Trouble with Treewalls

I have set out making my own Tree walls, but seem to be having some troubles with either my settings in photoshop or Sketchup. I am using BTB Evo, I am modifying the texture in Photoshop using Brendon tutorial, I have the magic wand tolerance setting to 10. Saving as a .dds file first then saving as a jpeg to use as a texture to be applied in Sketchup. In 3ds max I am creating a plane that is being imported into Sketchup.

The trouble is white capping at the top of the trees & what appears to be overlapping at the top.



2.jpg3.jpg


:cool:
 
Rather than making an SObject based on your plane object, you can apply the dds texture to a Wall, and then use the Y offset value (in the wall's Materials section) to move the texture up by a small amount, and then move the points of the wall downwards by a similar amount.

Walls also have a 'Tree Wall' option for evening out the brightness.
 
Also, when I make objects with Sketchup, I always have to stretch the texture to be a little bigger than a face to avoid those lines... Somebody might know how to switch off that Sketchup's tendency too "fit" the texture into a face?
 
Rather than making an SObject based on your plane object, you can apply the dds texture to a Wall, and then use the Y offset value (in the wall's Materials section) to move the texture up by a small amount, and then move the points of the wall downwards by a similar amount.

Walls also have a 'Tree Wall' option for evening out the brightness.

Yes, the wall option makes more sense, a lot more flexible over terrain & many other aspects. Sorry, but I had went off at a different tangent looking at the 'Great Britain' xpack SObjects. Still the one problem remains with the white capping. I will do some more experimenting in Photoshop, which is where I think the problem is. In one of experiments I completely lobbed off the tops of the trees, but the problem still appeared.:)
 
I usually take a photo with some tree, copy bgr layer, select the sky with magic wand (need to experiment with setting), delete it maybe 3-4 times. Then select the transparency of the layer and make an alpha channel from the selection. Next thing is to use levels on the alpha channel - sometimes I make it "tight" - move the left node to the right and then combine with the middle one. It usually works fine. Then, at the end - I fill the background layer (or any new under the tree layer) with some color which fit to the rest of the picture. Sometimes the alpha channel needs to be corrected manually - with pencil or small brush to get the best results.
 
Here is a example of a railing that was created in Photoshop, there was no background to remove, but I am sill not getting a clean image in BTB.

I am creating a duplicate layer in Photoshop, Desaturate, adjusting the curves to 251, merging the layers, inverting. cut & pasting into a new Alpha layer, flatting the image & finally saving as a dds.

Some step I am missing in Photoshop or BTB

Getting a little obsessed with this problem, but want to get beyond it, to create my own trees & other items.:)
4343.JPG3424.jpg455.jpg

pencil.png
 
I would do couple things:
1. Change the background color from pink to something much darker (in future - for tress - use for the background some (green or gray) color that's fits to overall separated tree image)
2. Inspect the alpha channel again and "tighten" it by using levels on it - go with left node to the right / with middle node you can make the alpha channel "wider" or "thinner"
3. I think the most important thing at least is to save as DTX 3 - then alpha channel does not have that opacity and you get sharper edges! Also, the final file can be smaller :) For such straight lines as in your fence you can even save as DTX 1 I think...
4.... I think you also don't need any MIP maps in the file - I make objects (houses, trees, fences etc.) and found that switching on mip maps does not change anything, so I set for textures/materials in xpacks mip=0.
With mip maps you will get 1/4 bigger files.
But check (mip maps) in rF, I play only RBR ;)
I hope you will get better results :)
 
I would do couple things:
1. Change the background color from pink to something much darker (in future - for tress - use for the background some (green or gray) color that's fits to overall separated tree image)
2. Inspect the alpha channel again and "tighten" it by using levels on it - go with left node to the right / with middle node you can make the alpha channel "wider" or "thinner"
3. I think the most important thing at least is to save as DTX 3 - then alpha channel does not have that opacity and you get sharper edges! Also, the final file can be smaller :) For such straight lines as in your fence you can even save as DTX 1 I think...
4.... I think you also don't need any MIP maps in the file - I make objects (houses, trees, fences etc.) and found that switching on mip maps does not change anything, so I set for textures/materials in xpacks mip=0.
With mip maps you will get 1/4 bigger files.
But check (mip maps) in rF, I play only RBR ;)
I hope you will get better results :)

Yes, That fixed it, saving as a DTX 3 & adjusting the Alpha channel levels eleminated the problem. I was saving as a DTX 1.

Thanks:thumbup:
 
Oh, yes, I must correct my post - DTX 1 causes black lines around texture with transparent edges - sorry! So, DTX 3 is enough. Actually DTX 3 and DTX 5 make the same weight of pictures - just checked it... The last thing are mip maps - it's somethimes worth to avoid them (for me). I always use DTX 1 for non-transparent textures, although some say this makes slightly worse picture quality - I don't know :)
Glad that I could help.
 

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