[wacampbell]

These are moderate poly trees - 600 to 1000 polygons total. They were machine generated using Blender's 'sapling' addon. Someone with some artistic talent could probably improve the looks a great deal but they aren't bad. As they have 3 dimensional folliage they look good from all angles and even from above. ( or even flying through them )

I've used a custom foliage shader that's programmed to brighten the foliage on the side facing the sun, and darken the folliage towards the interior of the tree. The trunk just uses the standard diffuse shader and I really like how it takes the shadows from the folliage above.

Again, I am just having some fun experimenting to see what could be done to take OR to the next level graphically. There's no guarantees that any of this will make it in to the final released version.

[wacampbell]

Just to elaborate. The folliage is basically a small branch with leaves textured onto a panel that is attached to the modelled trunk like this..

[D&RGW]

Wayne,

Could you give some additional information on the conversion utility you used for this? I have been using Blender for some time now and wasn't aware that a Blender-ORTS conversion utility was ever created (and would love to get my hands on one...) The trees look great, by the way--the screenshots you've been posting recently undoubtedly rival Railworks in terms of graphic quality!

Thank-you and cheers!

[wacampbell]

D&RGW, on 13 February 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

Could you give some additional information on the conversion utility you used for this? I have been using Blender for some time now and wasn't aware that a Blender-ORTS conversion utility was ever created (and would love to get my hands on one...)

I wrote my own export tool so I could experiment with custom features for OR. The exporter has become fairly complete with support for LOD's, animation, etc. It generates a .s file that is usually readable by MSTS as well as OR. The exporter runs in Blender 2.61 currently. There isn't much documentation ( read that as 'no documentation' ) but I'd be willing to share it - especially to someone who was willing to do up some tutorials.

[SVRy_Steve]

Wayne,

I guess that puts me in my place! Those trees are gorgeous. Here I thought I was doing so good with the ugly cruciform MSTS trees.

It's great to see progress on the quality of vegetation available for the future sims.

Steve

[wacampbell]

SVRy_Steve, on 13 February 2012 - 06:08 PM, said:

Wayne,

I guess that puts me in my place! Those trees are gorgeous. Here I thought I was doing so good with the ugly cruciform MSTS trees.

It's great to see progress on the quality of vegetation available for the future sims.

Steve

There's still plenty of need for the cruciform trees. These hi-poly trees are only for the near forground. When it comes to covering a mountainside - simpler shapes are the way to go.

[D&RGW]

Wayne,

That's pretty impressive! And with animation as well? You've been doing quite a lot of work!

I certainly can't make any promises, but I'd love to take a look at that exporter sometime. I have no experience with technical documents but perhaps with your help I might be able to figure something out. I also have a few models in progress that I'd like to share at some point.

Thank-you and cheers!

[Fleegle411]

Excellent! With trees like that and procedural vegetation, I'd say Open rails is certainly on the right rack!

[captain_bazza]

Wayne, you ol' Wampus, you're full of surprises....and they're gooduns.

Cheers Bazza :lol2:

[conductorchris]

It's really exciting to see this. It looks SO different from msts, with the lighting and your improvements. I am happy, just looking at it!
Christopher