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Radar shadeing almost done... only some extra modeling have to be done like cables.. and maybe some few details.. later... maybe a bit of wire strenght structure.. to give extra detail will.. see... now i am moveing to rocket luncher unit. as u can see it is very low poly at the moment so needs bevels.. and some chips made in houdini probbly useing boolean because why not. also the shader of paint on whole vehicle needs way better procedural bump because this one looks meh.




this is how current shade network for vehicle looks like... so far no external textures all procedural. no OSL scripts.

So the rocket luncher is rigged... few stuff left to do in terms of rig better automatization because currently u have to move few sliders.... and i want to simply have one slider that will basicaly armed/unarmed..

Shader whise... we are getting some nice look i think finally.. still lot's of stuff needs shader.. there are still like 5-6 shaders that are just simple diffiuse. Also i have to redo some shaders the edge masking for chips as i discovered pattern that looks realy realistic and it is only applied on 1 shader so far.

Modeling data.. well still a lot of stuff to model.. mainly the rocket luncher box. requiers aditional armor plates.. and some nice details... The main chassy section requiers suspension to the wheels.. and some general details some cables stuff like that...

also all shaders needs a recheck because now object is bigger and procedural noise textures... started to work diffrently so that is a xD small fuckup from my side...

worked a bit on shaders... on radar... i have to say... useing all those curvature nodes and ambient occlusion nodes.. bring down the render times a bit xD

ok so i have to take a bit of free time from tank asset and i moved to acctualy start doing some enviroment work.. Will be Houdini & Clarisse post.

We will kick off with Houdini useing newest H17.5 with top system that makes u option to procedurally manage whole project.. i was beying able to simply produce whole lib. of tress.. this is how setup looks like now it is a bit more advanced.. (more nodes) but this is the last screenshot i acctualy did for it... there is still much to do like work on displacment for wood.. and my setup allows me to control entirly the tree shape.. i mean shape is build inside object of my choice so i have to replace the cone.. that i now use with something more tree looking for the type of forest i am aiming for... The current poly count for tree is around 100-200 milion. 500k poly is the wood part.. altho it will be way more once the surface of wood will be applied currently i am wodnering how to do it to use texture or scatter small chunks of wood.. or just adaptive displacment will see.. probably will go with chunks as i think this will be the more efficient. and very flexibile in terms of shaders... as i will be able to control each chunk color variation so i can maybe many tipe of woods.. acctualy with same system.

on screen: Wood + visualisation of leafs.. to see how it will look with acctual scatter.


This is the element i am scattering in clarisse on wood part. This element is scattered on special point cloud prepared in Houdini so now let's jump to Clarisse!


So this is how tree asset looks... from intresting parts... look that i have one Combiner and inside this Combiner i have 3 tress... and with simple toggles i can quickly jump between diffrent type of tress... houdini automaticly useing tops outputs for me the alembic that are automaticly assigned.
That way i can simply after doing layout select some tree and with 2 clicks change that tree to other tree... keeping rotations and positions... that makes makeing building whole forest look very easy... Also.. each tree in crpytomatte layers is read as separate object.. so i can with 1 click in Compositing program choose tree and make it lighter or darker or change it's color... to make forest look better. and not repetetive.. But how it was acctualy build?

First i import 3 alembics...
1 is wood.abc that consist just wood part of tree..
2 is point cloud with orient attribute from houdini. this file will be used for scatter.
3 is the leaf/needle we are scattering over tree.

How to set scatter so it reads orient attribute from Houdini?
There is topic on forum about this but simply speaking u are useing extract property and u type orient and correct order and remember to put in scatter and other place XYZ.. rotation order. later we simply connect this to scatter settings as on pictrue.. the 2 node reeds pscale attribute to control scale of each instance...


Next thing we need to focus is the leaf/needle material settings.. i am reading 2 attributes on this element one is color value (cd) of object it self.. that was assigned in houdini.. and 2nd thing is i am reading color value from pointcloude.. all this is multiplayed and useing gradients.... To read Cd Value from point cloud we have to use instance color... if u want more information about this read the manual it is very well documented or simply ask question i will help

And finally we come to first test render of my trees... as u can see.. a lot of work have been done... and still there is much to improve to get it to look really good.. also fun fact considering my trees are each 100-200 milion polycount... the whole project still renders with 500mb usage..

there is still long way.. to make this tree really photorealistic... that is why speed tree is so expensive. now u know xD but satysfaction of doing everything by yourself and saved money priceless

looking great! thanks for showing the whole process!

thx! So i worked a bit in Houdini to make better wood on tree it is basicaly duplicateing tree 200 times. and adding noise based on few parameters... and layer all those curves are changed to tubes... with UV written in VEX so.. whole UV for whole tree is one single rectangle stripe in UV editor... this makes texturing of tree super simply and all i did is i just made noise in clarisse and stretched it on 1 axis... and i have to say it looks good! even on closeups i was acctualy suprsied how well this works... Renders super fast! because no displacment.



Also worked on needles added better color variations and few details... i also did some relayout of the sceen added more trees to better test.. distance fog... done in composition and also i added very close 1 tree on left to see how it works.. (on left is almost the top of the tree). Speaking of tree top part needs some better work and ofc... i need to switch cone shape to acctual tree shape.

However this is render i recommand looking at it in fullview. as details on tree are pretty nice!.. currently in this sceen there are 4 tottaly diffrent trees.

forgot to make updates haha... i moved to more final enviroment.. and camera position.
so this is current frame:


problems to fix... make composition more open, by moveing left tree to the left.. + maybe some lense changes... also hardest thing to fix... right tree to not stick with top of mountain that is such anfortunate compositor error... and very hard to fix acctually since the composition is very tight and there isn't much room to play but i will get this sorted so no worries...
biggest problem is acctualy the... image it self... i don't know should i go with this explosion and missle trails look or i just should stay... with no explosion etc... or maybe just 10 min after fight where are just smoke trails.. left... because right now the explosion is takeing a bit to much attention i think...

ofc i can't be guided by fact that i spend a lot of time on asset and i want to show that asset... because that is common mistake. I think i will stay with explosion as it makes whole shot a bit more hard and more advanced? i don't know what u guys think?

From single assets.. tree generator has been improved by a lot... whole wood part of tree is now VDB meshed. and uv'maped with procedural texture looks really good in my opinion... the needles have been modeled entirly in 3D.. What i want to do is to make 2-3 broken trees in half... to put it on field..

after this is done.. work a bit on stones to cover terrain... some procedural texture for ground... and elements like that basically finish the ground terrain. Once this is done.. i will move back to rocket lunch xD asset and start to model details as a few elements... because currently the back of luncher is very minimalistic and acctualy will be a bit diffrent there is big element missing there... once that is done i will move to.. adding clumps of grass mud dirt etc stuff.

Good news! i have again a bit of free time and strenght that means we are back at this project. I am still scared to open project xD (will see how well my nameing and organization worked) i hope it will be easy to get back to what is what. So i decided to give a composting a shot! So pickedup last render i had. and This is the outcome.

stuff to do: Better lightening we are talking clouds or some sort of mask on sky that will give as some shadows. on the ground. so the whole sceen is not that evenly lit. + will give some nice pattern on mountains. Modeling Modeling Modeling of our main vehicle and ofc textures. after that we can focus back on vegetation. and micro details. and ofc back at compositing that needs a bit of smooth as now is very crazy in terms of light.