what are your favorite trees to use in Daz Studio?
Diomede
Posts: 15,410
What are your favorite types of trees to use in Daz Studio? There are a number of prop/figure style trees by Predatron, Esha, and others. There are some trees that are done as a flat plane (billboard) with alpha channels. Howie Farkes and Tango Alpha build large complex sets with multiple instances. What works for you, and why?
Post edited by Diomede on
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Comments
I like the ones in Faveral's 'Le Village Tree Pack', but the ones I probably use most come from Dogz's 'The Old Railway'. Other than them being well-made with a nice selection to choose from, there's nothing wildly special about them, but trees don't usually take centre stage in most renders. Not mine, anyway.
I appreciate the feedback.
@Astracadia, I have that Faveral village tree plant pack also. Wonderful resource. I will have to check out Dogz's 'The Old Railway'
@Dracorn, I prefer prop/figure trees to billboards also, but I could see how billboards might be useful for some people in the background. I am trying to learn instancing for Daz Studio. I come from Carrara where the replicator function is reasonably powerful. My current hurdle in doing more Daz Studio renders is creating outdoor settings.
@timmons.william, agree, gathering trees fom other products is an excellent way to go. I combine trees from Howie Farkes, Dartanbeck, and others.
I think the tree I've used the most is the RDNA Park Tree. I don't remember if its a Deep Freeze collection piece, but it's old enough to be. There is also a texture addon with different barks and leaves.
It's a very large full tree, but for all that, it renders surprisingly quickly. I have other trees from there (and elsewhere) that take *forever* to render.
My big problem with billboards is that while there are definitely situations where they'd be useful over, say, cloning them in with Photoshop or using 3D trees, I suspect the time taken to put them in and test to make sure it looks ok would be far greater than the rendertime savings of, say, instancing the heck out of a bunch of trees. (Particularly now that I have two different, cool instancing scripts)
Oh, and if you haven't checked it out, Xfrog has a LOT of free plant models and billboards available here: http://xfrog.com/category/samples.html
@JOdel, I think I have the RDNA tree that you referenced. Haven't taken a look in a long time. If it is the one I am thinking of, I wonder if I could make some morphs etc to allow more customization and variety. Worth taking a second look.
@timmons.wlliams, Thanks for the links to the freebies! I just bought the Ultrascatter script but haven't had time to figure it out yet. I don't have 'Instances Plus' but will put it in my wishlist and hope for a sale.
My problem with billboards is that even when used at a distance where the actual object looks acceptable, the shadow cast by it is often all wrong.
Excellent point about the shadows
I prefer real 3D to billboards any day. I have a few chestnut and oak trees I did for a game project did last year that get lots of use. I also get a ton of use out of 3 different species by Dinoraul at rendo, Acacia, Queen palm and bamboo. All are very well done, easy on resources and have lots of options.
Stonemasons Japanese Maples and Predatrons Japanese Pines (Stone Pines?) are my favourites.
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Those look like they'd be pretty great - I've got it added to my wish list along with The Harpwood Trail: https://www.daz3d.com/the-harpwood-trail-for-daz-studio
I think both of those would be great for outdoor/wooded renders.
If you have older trees and want them to look better in Iray, I find that this product: https://www.daz3d.com/nature-shaders works pretty good for making older trees look better. I also really love the water shaders in that pack.
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Thank you, everyone. Great suggestions. I have some Flink products from several years ago that it appears are worth a revisit. Maybe one of the instances plugins can help address the resources issue. Also, I have that nature shader pack by J Greenles so will experiment with reviving some of the old trees for use in Iray. Thanks for the tip Divamakeup.
They are Iray. According to the descripiton "Daz Studio Iray Shader Presets".
You're welcome. I hope you find it helpful. :)
I use dinoraul (other place) trees a lot because some are very unique so I make them the focus. He also does some trees from older earth eras some of which would be good for pics with dinosaurs and such. Also some just imagined.
I realize in my shopping, though I get all kinds of things, my heart always goes to trees, vegetation, and animals because I started with Bryce and those were the things I wanted the most for my scenes. Old habits never die and my main desires were set twenty years ago.
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