Finally, a solution to a problem that has plagued me for such a long time! How to have decent looking 3D trees but still have low poly count enough to shorten render times so I can get more BG’s produced in short time.
But first a bit of history…
What you see above are a bunch of 2D trees I’ve been using and abusing for a long long time now. I use them in my sketchup scenes whenever possible and it is very good decision because it make my scenes look good and being 2D they are just one plane so very low poly count but…
Problem with 2D trees is that they are flat objects in 3D world so if you turn on the shadows you can quickly see the problem immediately.
So for a long time I used this really clever but depressing method of hiding the source of imperfection by hiding the base of the trees behind walls, structures, other plants and shrubs or make sure they are offscreen.
It works but this severely limits what scenes I can do which makes UNCLE MUGEN really sad…
Of course, there are 3D trees in Sketchup but chances are the poly count quota for the leaves alone is enough to model a whole town in sketchup. A single tree alone is enough to slow or even hang a low end unit and even if you have a high end unit that can accommodate such polycount intensive resource they don’t quite look anime’ish enough for use with OELVN (visual novel) backgrounds.
So UNCLE MUGEN comes up with a clever solution because UNCLE MUGEN is very smart. Let us combine 3D tree trunks with low poly 2D leaves. I am genius!… not only does it look somewhat OK for use with OELVN (aka Visual Novels) it is low poly count enough that I can put a whole forest of it without worrying too much that it will make machines all over the world crash… and best thing of all… I can now do scenes that I wasn’t able to do before using 2D trees… like scenes where the base of the trees are visible…
Anyway, this is just the first. it doesn’t look good right now but we’ll get better. As always, UNCLE MUGEN is releasing this for everyone to enjoy. You can download it HERE in the Sketchup 3D warehouse… more to come!
“POOF” (Disappears)
Filed under: OELVN Project Tagged: 2d, 3d, Anime, low poly, mugenjohncel, OELVN, scene, tree, uncle mugen, visual novel
