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[Quadratect]

I can't get plants or trees to show themselves when exporting 3D models to dwg or to 3ds...I get only what seems to be solid color static photo boards.

What am I doing wrong?

Don

[FynrDzynr]

G'day Don!
That's all they are. Envisioneer just does nifty things with them.
But wouldn't it be good if users could just get in there with a virtual saw & lop a branch or two so ppl could better see our design?
Merv

[Quadratect]

G'Day Merv,

Hope you are doing well...

Does that apply to all 3D construction programs as well(landscaping programs included)? All plants and trees are only dynamic photo boards?

Don

[ngbris72#3]

Quad,

Have a look at the attachments; they are 3d trees in 3ds format. You can download them from this site xfrog.com. It is a commercial website they develop complex 3d plant libraries: shrubs, trees etc. They use advance procedural textures for rendering; whatever that is. I am really not a buff on all this.

Download a couple and import into EV. You notice how the model begins to bog down with just two trees? It is the high poly count of all the 3d faces; makes orbit, pan, and moving around nearly impossible and them a complete pain to work with. The trade off is the excellent renders they produce. See the other attachment; rendered in another program.

You can have a whole tree with just one 3d face and a bitmap. You could possibly do a whole forest using this method and it would be equivalent to one xfrog shrub! I don't know if that is an accurate analogy or not.

Once you go high polygon count you need extreme computer power to work on your model. This is one good reason to map a texture to a 3d face. Yes you can model with 3d objects but..... I can't with my machine's spec.

Cheers

Nick

[Doug.S]

There are some free 3D plants around the web, just do a search for what you want.

Or you can "grow your own" free via Plant Studio
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/summary_plantstudio.html