it twice can be a little bit stubborn okay so where this says mode i'm going to change this to absolute and during this course we're going to be using the two modes which are absolute and absolute steps and that just really helps define this type of tree i think we'll turn the roots and twigs off just so we can see what's happening under the number we'll increase this to two so we've got two of them there what we also need to do is go to the generation tab and we need to change this extend parent option to any and that just basically means that uh these branches that we create here will continue from where the branches or the trunk left off that's a really really important option this is something usually that you'd want to take in most cases and as we're going to be building up this hierarchy we'll keep ticking this extend parent otherwise if you don't tick that branches will be sort of spawned off of these branches i'm going to show you just as an example and you can see that we've just got a sort of a hole but if i was to click extend parent then it continues where it left off let's delete that okay on the big branches let's go to spine and i'm just going to increase the absolute value until we hit around i think around 18 feet just looking at this sort of marker here i think what we can also do is change the starting angle of these two branches that are coming out of the split trunk and the way we do that is not by controlling the start angle on the big branches it's by going to the trunk and under skin you can change the spread here just like that and like that and we sort of want to bring these branches kind of into the middle go back over to the spine tab and i'm just going to increase those just so the starting angle is nice and sort of close to the middle i think we can introduce some late a little bit of noise there just helps create these sort of really jerk pieces yeah it's looking pretty cool let's add some twists as well so under the shape tab just add a little bit of twist not too much as it will start to deform i think around one is fine that's looking pretty cool just gonna have a little mess around with the gravity as well yeah i think a little bit of gravity helps let's take the start angle back in yeah i'd say that's looking pretty nice let's just i think we can increase the or decrease the starting angle like that i kind of want to create this nice sort of arched kind of top let's drop back the gravity i think it's going a little bit too crazy there yeah i think that's looking decent we'll also change the uh the radius of the thickness of this of these branches so they're sort of equally as thick at the ends so where it says absolute and we drag this blue line let's just drag that up something around there so it's consistently thick under the spine tab i think we'll just increase a little bit more lateness there yeah i think that's looking pretty good okay next branch level up i'll right click on these current branches i'll go to add geometry to selected and we'll select big branches this time round we're going to go to the generation tab and we're going to change the mode to absolute whoops well absolute steps rather sorry let's increase the count to i think three gives us a little bit more let's increase the per step count to something like five it's way too many of them and they're also starting towards the bottom we want to shift all of these up we'll go to the position i'm just going to slide that right up something around there it's looking all right let's change the spread so they're all sort of branching at different angles there and as always we've got holes here so we need to use the extend parent option so let's tick any there you go we'll also change the thickness at the ends of these branches let's keep them reasonably thick it's on the skin tab absolute let's just lift that up something around there and you can see here we've got this nice arc that's looking pretty decent i think we can actually push these up a little bit more as well i think they're just they're starting to lower and just to let you guys know i've got my reference on my right screw right screen so i'm constantly checking that so i'd advise having two monitors if you can i just have your reference on the other screen so you're always looking it's the best way to hit your target okay so let's increase the position let's make those higher yeah i think that's looking okay let's take a look at this spread yeah i think something around that will do i think that's looking pretty good so the spine tab will increase the gravity ever so slightly and will also add a little bit of noise and lateness like so like that let's also increase the length so on spine all the way at the top let's delete all of these points hit delete i'm just gonna shift this up a little bit like that and we'll also increase the absolute length i think just to push those a little bit further i'm also gonna decrease the starting angle let's decrease the alignment just add that little bit of gravity there and i'm being a little bit fussy about this but i think i've pushed these a little bit too high up there just watching out for my first and last as well just having a slide around with this just until i get the right result and like i said i'm always watching my reference on the other screen just referring back to it yeah i think that's looking okay let's make some adjustment to the the length i kind of want the the length of these branches to be longer sort of at the bottom than they are at the top so under the spine tab which says absolute so where these branches are starting which is sort of here represented by this point and where they're sort of growing towards the end is represented by this point so i'm just going to lift this up just like that and you can see what would happen here if i lift that up so i want them to kind of meet at the same kind of level i'm also going to turn this down to about 0.02 so they're kind of all going towards one level there under the skin tab i'm just going to drop the radius the end of those yeah i think something like that looks cool so just before we move on to adding another tier of branches i wanted to quickly stop and just take a look at the reference image so this next step is probably the most defining part of the tree it's what sort of gives it this really nice unique flat top like canopy look so you can see here that we've got our nice arc that's looking really cool but then it's that next level up where the branches are getting really squished which gives it this flat top look so let's move on and do that and as always uh keep your reference on your other screen and just always be looking back and forth okay so we're going to copy these branches paste them and drop it on top i'm going to take the gravity and i'm just going to move the gravity to about 0.06 something around there i'm just going to delete the force i've already made we're going to click on the forces we're going to add planar i'm just going to increase the strength up to something like 5. and you'll see that that's done nothing and that's because we need to assign the force that we've just made and we need to assign it to the allow forces tab so tick that so that gives us that kind of look that's really cool let's also add in i think some twist around two work quite nicely for me it's looking cool and we kind of need to be careful about branches here this can be a little bit dangerous because in the reference image there's not really any branches that are going downwards they're all sort of going upwards so that's something to consider usually what i do is i'll sort of mess around with a roll to make sure they're all pointing upwards oops let's go back yeah we can go there mess around with the sweep as well yeah and now they're sort of pointing upwards a little bit better we're going to be nice and efficient with the next level of branches we're going to copy and paste again drop it on top it gives us something that looks like that it's pretty cool i'm just going to control one just so i can see where we're at it's looking pretty decent i might even increase the length of these switch back to wireframe mode so you can see how far out these are going sort of playing around with the settings just a little bit add a little bit of twist a little bit more to this rather and just be careful of your uh topology make sure it's not warping you can get some really weird artifacts from using this twisting modifier i'm just going to drop this lateness down yeah i think that's looking cool control one i'm switching back some really nice interesting look there i just noticed that uh these branches here actually the ones before maybe are a little bit too thin i think they're a little bit too thin so i'm just gonna thicken them up a touch just at the end there you go like that and you can kind of see as i move this down we start to lose more branches on the edges so yeah i'm just going to lift that up something around there it's looking a little bit better here that we can do something similar like that would make them nice and thick these next ones will do exactly the same you can increase the thickness of these as well yeah i think that's looking a little bit better it's looking a little bit more sturdy okay so let's copy and paste that drop it on top wait for it to load and it looks like this which is not so great so i think if we go to the generation tab i'm going to type in let's put this to zero and i'm just going to mess around with the first and last yeah about 0.9 i think these are way too long right now so let's go to the spine tab and i'm just going to drop this down i'm also going to turn this to actually we can leave this at 0.02 that's fine 0.25 0.2 something around that so a lot shorter cool ctrl 2 to go into wireframe mode and i think we have too many whoops not 22 2 2 2. so we got that happening and maybe we've gone a little bit too last with the radial segments okay that's looking all right and we just want to add a load of noise to make them look like sort of lightning strikes or drop off the gravity as well i don't think we need that go down and increase the late there you go so it's starting to get more like lightning type branches still quite cool it's got a generation i don't think we need this many i think two by two is fine we've had to load a moment there you go that's looking pretty good i think the overall it depends on what type of tree you're trying to sort of emulate i mean in this particular case we're we're going with sort of more of a more of a an arc based tree some of them do look like this some of them are really flat but if uh it was the case where you thought well maybe this is looking too flat overall and you could just lift this branch upwards so let's click on the branch and when i'm on it i'm going to right click go to manipulator and translate and that just brings up the translation controls just for the one branch which is really cool if i zoom out a little bit i'm just going to lift that up just a touch so now we're starting to get more of a that arc that we were talking about let's undo it so like so i can show you the difference lift it up just a touch and it just changes the silhouette ever so slightly something around there i think is uh looking quite cool let's go back to these branches i'm just taking a look at the starting angles i'm wondering if we can just sort of widen them a little bit seeing how that looks that's looking pretty cool yeah i think that's looking kind of nice it's got some nice tears there then right at the end i think we'll add some more branches and just each time you do this make sure you've got the extended pair into any lad even more big branches like that then these branches will have twigs coming off of them but just bear in mind that each time you're adding this you're increasing the uh the total polygon count like exponentially so something to think about and also on whenever i'm dealing with branches and twigs right at the end of the hierarchy i usually drop all the segments down to one because right now we've got 239 000 polygons there that's a lot so if we watch this number as i reduce this to one one one one that's a little bit more sensible i'll do the same for these as well not 41 that will probably result in a crash okay let's check out how many polygons we've got so we've got a million so far it seems about right you could probably be a little bit more efficient and reduce them furthermore but i think for now that's fine i'm just going around the model i'm just checking it out see what the whole thing looks like i'm looking at my reference as well i'm just comparing and each time you do this you're going to get a different result you're never going to get exactly the same result that's also a good thing because it means you've got lots of nice different variations to use in your scene and let's say for example we wanted to cover these sort of areas up in here then we could go back down we could decrease the starting angle like so so we're still getting getting that nice arc but closing the gap just a little bit that's not looking bad if you wanted to you could individually scale these up i think that's looking pretty cool overall then we can move on now and do the leaves i'm going to make a slight adjustment to these branches here so during the course we've been using the absolute steps mode so we're going to change that to absolute steps and just sort of keep that running throughout wait for that to load let's view it again it looks pretty weird all of the uh twigs or branches are sort of pointing downwards we don't want that we still want them randomly going in different directions and we've also forgotten to extend the parents so i'll take that to any and that will make a pretty big difference there there you go and as we've done with every other branch we've used the extend parent that's a really important option okay i'm going to select this branch and we're going to add leaves to this one this one and this one start with this one first i'm going to right click on this node i'm going to go to add geometry to selected and i'm going to use leaf mesh like that currently the size of the leaves are pretty huge so we're going to need to turn those down but before we do so i'm going to load in my textures for these leaves and i've downloaded these from the speed tree store they come with the the tree models which is really cool and i've gone into so i can show you guys the acacia savannah one leaves four front two and i've taken this a cassia front two and that should also load in all of the other texture maps as well the only one it didn't load in was the opacity so i'm just gonna browse for that opacity b and if you guys have your own textures load them in i recommend getting a hold of the speed tree packs because they save you so much time i mean whenever i'm moving on to different projects it makes my life so much easier if i'm able to use an asset that's being developed by someone else it just saves me that extra bit of effort okay so once we've done that we've got this a casio forefront too but it's not assigned to the leaves so the way we do this is go to the material tab on the leaves and where it says material i'm just going to assign the accasio front too so right now these leaves are pretty huge and they kind of dwarf the tree they're making the tree look a lot smaller so this really does help uh add scale to the tree when we scale these leaves right down and i think uh a size that i went with was about 0.2 which is really tiny something around that let's go to the orientation tab and i think we're just going to align these a little bit more so they're kind of facing they're all sort of pointing towards the end of the branches we're also going to add some variants when you see this plus minus button this is sort of where you add your variation or variance so if i type something like 0.2 we're going to get a variation or variance of 0.536 and plus 0.2 upwards and downwards so that's not looking too bad you can have a mess around with fold as well just see what that's doing lots of variants in there as well point two slide up and down on the face see where we're looking there just going to come from above looks like they're kind of pointing upwards that one does add some variation in there as well i'm just going to drop that down that's looking pretty decent let's also increase the frequency i'm going to put this to something like 12. we're going to go up pretty high with this maybe something around 36 or something to really get all of those leaves going up the branches and because they're smaller we'll need more of them that's looking okay and before we uh add more of these leaves i think it'd be a good idea to press ctrl two so we can see the geometry and i'm just gonna hit z so i can reframe and then that allows me to zoom in so i zoom into these leaves and they're perfectly straight which is not good so if i can just get this right in the viewport there you go i'm going to turn off these uh branches beforehand so i can see what's going on i'm just clicking h to disable the nodes disable all of them we're going to go to the mesh tab i haven't got that open right now so i'm going to go to assets and meshes you can also access this via i think via the material yeah here so when you've got the leaf selected you can select mesh and you can tick any for this we'll go back to the materials and there's also an option called meshes where it says none and then you can edit the mesh this brings up this mesh window here which is really cool i'm going to drag this all the way into the corner these points so we're getting full coverage of the leaf if i was to do this here then the leaf would be getting cut off so we don't want that and we also have to remember that we're using opacity maps so the opacity is defining or the opacity map is defining where this leaf is getting cut out so it's absolutely fine if this mesh is larger than the actual leaf okay so we want to create some subdivisions so i'm going to create one here one here i think one here and one here i think something around that just so we're getting some nice even spacing that just allows us to bend the leaf and then before we close this window i'm going to send this over to high medium and low and now you can see that our geometry has been updated okay so we've got a higher subdivision leaf we need to bend the leaf now so under orientation let's go to the deformation tab i'm just going to start curling these leaves maybe did that a little bit too much yeah something like that i think looks nice let's add some variants in here again maybe like point one so they're all getting different core values there's also this fold option this kind of only really works if you've got an edge running through the middle of the the leaf but we don't so we're going to leave that as is okay let's press ctrl 1 again and sort of viewing the leaves here so they've got a nice amount of curl on them we've seriously increased the polygonal count so our polygons are at 493 000 tries so around 245 000 polygons which is not too bad but it's it's getting quite dense let's turn everything else back on just so we can see it and it's still looking way too sparse so let's increase this to something like 36 so we've got a lot of them that's looking a lot better let's copy and paste this leaf mesh here and we're going to add it to these branches as well but before we do that i'm going to decrease the number i'm going to do something around 12. otherwise it may take quite a long time to load let's wait for that to load it's looking pretty good it's added a nice amount of density there we've got twigs as well so let's add the leaf mesh to there and this is also the reason why i left the leaf subdivision to triangles because uh in order to bend the leaves they need to be triangles not quads whereas everything else in the scene can be quadrilated okay so that's looking pretty cool i think we've got too many at the ends of the twigs we only want something like maybe four wait for that to load a moment hopefully it doesn't crash good time to drink my coffee i'm just going to pause the video a moment until this loads well hey that loaded okay let's go back to the brighter side let's add some bark material to the branches i'm going to select all the branches here under the material tab where it says material we'll click import new material i'll browse to my bark folder which again is in the acacia savannah1 folder and i'll load in this part too and you might be thinking oh this is really annoying that he's that he's using other people's assets but like i said earlier it just saves so much time it's that one less thing that i have to do which speeds up my workflow so if you can get hold of other people's assets then i recommend using them okay so that's looking pretty good overall if we need to uh adjust the material like for the leaves for example we could go into the casio forefront too we could click on the color for example and we could just drop down the brightness like that we could go to the bark we can also drop down the brightness here but i don't really worry about this too much because i don't do any of my shading in speed tree i do all the shading in another 3d software package yeah i think something around that and that is more or less the entire tree done i didn't really do much more than that i'm just going to show you my example scene over here so if you take a look at the one we've done and my example scene they're pretty similar there's not too much difference there and you guys are welcome to jump in this scene and and use this this model here so the only other thing we need to do now is export this asset and break it down into different parts so for example we're going to export the branches out and the leaves as two separate objs okay so let's export these assets out so i'll select all of the branches first and the trunk we're going to save that out as one obj and then we're going to save the leaves out as another obj so i've got a file export selected as mesh we'll select this wavefront obj and on my hard drive it's on an ssd i've created a folder called digital assets library and this is a folder ideally that shouldn't be moved it should always remain in the same place so i've created this folder called digital assets library inside i've got a follow called trees if i had other types of assets in here let's say for example they were kitchen appliances then i created four local kitchen appliances within trees i put african if there are other continents then we could put something like europe or whatever uh and it just basically means that everything stays really nice and organized so if we're working on different projects in the future we know exactly where to go so let's go into the african folder all these other folders i've down uh the trees that i've downloaded from the speedtree cinema library and they're really good i've created one folder called a cassia canopy jump inside there i've also created a folder called leaves and bark they're empty i've created another folder called obj and this is where we're going to save our meshes out to so you can see in here i've already created a two different obj's one called a cassia canopy one main and one called leaves so i'm just going to call this one just as a test but i'd recommend using this type of naming convention i'm going to call this test underscore main underscore one i'm going to click save i usually skip the texture save so that's not saving out any textures i choose hierarchy zero to all swap y and z and set the scale to one so just wait for that to export that's done and then we'll select the leaves we'll go to file export selected as mesh and we'll call this one leaves exactly the same options click export so if you guys are interested in learning a little bit more about uh the process uh between speed tree and houdini then i've got a course called creating atmospheric environment which is a really great opportunity to learn these sort of ins and outs of the entire workflow so we showed you how to model a tree and speed tree we're going to show you the rest of it so the shading look development the rendering instant instancing scattering uh redshift proxy so there's a hell of a lot of information in the next course um and it'd be great to have you guys over

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Id: 0BgbdVotv-8

Length: 46min 0sec (2760 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021