Blitztree3D

I posted in another thread on a diffrent topic about a tree engine we were developing for blitz ( http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=30320 ). I showed quite a few screenshots as the engine was being developed but never showed any trees that were intended for the release bundle. Well now that the coding is complete we have spent the last several days doing nothing but creating trees. I wanted to share a few of the 'release' trees with you guys.

Tree displaying ultra low skin/texture resolutions.. This skin is actually 90x90. Should be able to avoid most fillrate problems at that size.
ss1

This shot displays the power of the engine, pushing 100's of trees on-screen at once without noticable fps drop.
ss2

A tree im currently working on, this tree also uses a very low res leaf skin to achieve optimal fps.
ss3

A fir tree, variety in many forms!
ss4

Tranz is also working on some trees but he's been silient about them at this stage.. I can only suspect they will be spectacular.

Those trees look great Sabata, I can't wait to see this in action!

Can I just ask - how easy will it be to create your own trees? Is some kind of editor required for placement of chunks or is it done automatically?

Super easy, you can use any 3d modeleing program to make trees... A simple convertor will be included to convert the tree to engine format. Trees can support upto 200 quads or as little as 1. There's better ways of doing it but for now im using 3dMax, heres the tree from screenshot 1 (above) in 3dmax. edit.jpg. But we are including 60 pre-made high def trees so hopefully there won't be much need for the end-user to have to create their own, but it's there for those that want to.

I'm also planning on a simple cad-like editor for tree creation but this utility won't make the launch date.

[edit]
I was wanting to check out your M&M clone but the link is dead?
[/edit]

That sounds great, I'm sure the trees that are included will be excellent (judging by the screenshots) but it's good to know that it's quite straightforward to make our own as well!

The MMT site's definitely up at the moment, link seems ok, I'm not sure what the problem could be?

That looks fantasic :)

Thanks Ross.

Sir Felgar, just noticed I can't get into my email server either so no doubt my provider is acting up atm.. Will check out that site later (im a long time m&m fan!) :)

Excelent work sabata! Now make more of those trees and release the thing :)

Sabata,

I've been thinking about trees as well. I have an idea about trees changing season (although it may not be new).

Well here it goes. My idea is to use a 'greyscale' texture leaf mesh and color the mesh via blitz entitycolor command. This is in theory should provide a very wide range of natural color, not to include cool fading color effects (from healthy to dead, etc).

( www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=30320 )

We are using a procedure simular.. Blitztree supports global season settings using greyscale masks...

very nice , how many poly planes did you use for each tree.

I am guessing the poly count for each tree is no more than say 450 polys.
are they masked or alpha?

Either option is avialable, masked or alpha. Right now Im using a combo of both alpha for distance and masked upfront (alpha tends to make the edges transparent to much causing a nasty effect). Trees avg between 300-700 polys. The planes are 2 poly quads made up of a single surface system.

Ahhh weekend is over :(... but I did get some extra time over the weekend to finish up some more material for the tree engine... In the process I was able to create 4 new trees.. here they are:

Live Oak
Needle Pine
Eucalyptus
Japenese Water Tree

You do have flip false on right?
(just in all the screenshots the FPS was around the 60 mark....60hz refresh rate anyone?)

BTW, very impressive tree's, blows every other games tree's I've ever seen into the water. :)

Only problem I've found with tree's like these is they look pixelated like crazy on lower resolutions.

Monitor refresh is locked at 62 refresh rate..
Pixelation at lower res is a problem not only with trees but all gfx.. But i have some smudge filters in that can be applied to help with lower res.. Ive only noticed pixelation at 640x480 and some light bleeding at 800x600 which the filter hid well.

Sabata this is great. Can't wait to try it out.

Hey I'm back, hope you guys are getting tired of these screenshots yet. :)
Completed more materials and added more trees to the engine bundle, this things shaping up. Shouldn't be much longer until it's ready for packaging.

Also, name changed to TreeBlitz3d..
Here's 4 trees recently finsihed and added to the bundle:
Japenese Maple
Mexican Sage
Norwegin Spruce
Ancient Oak

... never get tired of stuff like these

really great work Sabata!!!

--Mike