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Pak128 Tree Update Project

Started by Sarlock, October 01, 2012, 03:24:16 AM

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Sarlock

As I will be progressing through the entire tree set and adding snow versions and doing general updates, I'll start this discussion here to document the progress of the work.

Before I begin I want to finish off my douglas fir tree project.  I've lightened the trunks of the trees as well as did some smoothing of the colours on the top green tree set.



In a game setting:  Old version <-- || --> New version

OLD: NEW:

OLD: NEW:

Tell me what you think.  The objective points of view that you've been giving me has been fantastic, I tend to overlook a lot of things because my eyes glaze over after looking at the tree for so many hours in a row.   :P
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

For reference on what these trees actually look like:



If they grow within a thick forest they have only a bit of green at the top and a long, barren trunk.  If they are growing at the edge of a clearing and get a lot of sun, they will keep their foliage much further down the trunk, like most evergreens do.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Roads

Sarlock, IMHO, the trees, beginning with the limbs, look nothing short of wonderful!

The trunks, I think need to be lighter still.  I don't envy you the task.  I played around with the trunks for a few minutes to see what I could do and the results were pretty awful - make that downright awful.  So as far as I'm concerned if you do nothing else with them, I'll still think you've done a great job.  In the game they will look much better anyway since I assume they will be mixed with other trees and you won't see rows of trunks.

mEGa

About trunks.
IMHO, I think that color is too black. A clearest brown color could be more realistic ?
I like very much your snow effects.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Roads

#4
Sarlock, I hope you don't think I'm intruding here.  Just been playing around with this trunk in PhotoFiltre(thanks mEGa), with the spray can and light gray.  Please look at the bottom left tree trunk:




Sarlock

#5
Thanks for the input, Roads, I appreciate you taking the time to tinker with the picture and throw some ideas out.  It helped me to visualize a much ligher trunk colour.

I have been playing around with the trunk for a while today and this is what I've come up with so far.  If the tone is a little closer to what looks best, I'll refine the colours a bit, the lines between the light side and the dark side are a bit too straight and need to be smoothed a bit.



Edit/Addition:

This is a forest with a density of 6 trees per tile:

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Roads

Sarlock, yours looks good now!

Mine was too speckled...I was thinking of how bark looks but the pictures are just too small to portray that.

Sarlock

#7
Yeah, I tried the same thing, it just didn't look right.  The trunks are only 5 pixels wide so there isn't a lot of options available with such a small area.  I'll update the other trees to have the same trunk colouration as well as smooth out the spring versions in the middle to remove some of the light/dark contrast that I fixed in the top set.

I'm going to be working down the climate zones starting with rocky(alpine) and tundra.  I'll borrow from existing tree content as much as I can, but I want to ensure that each tree matches the other trees in that climate zone to create a proper "feel" for each zone.

For alpine/tundra, the evergreens are typically pine and spruce, grow quite high and spindly (due to the short growing season and heavy snow burden) and are interspaced with deciduous trees such as white birch and larch.

I am working on a white spruce tree but I'm not happy with how it's progressing and I might just redraw from scratch.  While taking a break from that frustrating project, I tried my hand at a white birch tree and was pleasantly surprised by my first draft results:

WHITE BIRCH v1.0:

I originally did just one tree but decided it looked better with three trunks placed closer together.  It looks nice nestled up with my douglas fir and hopefully will look nice coupled up with larch and white spruce once I get a design I'm happy with.  It's a bit lighter than I think it should be, so it'll get darkened a bit.

It doesn't have shadows yet.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions/criticism welcome!

Edit/Addition:

I played around a bit more and tried an experiment.  I added a small amount of ground cover/small trees to the base of the mature/adult white birch.  I'm not sure how this will look in a forest with other trees and near cities, so just playing around to start with.

WHITE BIRCH with ground cover v1.0:

I put it with some douglas fir to space it out a bit.  I can't decide if it looks right or not, but it fills in the trunk area quite nicely.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Roads

The White Clump Birch.  I love that tree!  You have done it justice here and thank you very much!  I can't wait to see it in game. :)


Modify:  Actually I like it better without the "suckers" at the base but that's just me...

greenling

Sarlock
The trees they you have make looks very good out.
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Sarlock

A thought about tree design:

There are 5 stages of tree growth built in to the game.  We have chosen to designate these 5 growth phases as sapling[0]-->young[1]-->middle[2]-->mature(predominant)[3]-->aged/dying[4].

In looking at many of the graphics for aged/dying trees, some are excellent and some are just rehued (browns, mostly) versions of the adult tree with a few branches removed.  Some are completely dead.

I got to thinking about this and had a thought.  One thing that happens is that because most of the trees are of the mature variety (not sure on the actual percentage, but it's certainly over 50%), there tends to be a lot of repetition in treed areas, especially with trees that tend to stand out because of shape/colour/etc.

There are two approaches that I think may help to alleviate this a bit:

One would be to draw a second version of the same tree but change it so that it is not a copy of the first tree of that type.  This would give us two mature trees for each tree variety, making forests more varied in appearance.  The downside of this approach is that an entire second set of drawings needs to be created for each tree and this is a lot of work, though we could reuse the young tree varieties from the original set as there isn't enough of these in game to cause a repetition issue.

The second thought was to change the growth stages of the trees to be instead:  sapling[0]-->young[1]-->middle[2]-->adult #1[3]-->adult #2[4]
Adult #1 would still be the tree most often seen in a forest but there would be enough #2 to break it up a bit.  The middle tree is generally large enough to offer enough variety to the adult trees.

I prefer option #2 as it doesn't entail drawing a second set of trees and I don't think that the dying trees currently add much from an aesthetics point of view.  They may only make up 10% of a forest but it could still lend some variety to the adult trees if they were drawn as an alternate adult instead of a dying/dead tree.

Thoughts?
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

Tired of me yet?   ;D

WHITE BIRCH v1.1:

TEMPLATE:


Input on the trees appreciated at this point before I go ahead and create the seasonal versions.  Easier to refine and fix the summer version first than to have to change them all afterward.

The contrast with the white bark is very appealing to the eye.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

In no particular order...

No, not tired. Enjoying the graphics :) A lot.

This should probably come before everything else: We don't worry about image duplication, at least on the technical side. Simutrans recognizes identical sprites when loading paks, so memory consumption is proportional to unique graphic count. This means you can have two 1:1 trees, only differing in one age graphics, without any performance hit at all. Trees also have DistributionWeight, so it is easy to compensate for the imbalanced probabilities that might result from such practice. So... you can simply draw variants of ages or seasons as you please! (To be fair, we poor humans are somewhat worse at managing redundancy organized in this way, so try to stick to whole rows/columns in the hypothetical table ;D )

Saplings didn't exactly work for me either, and I can even rationalize why :D Perhaps your local variant grows as white from young age, but over here, the young trees have at first brown, then maybe grayish bark and turn into the characteristic w/b perhaps at some 3-5m. Otherwise, I liked the idea. If you managed to pull this off, you could have two versions with & without these.

As to dead trees, hard to say. You are probably right that they do not add to aesthetics... much. On the other hand, I remember actually liking seeing some of the trees dead. A forest with these just felt more real, somehow. No offense meant to your elvish side! ;) Theoretically, you could have two variants of a species, and for their last ages one dying and one "rare", while still reusing the first 3 ages... I don't want to imply that you should paint so many, though! Just thinking aloud :)

Anyway, tree life cycle period lengths are 1:1:1:6:3, so focusing on adult #1 = win :)


Err, it is tomorrow already? In the end, don't mind my rambling that much. I'm probably too sleep-deprived...

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

Excellent comments, VS, great information.  I assume you mean 1:1:1:6:1 for the tree occurance ratios.

It is good to know that duplicate image content does not consume additional memory, adding an extra picture or two for additional trees won't matter as much when the rest of the pictures that come along with the file for completion are just duplicates of other images from other files.  Doing additional drawings isn't that hard once I get the basic design and colours set.  It's the time between the first drawing and finally getting a design we're happy with that takes a lot of work.  Making another mature douglas fir tree or two at this point isn't a lot of extra work.

The birch trees here behave in the same manner, they have brown to grey bark in their younger years as well.  The smallest tree I made is 50 px high, which by the pak128 scale already makes it 8m+ tall, so I didn't worry about it.  The game may say it's a 3 month old tree but the image is more like a 10-20 year old tree...

I had to remove the suckers at the bottom of the birch trees because they made the base too wide and they would sometimes overlap on to roads.  If the consensus is satisfied with the birch tree design, I'll make the fall and winter varieties.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

I took Shunter's tree133 (spruce tree) and made some modifications to it:





The distance shot reaffirms to me that I'm on the right track... it's instantly recognizable as a boreal style forest with the conifer/birch mix.

Before I continue, since I'm fairly new to this side of the game, is it acceptable that I modify a previous artist's work?  I took Shunter's excellent tree, lightened up some sections, added a few more branches, decreased the size a bit and made it a bit skinnier (its size seemed a bit overbearing).  I don't want to step on anyone's toes.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Fabio

1) modifying other's work: very acceptable (I'm kind of doing the same these days with the snow project), as long as you quote the original author in the copyright string.

2) birch: the removed suckers could be reused as saplings for age 1, IMHO.

3) great work!

Roads

Truthfully and I really hate to say this but I do not like the modified conifer.  The foliage looks too angular and rigid - like a clump stuck on the tree.  Also being truthful, it is undoubtedly better than I could do so you will hear no more complaints on this particular tree from me.

Sarlock

I don't offend easily, Roads, I like the honesty :)
The original tree had a lot of almost pure black in its center.  I added some more foliage and brightened up the tones considerably, but I think you're right... it's still too dark in those middle sections and it makes the pieces of foliage stand out as if they are floating there.  I'll do some more work in the dark sections and try to bring them out a bit so that the brighter sections don't stand out as much and there's a smoother transition between the two areas.

Good point, Fabio, that's what I'll do with those saplings.  :)
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

#19
Another thought. Since age 0 variant is used for hiding trees with transparency off, it should be somewhat minimal.

As to the spruce, I guess I'm easily impressed? I'm an engineer, not a botanist ;D It seems to fit, although seeing it alongside the fir might help, too.

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

Been busy the last few days, but I found a few hours here and there to chip away at this project.  I've changed the spruce tree a bit, tried to resolve some of the deep shadows and angles with some smoothing and introduced summer and fall versions of the birch tree.  The fall version is a bit bright, but I love the contrast!  I'll darken it a bit later, but for now here it is:

SPRING:

(Note that I haven't smoothed out the douglas fir tree spring version yet)

SUMMER:


FALL:
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Dwachs

Great trees !

The autumn birch looks to bright to my eyes. It could also have less leaves.
Parsley, sage, rosemary, and maggikraut.

VS


My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

TommPa9

... yellow? I think, orange and brown can be better. This yellow look so... unrealistic (it may be the best word for this autumn color)

greenling

I think that the Color Red be are Missing in the Trees.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Roads

Sarlock, seems I always fall back on this but years ago when I was canvas painting, one Autumn day I went out and got a yellow leaf to try and match the color.  To my great surprise, compared to my yellow paint, it was green!

I don't know what would work here though, green or gray.  As you said in an earlier post, it is not the color but what we perceive...

Fabio

Probably a bit darker and desaturated...

VS

Hmmm... To expand on my previous comment with yet another 2 simu-cents...

Compared with this: https://www.google.com/search?q=autumn+birch&hl=en&tbm=isch

I think more warm - red and orange hues (thus implicitly darker?) are missing from the "big picture". A bit of desaturation would help the "too bright" problem as well? Sorry, but my colour theory is a bit weak, so interpret these as you see fit :-/

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

mEGa

Birch trees in autumn really have yellow leaves, I remembered. Not so unrealistic IMHO.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Sarlock

#29
Fabulous feedback!  Thanks everyone.  I knew they were a bit too bright, but I wanted to release it for now to get some general input.  Birch trees are generally quite a bright yellow when in autumn colors, but even toned down it might be a bit too much.  What I might do is do two versions of the autumn birch to try and tone it down a bit and give it some more variety.

Adding some more shadows should help and I will convert some of the yellow to more brown/reddish hues and see what I get.

I'm trying to assemble the set of alpine/tundra trees, so I want them to all fit together nicely as a group.  I'd like to add another deciduous tree that has reddish/brown tones in autumn to help add autumn variety.

[Add:]

Did some work this morning on modifying the autumn birch:



Generally desaturated the yellows, added more golds and browns, added more transparent pieces.  I might make it even more transparent and include a few branches that are mostly bare of leaves.  Either that or I will make a second fall tree that has that effect, with more browns and bare limbs.

Old picture:

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS


My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Zeno

Oh, lovely. It seems I'll start playing with trees after hating them for ages! :P

IgorEliezer

I think I should play pal128 a bit more often. :)

Sarlock

Found a few free hours tonight and was able to draw the winter versions of the birch tree.  The snow version is identical to the winter version, I didn't see any purpose in making a snowy version because the birch tree bark was already quite light and seemed to fit with both the winter and snowy version.

I drew a spruce tree with snow to go along with the set.  I haven't completed it, but it's good enough to include in these shots:



I'm pretty pleased with the winter birch tree and the conifers.  I might make a few changes, but they seem pretty good.

Here is the shocker... this is a winter shot with 4 trees/tile density.  At first, it's a real shock... seeing this kind of winter shot is a bit startling in Pak128!



Comments/suggestions appreciated!  The snowy spruce picture isn't complete, I want to smooth out the black/snow transition areas a bit and add some highlights to the darker areas.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

Severe climate change detected! Global warming, engage!

If we could constrain citycars to climates, a snow plough would be welcome, I think ;D

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

I'm still not really happy with the spruce tree, it looks more like a prop than a real tree.  I've been working on it to limited success.

The winter birch is pretty good.  I used 3 layers of greys to construct it, darkest to lightest, to try and give it a more 3D appearance.

I think I might try and learn Blender a bit better and see what I can produce in there.  Looking at some trees that are rendered in 3D, the pixels are far more "messy" when viewed up close yet the end product is very impressive.  I peeled a few trees out of Simcity 4 and took a good look at how they are assembled and learned a lot of tricks.  If I don't post much content here over the next week or two it's not because I've given up, it's because I am sharpening my skills a bit more :)  Blender looks like it will take a lifetime to master!
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

mEGa

#36
Quote from: Sarlock on October 09, 2012, 05:56:22 AM
I'm still not really happy with the spruce tree, it looks more like a prop than a real tree.  I've been working on it to limited success.
Imho Spruce trees are rather realistic. brilliant work !
Quote from: Sarlock on October 09, 2012, 05:56:22 AM
The winter birch is pretty good.  I used 3 layers of greys to construct it, darkest to lightest, to try and give it a more 3D appearance.
Very good method ! I shall use it next time because so far I only drew on 2 layers (one for snow and one for other) and paint by hand step by step color by color as painter artist (2D root !). It isn't a good way of working I grant it !

Can I use any of these excellent trees for my current project of winter sports resort?
So this addon will become integrated even better into pak 128.
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10548.0
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

greenling

Sarlock
In the last photo be standing four Houses are this houses form you?
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

mEGa

Quote from: greenling on October 09, 2012, 01:18:46 PM
Sarlock
In the last photo be standing four Houses are this houses form you?
Greenling, I mean it's fabio's last contribution
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

greenling

mEGa
ugh. :o
Thank you that you me be gave a hit.
I have not be remember that this house from Fabio it.
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Sarlock

#40
Quote from: mEGa on October 09, 2012, 07:38:57 AM
Imho Spruce trees are rather realistic. brilliant work !Very good method ! I shall use it next time because so far I only drew on 2 layers (one for snow and one for other) and paint by hand step by step color by color as painter artist (2D root !). It isn't a good way of working I grant it !

Can I use any of these excellent trees for my current project of winter sports resort?
So this addon will become integrated even better into pak 128.
http://forum.simutrans.com/index.php?topic=10548.0

You can use the trees for your resort, yes :)
I might change the spruce tree some, but the douglas fir and birch trees I'm pretty happy with.  Use any of them that you'd like.  Put them in to a layer so that if I make a further change before release you can easily change the trees to match.

I found some really nice addons for Blender that allow for quick construction of trees, so I will play with that for a bit and see what I can get.  A real weakness that we have for creating lifelike trees is the lack of a transparency channel... you have to either make a section of the tree entirely see-through or opaque; you can't make what is behind the tree partially visible.  Simcity 4 must have an real time renderer to do this and its shadows.

Greenling: mEGa is correct, those apartment blocks are from Fabio.  They were added to the pak128 a few months ago.

This is a tree that I took from Simcity 4 as a test:



It has a much more irregular shape, now look at the pixel patterns:



You can see how "messy" the pixel pattern is.  And yet it works on full-out zoom.  The big branch at bottom right really stands out without color transparency.  It works in Simcity because it is partially transparent and blends it.  It really stands out when clipped like this.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

My first attempt at a blender 3D tree using the sapling add-on.



Clearly I have some work to do with learning the program more, fine-tuning lighting, textures and other aspects, but already after just 10 hours or so of learning blender I am already producing some decent product.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

You have my respect. I'd rather learn flying a plane than Blender :P

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

Yeah, it's rather complicated... information overload!  But I'm slowly starting to understand it.  With the sapling add-on it's really quick to create a tree, I just have to get better at applying textures and setting up the right lighting to get a good image for simutrans.  I need to get a better dark/light transition in the trees to indicate the 3-D aspect of the tree.  I can turn off the edge anti-aliasing so it's really simple to import to a 128x128 tile and add the blue background colour.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Fabio

Quote from: VS on October 09, 2012, 08:46:57 PM
You have my respect. I'd rather learn flying a plane than Blender :P

+1

Sarlock

I just don't like the blender trees.  I think doing it by hand is still probably the best method for this application... the blender trees look great when they are larger, but zoomed in they lose their effect.  On such a small scale, doing it by hand allows you to exaggerate certain features of the tree to make it look more "real".
What I really need to do is just take some pictures of trees against a neutral blue background.  All I need is a 150 foot high blue sheet and a crane to raise it...hmm...
Until I get that, I'll just go back to doing the rest of the trees by hand.

Blender should work great for doing buildings (especially for rotations).  I'm getting better with it though I still need a few weeks of practice before I am likely to produce very much.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

Alright, I haven't given up on the blender trees... I've done a lot of experimenting and I think I'm getting a better product out of blender now.  There still needs to be some post-blender touchups, but I'm starting to figure that process out a bit too.  The snowy trees are still going to need to be done manually, I think.

I'd love some input on some different variations that I've done with post-render processing.  I've added various levels of blur/anti-aliasing and would love some input on which ones you like the best.  They go in order of the amount of smoothing that I've done to the image.  The graininess that comes raw out of blender doesn't translate very well to 128x128 but I'm pretty pleased with the more processed versions.  I've put the trees beside my douglas fir tree as a comparison.

#1:
#2:
#3:
#4:

Which one(s) do you like best, 1-4?  I think something in between #3 and #4 might be best... #4 might be a bit too over-processed.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Roads

I like #4 best.  While all look good, the others look a bit more like deciduous trees.  Number 1 being the most "deciduous looking," the screen shots seem to get more and more like evergreen trees with each shot.  I think number 4 is excellent!

Sarlock

Here's something in between #3 and #4:



But I think #4 is best as well.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Roads

Sarlock, my eyes are not good enough to tell the difference.  If you laid this one beside #4 and I had to pick which was which, I couldn't.  I like this tree very much though and the size compliments the tall fir - makes the shot look more like a real forest.

mEGa

For me it's #3... Because the compromise of contrasts / color is relatively balanced.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks



VS

Perhaps #3, although I have trouble telling it from #4 (cheap monitor?).

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!