[Released] dForce Thicket Shapes
Oso3D
Posts: 14,888
Welcome to another Thicket product! This time it hit me that some basic shapes would provide a great basis for generated foliage. You can easily create hedges, or topiary, or other items. Also, the included materials are compatible with the other Thicket products (and vice versa), so you can play around with weird and different styles. Or even use your own leaf and bark assets to create your own look.
In doing outdoor and somewhat outdoor scenes, I keep feeling the lack of some easy greenery to put in the middle ground, so I don't end up with a character sitting in the midst of a giant open space with mountains a mile away. Or struggle to integrate HDRI elements close up with my figure. Putting a hedge or vined wall helps break up that background interestingly.
Finally, with thicket cone, you can make credible fir tree.
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Comments
Very creative! I like seeing the things you come up with.
One of the fun things about thicket products is that you can take the materials and apply them to anything that's dForce. The Thicket Shapes doc outlines some of the ways to do this.
For example, here's https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-hair-for-big-cat-2 with redone hair textures...
Any plans to do a G8F Thicket or can the current materials from g8M be used on it?
I’m debating. I’m torn between an idea for a generic base that can fit most figures, basically a confirming outfit.
The benefit is autofit and the ability to adjust the mesh to generate dhairs better. The downside is the uh would be different which makes it impossible for people to use existing body textures... but I’m not sure it matters.
Still, good chance of something
If someone wanted to get started learning about this, and making other leaves and twigs and such and such to go with it, would this be the logical one to buy first? Or do I need more than one, at start? Are you theoretically open to people making leaf sets and such, or are you still exploring what you want to do with it too much?
There's really no way I can justify telling people they can't buy this product, learn from it, and apply that to other stuff, make their own plants and branches and leaves. And hey, that's cool with me.
It'd be nice if you said somewhere 'this was inspired by Oso3D,' if you feel up for it.
I haven't dug into how it works yet - I figured it would be an add-on for your thicket products, not a stand-alone. :( I don't want to put out a competitive product, it's an awesome idea, and I didn't have it first. :)
For whatever is worth, I don't think the underlying textures of the character matter overly much and, if somebody wanted to use a character's skin with the thicket growing out of it, they could always hide the outfit surface (assuming it is form-fitting, obviously). Also, if you are branching out (unintended, and now I hate myself a little bit) into clothing, I would love to see a cloak made of leaves or ivy. A friend of mine played a ranger with one of those, and the image was striking enough to stick into my mind--and the drapable circle in the latest product certainly looks good over that statue.
Yeah, there are definitely options with the underlying figure. With Thicket G8M and Dog, there are options like 'everything is invisible except the eyes emit light' which produces an interesting effect. You could also have a figure with stuff growing out of it.
dForce Hair beards and hair can also be made into leaves and whatnot.
An example of using materials on other dforce. This is https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-virgin-hair-for-genesis-8-females with, first, materials from https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-thicket-for-genesis-8-male , the second from thicket shapes.
Can you apply the materials to anything or does it have to be dforce?
Sure; if you have a tree product that has transmapped leaves, you could use thicket shape leaf textures for it. I think you just need to copy/paste over. Same with bark pattern of this and the other thicket products.
The bark patterns are designed around long slender objects, so it might not look great around more squat stuff, but I think you could get decent results with, say, a Carrara tree and these materials.
I'm having fun playing with this.
Hi, i have some questions:
1. how can i get the result of single branches like in Promo-image 1 and 4?
Id didn't find such an option.
2. when i click on the green shaders i only get a green flat object, no leaves. How can i change this?
Sometimes it works and sometimes not.
3. For what are the Thicked Shapes Blackout and Shadowout? The seem to have no function.
Thanks
Thicket shapes are primitives from which dForce Hair is grown. The dForce Hair then has settings to make it look like leaves (or branches).
The first step is to add the appropriate thicket prop. The prop consists of a shape and an attached hair object.
Blackout is used when selecting the root shape; it turns it a flat, absorbing black. This helps create a shadowed 'core' to the bush, so light doesn't get through; the benefit is that you don't need as much leaf density to create the effect of a dense bush/hedge.
Shadowout is also applied to the root shape. It uses a fog/haze shader, so that it gradually becomes more opaque toward the center. This creates a more realistic effect, though it's slower to render.
Finally, you can just hide the root shape, if you don't care.
For the shaders, you need to select the hair object attached to the root shape. It'll be called something like Thicket Cube Leaves or similar.
The shader will not work effectively on regular objects. It will work on other dForce hair objects, but you may have to tinker with Surface group name and scale to suit whatever hair style you are dealing with.
Promo 1 and 4 are using vine settings. Click on the root object and then apply Thicket Shapes Plane Vines Base. This makes the plane look like, well, vines.
Then select the Plane Leaves and apply Thicket Shapes Plane Vine Layout. This applies the vine pattern to the hair density; that is, leaves only appear where there are vines.
You can create your own patterns!
If you had a map of a series of concentric circles, you could put that into Additional PR Hairs Density. Where the map is white, leaves appear. Where it's black, leaves don't appear. Create all sorts of patterns... crop circles!
Will, I used a drapeable plane prop and simulated it over a standing person. The plane draped, but the leaves seems to always stand out straight from the normal of the plane. I tried freezing the simulation on the plane and then simulating again for the leaves, but Daz Studio said there was no object to simulate. I see surface simulation settings on the leaves. Do you know why Daz studio would not simulate the leaves?
The leaves on drapable plane are set to 'Display > Visible in Simulation > Off.'
That way you can drape the plane first, freeze it, then set Visible in Simulation to On on the leaves and simulate THEM.
Trying to simulate both at the same time can get messy.
Oh, thank you. I didn't think to look there! I did read the user guide, which mentioned freezing and hiding. Now I know to look at visible in simulation, too. I'll give it a try.
I'm realizing I glossed over a few things in the guide... eep.
I did a quick test yesterday and also stumbled upon the "visible in simulation OFF" issue, but it was late and I didn't investigate too much, so maybe it wouldn't have been much of a problem. I must say, I am finding it very fun to try different things with the different thicket shaders and hairs (trying to grow watery fronds on everything). If you expand the line in the future, I would very much like to see a furry, rigged cylinder to get the kind of magic effects that the Serpio product from V3Digitimes provided--a spiraling line of autumn leaves around the quintessential ninja would be fun, for instance (I guess I can try to get a similar effect with ultrascatter, but the result is not rigged and would need to be rescattered after every change.)
Hmm, new flexible shapes would be interesting, yeah...
after searching a long time for "Thicket Shapes Plane Vines Base" in the Shaders folder i detected that it is in the materials-folder ;-)
Step 1 works, but not Step 2. Nothing happens when i applay the shader "Thicket Shapes Plane Vine Layout."
The small leaves on the plane are too regular. No single leaves are "standing" in a correct order. (Screenshot 2)
Try a render.
A lot of dForce hair only looks right when rendered.
So, after learning how to simulate the leaves on the drapable plane, I decided it didn't really make much difference. I can see the preview lines drape down with gravity during simulation, but the final render didn't look like that. I think it is because of the random angles applied to the roots. So I dialed down those values. Anyway, it looked equally acceptable, whether I draped the leaves or not. Here is my render (draped leaves). The statue uses canary3d sculptural UV, although you can't see much of the statue after I added the leaves. So my next question is - is there a way to reduce the number of leaves? I already dialed the Additional PR Hairs Density to 0. Going negative didn't seem to help.
Hmm. Well, you could change the Simulation settings to not generate PS hairs. So it should then STRICTLY be based on PR hair count.
How do I not generate PS hairs? Is there any documentation about these PS and PR surface settings?
@barbult: did you simulate the plane?
Yes, I followed the instructions to simulate the plane, freeze simulation on the plane, and then simulate the leaves.
Been experimenting with this product, it's a unique idea and I haven't seen anything like it in the store :)
I have an existing hedge maze (modeled in Sketchup), and I would like some actual leaf geometry on the walls, similar to the courtyard scene in the Promo? What would be the best way to do this? Thank you !~!