0

I'm making a terrain for a video game. Is there a tool to spread a lot of trees/plants/rocks on a terrain? For example Unity has a built-in terrain tool for placing them, are there similar methods for Blender? Also, I don't want to decrease perfomance for every tree. Thanks!

JakeD
  • 8,467
  • 2
  • 30
  • 73
Stas Garcia
  • 37
  • 1
  • 6

2 Answers2

6

If you intend to export a whole terrain to unity (or any other RT 3D game engine), it would be wise to create your terrain, the trees, rocks and so on as independent objects, then import them into unity and let unity's distribution method do the work.

The reason for this is that unity works with instances of objects, while Blender would produce actual geometry or - if you do not intend to join your terrain into one object - many objects with possible redundancy of materials. That means more draw calls which lead to a heavy load on the engine.

Besides from that, you would still need to create collision meshes, which means even more redundant data or, if you chose to join all objects into one mesh with submeshes, it would be nearly impossible to generate the collision meshes automatically.

metaphor_set
  • 6,625
  • 2
  • 22
  • 35
  • Thanks, so even if i use Blender tools for spreading my objects - they will export as individual ones? – Stas Garcia Aug 29 '16 at 20:50
  • No, but the performance would be horrid. – JakeD Aug 29 '16 at 21:00
  • It's a huge problem to make normal terrain in unity, for example placing roads and e.t.c. It becomes painful when u want to change it ;( What should i do? – Stas Garcia Aug 30 '16 at 08:08
  • @Stanislav - "I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it." You can exchange one pain for another. I don't know anything about your project, but I know that one normally expects to have collision data and a decent not too heavy CPU/GPU load from a game. So next step would be: Try your method. – metaphor_set Aug 30 '16 at 10:53
  • I think the best way to do this - is to make base terrain - without trees, buildings, houses, just terrain, roads and mountains (or use separate objects for mountains, i'll play with it), then just use special script to export my mesh to Unity terrain object, and then use Unity's tools for surrounding. – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 22:44
4

You could use Particle System with Clouds texture (or any texture, even hand painted) to do this.

Steps:

  1. Add Particle System to your terrain (and set it as screenshot below shows).

  2. Add texture to this Particle System.

  3. Go to Texture tab, select created texture (and set it as screenshot below shows).

Settings:

tree settings

Blend file:

Update:

To add custom generation of trees you need to create New Texture, then in Texture Paint Mode create Material (Material Diffuse Color) and choose it in Texture tab. Now you can paint wherever you want.

tree_2

tree_3

Community
  • 1
cgslav
  • 17,548
  • 2
  • 39
  • 82
  • Yeah, tha''s what i want. But how can i attach those trees to certain areas, for example along the roads? I know i should use weights, i made them, how can i apply my Particleystem to them? Thanks for reply. – Stas Garcia Aug 29 '16 at 20:44
  • Check my update, and maybe check this excelent tutorial from Gleb Alexandrov as an addon to the whole process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eshOzshjt90 – cgslav Aug 29 '16 at 21:00
  • I did not understand this method with texture ;( – Stas Garcia Aug 30 '16 at 11:42
  • What exact part of it? Do you know how to add Particle System? Do you know something about Texture Paint? I can make some more detailed answer but you need to tell me specifically what do you need. – cgslav Aug 30 '16 at 19:27
  • Yes, i understand what the Paint Mode is, i know how to use UV's and paint this black line, but i dont understand how this black line can help me to avoid Particle System objects placement. Also i dont have "Textures" menu in particle system (as you have on your screenshot, i have the last version of blender(2.77a) ). – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 21:43
  • Are you using Blender Render or Cycles? – cgslav Aug 31 '16 at 21:47
  • Hmm. Ok, now i use Cycles Render. I made a texture, placed UV on it, painted black lines. But my terrain is pink in Texture Paint mode(no texture detected). Also there is no my texture in Texture tab in ParticleSystem settings. My texture tab is different from yours, i dont have "Mapping" and "Influence". – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 22:08
  • Check in update, second screenshot, and double check those textures. Also (I don't know why) after you paint something Blender do not update particle system. I'm changing back and forth some option to get it update. For example click on brightness in texture tab to 1.01 and go back to 1. – cgslav Aug 31 '16 at 22:17
  • Yeah, i know about updating the PS. Ok, i got something, there is still pink texture in PaintMode, but when i checked "Density" - trees dissapear where black lines are. This Cycles mode is so strange, blender mode is more "correct". I cant even change my brush color... – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 22:26
  • http://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/5966/paint-particles-from-texture check this one, and I will make step by step answer for you. – cgslav Aug 31 '16 at 22:37
  • I understood your method, it's interesting. I'll play around it, thanks) – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 22:41
  • Blender is great, but there are so many "points of no return", where you can make a mistake and to solve it - you should do too many movements, for example animations (when you cannot delete animations, coz blender thinks they used by phantom users and e.t.c) – Stas Garcia Aug 31 '16 at 22:48
  • I've done this once more and pink texture is result of not having material slot created in texture paint mode. Blender could be painfull but as it goes for me, I always have copy of my objects on another layers just to be able to redo everything also if my answer was good enough, consider accepting it or/and upvoting. – cgslav Aug 31 '16 at 22:50