Topic awaiting preservation: Trees... tips, tricks, or plugins?

I was wondering if anyone has a good technique for making trees.

Brush, pen, or line tool?

Is there a brush preset that works better than others?

I've seen the guy on PBS who makes em with a knife edge, a glob of paint and then some quick brush strokes for leaves... it doesnt translate so well to CG...

I am not so concerned about the leaves, I was hoping to make some spindly thin trees without leaves...

Anyone got a suggestion or trick for this?



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Spend a lot of time looking at trees.

Spend a lot of time getting to know your paintbrush tool, and working with whatever input device you have (mouse, tablet, etc....).

There's really not much more to it than that....

^ what he said, and no there are no tricks or magic spells that gonna archive this...

I would also recommend looking at master's land space drawings such as Rembrandt's or Dürer's

BTW, the "guy on PBS" you're referring to is Bob Ross. http://www.bobross.com/home.htm

Here's his method of painting an evergreen tree: http://www.bobross.com/bobrosstips.html



[This message has been edited by synax (edited 11-26-2003).]

you mean you guys dont have the Threez-Treez plug in?

I dont know what i would do without it...

It creats the 3 most common tree types, or so it thinks... i only use the first two, Evergreens and Oaks.

Just the click of a button and dang! a prefectly painted tree!

i loved Bob and his "happy little accidents"

*sheds a tear

Unknown: http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/howto/story/0,24330,2229533,00.html
watch part 3 of the video highlights
it goes rather quickly but should give you some ideas

Just a little bit sarcastic there eyezaer. But not far from the truth, actually is a new plug-in on the market, and there there may well be others as I seem to remember a diffrent one years back.
http://www.digi-element.com/verdant/verdant.htm

I you don't wish to draw by hand and depending on quality you are after. There are many 3D tree generation programs out there, most will need some kind of render. Xfrog, Tree Druid,OynxTree come to mind. a Bryce 5 and Vue d'Esprit also have tree generators built in. There are also tree generation plug-in for most highend 3d software.

For POVray there are several methods:

Forester&Arboretum: http://www.dartnall.f9.co.uk/ that also exports .obj and directX objects.

Opensource Arbaro http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/ that I haven't tried yet but sound intresting. But as far a I can tell can only be used with POVray.

One also might find Photographic Tree images with clipping paths, typically used n 3D rendering of architectual models using a method sometimes called "Billboarding".

Here is one link to a comercial image library: http://www.realworldimagery.com/

Trees and plants is the one reason I have Painter and Paintshop pro 6, it's so nice to use image tubes and or painters image hose. This is one of those cases when it realy helps not to rely on just one piece of software for everything. I keep about 6 paint diffent paint program just for sepecial uses. Even the realy cheep $40 dollar range programs have some unique uses.

[Emp edit: fixing link]

J. Stuart J.

[This message has been edited by Emperor (edited 11-27-2003).]

Thanks all... couldnt find threez-treez... Looked at some trees. Been looking at and climbing those for years... well, havent climbed one in a while...

Verdant looks nice... as well as aurora and their other filters... 0.0 ...ssoo pretty... kinda pricey for right now though....

My problem is which brush shapes should I use... there's so many! Even GIMP has so many... the tryouts and all the PS versions... then all those brushes available as add-ons... sheesh My programs are choking on themselves while loading all the stuff that tags along, plugins, brushes, textures... etc.

I sometimes just go back to that windows paint thingamabob and use the slash brushes... or the local pixelators favorite, the one pixel square...

I guess I was just wondering if anyone had a preference for brushes...

The TechTV links wouldnt open for me...

I pretty much ended up making some .dxf trees then opening them in my open source 3d modeller BLENDER and adding a texture and ground plane... snapping a render in .tga and then open, copy, paste,,, etc.

My confusion comes from brush selection, opacity, flow percentages... well, not so much confusion as it is distraction.... I start drawing other stuff, applying filters, smudging, and the next thing I know I have some colorized pattern 180 degrees in the other direction from a tree...

Is there a quick way to 'flip horizontal/vertical' a brush preset?


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As for controling the angle of the brush, you have more options with a pressure tablet, pen tilt, pressure, and stylus wheel ect.

There are not keys emulating the stylus functions functions that I am aware of, at least not in PS 7. The only thing you can do is either play with non pen specfic methods for controlling "Angle Jitter" such as Intial Direction and Direction, I use Intial Direction to control custom brushes I use for hair retouching. Otherwise I just setup multiple brushs when I need limited angles or special settings. I would suggest create some custom brushes out photographs of tree branchs various sizes and angle and just switch often.

One idea would be to go buy a fan brushes and some black or gray paint and create some simple strokes you could turn into Photoshop brushes to simulate that Bob Ross tree look. Come to think of it that sounds like a fun project, I may give that a try this weekend. Last week I had tons of fun making ink splats brushes by dropping ink from my second story on to layout board, But I think need to try again with a thicker ink or paint as the ink didn't splat as well as I would have liked.




J. Stuart J.

[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 11-27-2003).]

Good idea... I've been doing some of that... the making new brushes thing... but I seem to lose the flavor of nature when I apply them. I will try the paint stroke variation...



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Well, I bought a tree identification guide specically for this reason. Not only do I get lots of photos as reference points to get the shape and feel of the tree right, I also get bark pics which I scan to make textured brushes.

*runs in*

I just have to add that I absolutely love Bob Ross. Some may loathe him (or at least, the way he paints) but he always manages to cheer up my day.

Holy CRAP!!! Nice sword... err, if I could draw that, I wouldnt need to draw trees.

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Bob Ross suck ass! =)

*stabs Ruski*

*stabs nax*

Just needed to step in...

200th Post

[This message has been edited by Rauthrin (edited 12-01-2003).]

*stabs Rauthrin*

*Grabs mahjqa's nifty sword and lops off the 'thread hijacking stabbers' body parts in random order*

And screams: "No violence in my tree thread will be condoned! Bleed Hijackers! Bleed!"


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izz takes notice when he sees UnknownComic weilding mahjqa's blade... backwards.

~dodges sword and stabs UC~

Ok.. I'll stop...

*Step's back, and tries not to mix himself with issues not conserning him*
but why bother leaving this message???

Shut up... and pick up that finger!

... damn backwards sword!



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ive been trying to find a way to make trees with that painting method, so far I havent.
I paint with this method, and actually do wall murals with it.
All I can tell you is, maybe try to keep the trees wwwaaayyy in the background.
Let me know if you find a way.
hooch
http://real_illusion0.tripod.com/realillusion.html