Trees please

[Alain]

1. Are the maps easy to apply/scale etc?

Normaly there are no problems to remap texture in Octane because UV-Coordinates are saved in 3DS or OBJ formats.
And you can scale the textures in Octane, but normaly this is not necessary.

3. Anyone use xFrog?

xFrogs plants look pretty good in Octane, see here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... f=5&t=7405

Kind regards
Alain

[mirobimbo]

New version of blender 2.59 has nice tree generator.
http://vimeo.com/27668302

[Seekerfinder]

1. Are the maps easy to apply/scale etc?

Normaly there are no problems to remap texture in Octane because UV-Coordinates are saved in 3DS or OBJ formats.
And you can scale the textures in Octane, but normaly this is not necessary.

3. Anyone use xFrog?

xFrogs plants look pretty good in Octane, see here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... f=5&t=7405

Kind regards
Alain

Cheers Alain,
1. I will play around with the mapping.
2. If those are xFrog plants that is probably well worth the investment! Then again perhaps it's worth getting the Onyx generator and I can create trees for life. Will play around with the free xFrog sample and see how well the workflow thru SketchUP works.

Will also play with TreeSketch (coming to an iPad near me) but it seems by all accounts that the poly count is very high.

Seeker

[Seekerfinder]

New version of blender 2.59 has nice tree generator.
http://vimeo.com/27668302

Wow. Maybe it's time to learn Blender then...
Thanks for the link miro.

[Seekerfinder]

... Will play around with the free xFrog sample and see how well the workflow thru SketchUP works... Seeker

Ok, I feel like a distinct novice now but the 3DS xFrog opacity maps does not seem to follow through to Octane. I used one of the xFrog sample 3DS files, imported to Sketchup, exported OBJ but the opacity maps don't show. How do I transfer the opacity maps into Octane?

Any help appreciated!

Seeker

[Alain]

Is the leaf-texture a *.png with alpha channel ?
If yes then you have to add this texture in the opacitychannel of the Octane material and using "Alphatexture" (I can't remember exactly the name...).

Kind regards
Alain

[Seekerfinder]

Is the leaf-texture a *.png with alpha channel ?
If yes then you have to add this texture in the opacitychannel of the Octane material and using "Alphatexture" (I can't remember exactly the name...).

Kind regards
Alain

Alain, I don't know if it has an alpha channel (probably not as Octane would not allow me to import it as an Alphaimage (add/textures/images/alphaimage), which is where I presumed it should go.

Admittedly, I have lots to learn about how to create & manipulate textures in Octane but I find this somewhat frutrating since I am looking for the most effective way to create trees in Octane with Sketchup as primary modeller (there seems to be lots of solutions for Max users but I am not one). If I have to remap / recreate alpha channels in Photoshop (which I will also have to learn) everytime I want to import a tree then this is not a very effective solution. Any more ideas out there?

PS: Perhaps if Octane supports multiple OBJ meshes in the same file in future (as suggested before by others) then there will be opportunity for an object library which would be a valuable resource. Just a thought...

Seeker

[ROUBAL]

If your leaf texture is not a png or tga image with an alpha layer, it is very easy to create an alpha map that you will load as alphaimage in the opacity field of Octane:

In your favorite image editor, just select the part of the image outside the leaf (seems to be black in your image), invert the selection and apply full white where is the leaf. Save the black and white image and use it as alphaimage in the opacity field.

[Seekerfinder]

If your leaf texture is not a png or tga image with an alpha layer, it is very easy to create an alpha map that you will load as alphaimage in the opacity field of Octane:

In your favorite image editor, just select the part of the image outside the leaf (seems to be black in your image), invert the selection and apply full white where is the leaf. Save the black and white image and use it as alphaimage in the opacity field.

Thanks for that Roubal.
If that is all it is then it looks like there is one (in addition to the leaf image) - but it is a black silouette of the leaf in white in .TIFF format (it must be it since it maps perfectly in Sketchup...). But why does Octane then not see it the first time when I load the OBJ when it sees the leaf image ok. I inverted the image following your advice and renamed the file but that did not do the trick.

...in the opacity field of Octane...

I tried this but get the message below....

EDIT...
Ok, I got it. I tried to load as an alphaimage but it should just be a loaded as as an image (in Octane terms).

Still somewhat perplexed by the TIFF / PNG files not being recognised as alphaimages in Octane. Anyone know what this is about?

[Seekerfinder]

And here she is.
Thanks for the advice from all.
Seeker