Making trees -- any ideas?

i like the render. but, a tree? uhm, maybe on some abstract plane, maybe

yeah, we've discussed fractal going all the way back to the beta days. so, the developers are certainly aware of the desire. as i recall from the beta days, and you can probably find an old thread about it here on the forums, it was put on the 'needed and wanted' list, but as a low priority.

as for making a tree filter with the current version, i think you're going to have to construct it in a more mundane manner by building the parts, trunk, one branch, another branch, leaves and then blend them in together like i did with my waterfall filter. branches and trunk shldnt be too hard; it's the leaves that are going to be tough, i would think.

I can offer no suggestions, but I can say that the render is stunning.

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Kraellin wrote: s for making a tree filter with the current version, i think you're going to have to construct it in a more mundane manner by building the parts, trunk, one branch, another branch, leaves and then blend them in together like i did with my waterfall filter. branches and trunk shldnt be too hard; it's the leaves that are going to be tough, i would think.

Not to mention real slow...The leaves are going to be the tricky part...unless you don't want a lot of detail in them....Especially if you are going for this type of look....WARNING...shameless plug ahead...
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/4806.html

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ThreeDee wrote: Apart from being painfully slow, the experiment started to have a life of its own, so I figured I'll throw a render in here -- this one I called Fractal Mystique. (Renders way too slow to become a usable filter yet, but maybe something will yet become of it.)

I have some in the library that are fractal-like but not really true...I also have some that are closer but are just waaaay to slow for human consumption...
Those I never submitted..

http://www.filterforge.com/filters/se...ractal&h=r

http://www.filterforge.com/forum/sear...FORUM_ID=0

ThreeDee,

I see what you're going at here, I've been trying a similar "fractal" approach, but it is very hard since there are no recursion + evaluation components - basically what I wanted to create is some thing like this:



This is very easy to create with a few lines of code, but not so easy with the avail. palette of components.

I think the way to approach this would be to approximate a division curve which then is used to control subtiling, and then these tiles rotate for each "iteration" (in quotes because we have to unroll everything).

btw that pic looks cool!

Sphynx, what you have is exactly what I was talking about using to create the secondary branches.....so you don't notice the noise pattern so much....

I would do the trunk and an odd number of primary branches using curves.....run them through som distortion for an organic feel.....add the secondary noise branches.....add some bark texture.....then the leaves.....and voila.....an extremely slow filter..... .....

yup, looks good

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ThreeDee wrote: Unfortunately, it is mostly good for testing your CPU speed and your patience.

hehehe, boy, does that sound familiar

i'd love to see the method you used for this so far. i've got a couple ideas, but no point re-inventing the wheel.

Kraellin,

You can see from this work-in-progress version how it works (if you have enough time to wait for it...) This one is slightly improved in terms of results but not in terms of speed. Lotsa optimization to be done...

I can only imagine turning it into a surface filter! (My trial would probably run out before the next render was done.)

Tree test 9.ffxml

replace the chaffs near the results with a perlin.

ok, forget that last one. i think i may have a better way.

and i just couldnt resist taking it a bit further by adding some color. i plugged that into the perlin i added to replace your chaffs and then added a set alpha onto the threshhold following. fun stuff

of course, that added some extra time back, so i'm now back to 3 min, 28 seconds. lol.

Also, the details (the smallest branches) can likely be done in a non-fractal manner with some noise -- a similar approach to the leaves but closer to the branches. Having a trunk with enough main branches that grow from it in a natural fashion already makes it look like a tree.

well, i'm still trying to figure out your 'recursive fractal passes', so i'll take your word on it.

i was thinking you could replace some of that with shorter routines, like a frame set to a sphere and some profile gradients and curves, maybe... but that's just thunkin in my head.

and the way you used the offsets for more iterations... well, i guess that's part of the fractal passes, but that had me going loopy, too.

hmmm, working from the top down seems odd, but maybe. i like the way you did the two branches and trunk. i was thinking maybe just replicate that routine and adapt it for the smaller branches. if you can make two branches, then why not four or eight and then just resize them with one of the zoom snippets.

oh well, that's what makes this type of project fun, seeing what others do and playing on that and doing something else and so on and so forth. i'm gonna look at it some more.

Hi Kraellin,

Got back onto this yesterday and decided to try and optimize the performance so that it would become usable. Your suggestions are most helpful and I have tried out your ideas and use some of them to make the filter run faster.

Yes, you're right, there's no recursive routine, just an attempt to simulate it. I finally figured out a way to split the branch in two directions at once, which took the time down to 1/8 of the previous. Also, I managed to make it so that you can offset the branches on the different sides, which made it look more natural.

I don't dare to put any fancy texturing into the filter as it is still a bit on the side of annoyingly slow (2 minutes with antialiasing on), but with a few more things I can do to simplify it I think it's going to work. Here are some of the latest renders from the simplified version:

refracted wood texture around trunk and branches wood help with depth and stop the striped branches

Neat!

Bark works nicely, nice going