BUILDING FOLIAGE-HEAVY FORESTS — PART 01
Identifying the elements
Breaking a tree into reusable production assets.
Building a convincing forest is not only about creating the trees. During capture, we break each species down into individual elements that can be reused throughout the wider environment.
For the Aleppo pine, this includes trunks, branches, cones, needles, deadwood and bark surfaces. Some of these elements form the tree itself, while others become forest-floor scatter and used to integrate assemblies.
Species: Pinus halepensis
Trunks
A single trunk cannot provide enough variation across an entire forest. However, creating every tree as a unique asset is equally impractical. The goal is therefore to identify which structural elements can be reused without making that reuse visible.
Secondary elements
We capture all necessary elements of the tree. Using these unique, scan-based elements will help create more grounded authenticity compared to strictly using tileable textures.
In general, we would focus on using these elements in places that will be more visible to the camera, while relying on tileables to do the heavy lifting in less important areas.
Forest-floor scatter
Besides being used to build the tree, from an environment creation POV many of these elements are the foundation of a forest, and will be used as ground scatter.
That is also why we make sure to capture closed meshes, as we often utilize simulation techniques to create a volumetric and layered forest base.
Environmental integration
It’s generally best practice to remove small, lose objects from the subject you are scanning, as this helps to get a cleaner output.
As a result, assets do not feel integrated with the environment.
We use the scatter elements to help re-introduce the details in a cleaner, more flexible and efficient way.
We will speak more on this in a separate post.
Extracting surfaces
Finding the right surface with the right features to match with the trunk scans is important. The goal is to be able to blend the unique trunks and the surface tileables not only seamlessly, but with relatively matching features.
Sometimes this can be tricky, and you may need multiple if you’re being thorough.
Next: Capturing and atlasing foliage
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