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In part 2, I’ll talk about the next way to do low poly trees and shrubs.
For this example, we’re using a standard tree map you’ll find in any package. There are 2 files, the map itself (in color), and the mask (the one that has the tree in white on a black background). This is what they look like:
The images are always the same size. In this case, the images are 1645 pixels wide, and 1991 pixels high:
Trees
In architectural visualization, trees and other foliage give a real sense of, well, realism to images and animations. Unless the trees are the focus of your scene, you’ll want to keep their poly count low, and render times fast.
There are several ways to create trees for your scenes, but if you are going to have more than 1, you are going to have serious render time issues if you use any of the built in trees/foliage in 3ds Max (under Create -> Extended -> Foliage), as these trees have many thousands of faces. Even with 1, if it is the Banyan tree you’ll be waiting a while.
This is the first part of a few posts about alternatives. This first tutorial is about using Sphere primitives.