   How do you create tree trunk with so much detail
  I`d love to create the (non-palm) trees (for one of my games) as can be seen in following screenshot Screenshot However, I`m unsure as to how to instruct my artist. I believe that the in-game mesh uses regular diffuse/normal map for rendering, but someone has to do the hi-poly version first. Or are they just drawing the detail into bump/normal map in regular 2D SW (e.g. Photoshop) and the tree is just a simple mesh ? I definitely don`t want to use ZBrush for those details in the tree surface.I`d appreciate any ideas, especially regarding the necessary workflow in 3dsmax package.   
Quote:Original post by joe1024I`d love to create the (non-palm) trees (for one of my games) as can be seen in following screenshot Screenshot However, I`m unsure as to how to instruct my artist. I believe that the in-game mesh uses regular diffuse/normal map for rendering, but someone has to do the hi-poly version first. Or are they just drawing the detail into bump/normal map in regular 2D SW (e.g. Photoshop) and the tree is just a simple mesh ? I definitely don`t want to use ZBrush for those details in the tree surface.I`d appreciate any ideas, especially regarding the necessary workflow in 3dsmax package.this could be done multiple ways. the first is to model your tree trunk as a simple mesh, then unwrap it, paint your diffuse, then using the diffuse as a guide paint your b&w (grayscale) bump map. from here you can use a program like crazybump to generate your normal map from the grayscale image you drew. however to also get the high frequency detail you may want to generate a normal map from crazybump and then generate another normal map from the photoshop nvidia plugin, then mix the two since crazybump can sometimes miss the high frequency details that the nvidia plugin catches.another method would be to create a high poly mesh with no detail (tesselated basic shape), unwrap it, use your greyscale map you created above as a displacement map, displace the mesh, collapse the modifier list, then tweak the model by hand to get more refined detail. then create your low poly mesh around this high poly, and generate your normal map.or another method is to model the high poly trunk from scratch, make low poly mesh around high, generate normal map (and ambient occlusion while we're at it), then use the normal map as your guide to paint your diffuse and mix your ao map over your diffuse (or alternatively keep it as a separate map, depending on your engine)...of course this is just the way i do things sometimes, so it may vary a bit depending on the artist.   ;  Thanks for the CrazyBump tip - I haven`t heard of it yet. This can surely make our assets better from now on ! Any other tip for some useful application ?I also like the second method quite a lot. In fact, this seems like a way to go - to tweak the displaced mesh by hand.But, how much time do you estimate will this take ? Is it realistic to create it within 8 hours  (without diffuse map) ?   ;Quote:Original post by joe1024I also like the second method quite a lot. In fact, this seems like a way to go - to tweak the displaced mesh by hand.yeah, its a method i've been developing a bit as i work. only downside is its a bit wastful, but its a fast and dirty method that works well.to get even better, i've also been messing around with doing a high frequency detail normal map for whatever i'm making, add this to the displaced mesh, tweak the mesh by hand, model low poly around high, then render out the normal map. what this basically will do is combine the detail generated from the high poly mesh and the high frequency detail of the normal map into a single high quality 3d generated normal map.Quote:But, how much time do you estimate will this take ? Is it realistic to create it within 8 hours  (without diffuse map) ?no clue! ;-)it depends drastically on the skill of your artists and on things such as speed of his/her computer, what size texture you are rendering...etc   ;  One should be able to make a tree trunk like this pretty quickly...   