Looking forward to it =)

Here's a shot to show what I mean by the specular maps; see how much cooler it looks with them
(attention 56 k guys)

Zezeri: What makes you think it's specular maps that make the scene look cool? ?( If you mean opacity maps, I have those already. Here's a comparison:
No opacity map:


Opacity map enabled:


You can see the difference most clearly in how the branches are much darker from below than the needles, which are slightly translucent.

A small update; I've been working on the trunk texture, you can see my current progress below. I unwrapped the trunks again to prevent stretching, and made all new diffuse and normal maps.





I'm having some problems with the dead branches on the lower part of the trunk - I'm going to remodel them as individual branches due to the way CE2 lights 2-sided planes. The way I have them setup now (vertical planes running along the trunk), the "back" side of the plane is always dark, even if it's facing the sunlight...

Rawr I want it now! Much better than the Exodus Pines in my opinion. Those screenshots are like I would be watching outside my window. :happy:

@the_grim

Of course I know the difference between specular maps and opacity map . Both is important for vegetation. But without specular highlights almost any model looks flat and boring. Just try it out, play arround with specular power and glosiness and be amazed by the difference

Also if you look at that picture, you'll notice that they're not only using opacity maps, but also specular maps, notice the highlights on the leaves and the trunk.

edit: I'll get you some pics of the exodus pines to illustrate it.

EDIT:

I am sorry for the blurriness of the first image, i had wrong options on my camera. The 2nd pic had slightly wrong settings, so it has blur on the edges of the image. This can be fixed with some editing of the images and slight downscaling, though.

Bark for you here... A very close up of a small, young pine:



And here's an very old (Approximately 60 years old) pine's bark. Has experienced some rough things..



I am going to take more shots today, with my camera adjusted like it should be.

@the_grim please, infrom me when you have these pictures saved so that i can remove them from my FTP.

A new one, better than the last ones...

if you want bark textures i got some i took earlier this summer..

heres one


theyre pretty similar to RaZoR-FIN's pics but they got less of that moss stuff growin on em

Yeah, also you had a better lighting there. Easier to tile. I could send some forest ground textures, as the ground in europe isn't so similiar (Different style of grass, etc) than the tropical theme.

Thanks RaZoR and Olli, I've saved the pics so you can remove them from your ftp (and from clogging my thread). The last pic has a bit of shadowing going on, you should try to take your reference pics on an overcast day so there's only ambient lighting and no sharp shadows in the diffuse texture. I'm starting to be pretty happy with my bark texture, it's a bit lighter and has larger features than the spruce around here but those are things that look better (show more features) in a gaming environment! :tongue:



What I need more urgently now is a good-looking dead branch texture... :unsure: I painted one in Photoshop but it doesn't look too good close-up. Also those thin branches have some serious aliasing problems, I enabled alpha blend for now because there doesn't seem to be too much z-fighting going on (the dead branches are so wide apart). I'll probably redo the texture though, but I can't find any decent photo sources... ;(




I do have specular on my needles, but I don't want them looking like plastic so I'm not overdoing the effect. If you look at photo references (for example here), there isn't much specular visible from a distance. I'll adjust the specular a bit though, to bring it out a little more.

Woooah, nice! That picture looks fantastic and so do the pines
The bark texture on them looks just right with normals and speculars. It has also got great colour depth

For the branches, I guess you could use the bark texture to overlay it in Photoshop, make a outline selection of the branches you've painted, and delete this from the bark. Then use saturation and darken effects to adjust it. I noticed the disjointedness of the branch, you can patch those up by painting over them

Either way, nice work!

that trunk looks pretty good already

youre right, i took my refs on a sunny day, and i only realised it when i applied some of the textures to trees i made ingame.. that pic is one of the least shadowed though.

@the_grim
Yes, I see what you mean, but a bit more of it would make it more interesting to look at, I think. Anyway, you're making some good progress ^.^

Zezeri: This kind of specular more to your tastes?



I can't really up the specular much more, or it starts shining bright white which makes the needles look more like metal. I think it looks good.

I finished the dead branch texture and remodeled the dead branches, they don't look as good as the CE3 forest demo branches but this will have to do since I don't really want to redo them again.



Alpha blending is enabled on the dead branches, it just makes them look better and adds nice antialiasing. I can't use it on the canopy because the branches show through each other and the trunk - all in all it looks completely messed up with alpha blending on.

And finally, the trunk:



I added a bit more specular to the bark as well, it's starting to look alright. If there are no major complaints about the looks of the trees, I guess the material is done now and I'll just model a couple more variations before release!

Hmm nice improvements. Some remarks:

- the trunk texture could be more colorful. Not oversaturated i mean, just add more colors, like different shades of red-light pink, brown, and black. It could be also more sharper, especially the normal map. There are quite sudden changes in a barks normals due to the rough surface of the trunk. Maybe some spec maps could stress this also.

- the leaves are too thick. The thorns of a pine are much more thinner imho. I would add twice more but also much thicker leaves to a branch.

- also more braches could be on the leaf texture, and more shades for the leaves

- and i would use a high res leaf diffuse texture ( at least 1k but perhaps 2k )

The only problem I see is your pine branches seem to be the same length throughout the tree, they need to get bigger closer to the bottom for some trees. Not by much but a tiny bit.

Besides that they look great, I really like the texture work.