Tree[d] Tutorial

[wciow]

Wciow's Tree[d] Tutorial

Tree[d] is a free program for the creation of 3d trees. It vastly speeds up creating trees and bushes for Glest tilesets as it does all the modelling and uv work for you, turning what used to be hours of work into minutes. However in order to use your creations they must be exported via Blender as G3d models. This tutorial shows you how.

1. Create your tree in Tree[d]
Once you have played around with Tree[d] and understand the options you can begin making trees for Glest. Trees for Glest should ideally be below 200 polygons.

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[img]http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/3686/treed1.jpg[/img]
2. Set up the textures
Once you have finished your tree note down the textures used by your model. This should usually be one for the leaves/branches and one for the trunk/limbs. Create a new folder and copy the used textures from the Tree[d] directory to your newly created folder.

3. Export to Blender
On the file menu hit export OBJ and export to the directory containing your textures from the previous step. Now fire up Blender and go to File>Import>Wavefront (Obj). You should now be presented with your fully textured creation in Blender.

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[IMG]http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/8398/treed2.jpg[/img]
4. Set up your model
In object mode rotate your model 90 degrees clockwise so that the trunk lines up along the Y axis in Blender.
Switch to edit mode and select all vertices (ctrl+a) then convert to quads (alt+j) and then triangles (ctrl+t).

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[img]http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/858/treed3.jpg[/img]
5. Split your model
In object mode select your tree and copy it (ctrl+d), then hit G followed by X and slide the copied model away along the X axis. Now in edit mode select the first model and click any vertex on the trunk. Hit L followed by (ctrl+i) to invert selection and then delete the canopy part of the model. Again in edit mode select the second model and delete the trunk. In object mode select the trunk and slide it back to its correct position on the X axis.

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[img]http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/1788/treed4.jpg[/img][img]http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/3437/treed5.jpg[/img]
6. Assign materials
Both objects in your model (trunk and canopy) will automatically share a material. Select the trunk and go to the assigned texture for the material. Make sure it is set correctly as the trunk texture. Now select the canopy object and assign a new material to it. Add an image type texture and assign the correct leaf texture.

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[img]http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3364/treed6.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/6097/treed7.jpg[/img]
7. Final checks
Check to make sure that alpha is set to 1 for both parts of your tree.
Make sure the canopy of your tree is set to single sided.
Check that animation is set to 1 frame.

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[img]http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/4619/treed8.jpg[/img]
8. Export the G3D
Select both parts of your model and export as g3d into the directory where the textures for your tree are located. If all has gone well the model should load properly in G3dviewer.

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[img]http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8160/treed9.jpg[/img]

[Trappin]

Nice work wciow. The tree[d] app is hosted at archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/treed

[Hagekura]

Interesting tool!
Thank you for excellent tutorial.

[Loronal]

Its easier to separate by material on import