NWST Foliage (SpeedTree)

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               So I figured it's time to bring  a SpeedTree like system to NWN.

After watching an old post from @OldTimeRadio of a tutorial he made
about importing animated textures and creating emitters to display them,
I got this little idea to try out and this is the result... ->> SpeedTree Like Foliage Demo Video

Note that only the bushes you see in the video are the Demo.

So what do you think? against or for SpeedTree type foliage? '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               I think as with most of the newer things we are all trying out, that it depends on processor load.

Speedtree is ok, as far as it goes, it does make placing objects easier etc... but emitters eat processing.  NWN has limited ability to handle large loads.

But, those bushes look pretty good from what can be seen in the vid.  

How difficult was was it to create that bush?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               It was quiet easy actually. All I did is a quick modification of a tree branch foliage texture I have to turn it
into a circle or crown of foliage if you wish, then I created this simple model which only contains
12-14 emitters strategically placed and done. The emitters are set to "Single Shot" type render
a birthrate of "1"  and a time to live "1" so I don't think it's very demanding while the emitters exist
for good, they only fire once. Sure they are still active for certain functions like follow the camera,
but I doubt that takes up a lot of processing power.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Lord Sullivan, 17 décembre 2011 - 02:00 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               Speed tree does make amazing quality trees and bushes.
In my experience, using it with UDK, it has a lot of potential for NWN.
Like Bannor said, it'll depend upon the load.
If it works well and you can come up with a fairly easy way to port from ST to NWN, we could have amazing foliage in a very short time.
I'm not familiar with OTR's post though.
Are these bushes created entirely from emitters? If so, does that allow for a higher poly count in the model? (I'm fairly clueless when it comes to such things)
While speedtree models are amazing, it can be a trick or two to keep their poly count low enough to not choke the old NWN engine... SP can do it, but it loses a lot of its sparkly goodness if you want a tree with less than 12,000 or so poly's.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               Just to be clear, it's not a SpeedTree model nor the SpeedTree system. SpeedTree has a tree model seed generation for variation which we don't in NWN. So using this emitter technique, we still have
to create all the base models we want.

@wyldhunt1 Yes the model in the video is entirely made of emitters, but this is just a scratch model for demonstration. A well made model requires static parts too for it to look good and
convincing.

While this is an experiment, there might be some cons that may need workarounds for sensible
use. For instance, the in game Fog will hide pretty much everything at a given distance and yet,
this model being all emitter based is clear as day when set to static at a distance. There are ways
to deal with this, but that's just to show that it may not be all perfect.

Note on poly count:
---------------------------

I'm not sure how that translates for emitters, but the model in the video has a partial "Box" with only
4 polys left. I can say that there are 12 bushes in that area in the video aside the rest of the props and
the tileset models and the game runs smootly and since we have to create the base "static" models
ourselves, the poly count is pretty much what we make it plus whatever the emitters add to the model.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Lord Sullivan, 17 décembre 2011 - 03:24 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_wyldhunt1]

               So, the idea is to make the trunk and branches first, and then use emitters to simulate the foliage?
Your test video of the emitter bushes looks like that test was fairly successful.
It makes me wish I knew more about modeling beyond what little I learned from programs like Speedtree that do most of the modeling for me. '>

Assuming it passes the lag test, this looks like it has a lot of potential.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               i tried that last summer but there is a major issue with that: emitter controlled textures will pierce through the engine area fog making the result just ugly, if you use the particle emitter its just useless cuz there is no setting for having them facing the camera. anyway old Time radio made a nice script to mass substitute helpers or whatever else scene object with another given object, thats handy to just convert speedtrees into static meshes trees
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_s e n]

               another thing: if you find a way to solve or bypass the fog issue its would be all right in terms of processor load since the birthrate would be just 0 and basically the engine would treat the foliage emittes just like a 2 poly mesh facing the camera, you can end using a few hundreds emitters/tree without lagging the area unless you end using literally hundreds of trees
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               I think it looks great!  The method is a very inexpensive way to get "volume" so, as you show, something can actually be concealed within.  It also makes sweet clouds.  The billboarding to Z is both the strength and the weakness, visually. 

With the clouds I didn't do any billboarding but I had to increase the number of emitters from 1 to 4-7 or so to get the same volume.  So it's a trade-off.

BTW, when you use the term "speed tree" in this context are you talking about self-randomizing textures or something like that? Nevermind, I missed one of your messages.

@Sen - If you have that script you're welcome to pop it up on MediaFire or even the Vault for people to play around with.  If not I might be able to dig it up.  Sure helped to save time and I thought the result was both convincing and reasonably lightweight, resource-wise.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 17 décembre 2011 - 07:04 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Lord Sullivan]

               

s e n wrote...

another thing: if you find a way to solve or bypass the fog issue ...{snip} ...

Uhm, yeah can't really bypass the issue. The workaround was to make them non-static, this way
they fade away at a certain distance... however, I've noticed a change in texture behavior when set
to non-static, there is a strange flickering of the texture when the emitters cross each other like
anyone might have noticed when placing a placeable road model on the ground which is in part
transparent. You can see that flickering I'm talking about when the placeable is at zero "Zaxis".