http://dryad.stanford.edu/download.php

free 3d tree (try saying that 3 times fast)

It got posted on the C3D forum twice already.

It produces huge .obj files, though. I assume a good modeling app can simplify that geometry, however.

TomorrowPlusX Wrote:It produces huge .obj files, though. I assume a good modeling app can simplify that geometry, however.

Results will vary based upon the mesh decimation algorithm being used of course. Maya seems to have a good one, but I've found it does some wacky stuff too. There is a script available for Cheetah3D which seems to be alright, but not as good. Plus Martin seems to be refusing to load mtl files in C3D, so that might present a usability problem there. Maybe this is just the nudge he needed? It would definitely be better if there were a way to lower the poly count during creation. I haven't played with the app myself yet. Just how HUGE are we talking about here? Anything over a couple hundred triangles for trees in real-time scenery seems like it'd be pretty unusable except for central objects.

From the C3D forum…

Quote:I love how they suggest it as a tool for making trees for games ... yeah 20MB of geometry and 350k triangles per tree... Riiiight.

Hairball183 Wrote:From the C3D forum…

You've GOT to be kidding me!

About what?

Hairball183 Wrote:About what?

Sorry, the quote didn't get quoted:

Quote:20MB of geometry and 350k triangles per tree...

Do they even make cards that can do 350k triangles at 30fps for the Mac? Regardless, that is utter insanity on a per-tree basis ...

Well, considering the fact that it was posted by PodPerson(Space Weasel Game), I'd say he knows what he's talking about.

Edit: and I know nothing about Video Cards, so I can't tell you that.

Hairball183 Wrote:Edit: and I know nothing about Video Cards, so I can't tell you that.

Hehe... It was more of a rhetorical question. 350K triangles *is* ridiculous for real-time 3D. Considering a wide range of currently available hardware, <50k for the entire scene is probably a more acceptable standard, although there are certainly cards available which can handle much more than that comfortably. I prefer <40k myself for best compatibility with ~GMA950. 7 *times* that for one single object in a real time game, much less a lowly tree, is absurd on basically *any* card.

PodPerson has worked a lot with Unity, so he is very familiar with performance limitations. I haven't visited the C3D forums in a while. I prolly should do a stop-by to see what's up around there...

I tried Dryad a few days ago. Pretty cool. Though, importing into Cheeta3D had some oddities in the model. A few stretched polygons I had to delete.

Ya, not good for realtime graphics. But still nice for rendering billboard images.

macnib Wrote:I tried Dryad a few days ago. Pretty cool. Though, importing into Cheeta3D had some oddities in the model. A few stretched polygons I had to delete.

That more than likely means that Dryad is outputting incorrectly formatted .obj data somewhere in there. I've tested my obj loader alongside C3D's and I can say that C3D's loader is pretty robust and can handle some fairly odd files gracefully. I think mine is still a little better at handling oddball files than Martin's though -- plus I load mtl files.

Triangle count is only really relevant if you care about GMA 950, up to some upper limit of VRAM/PCIe bandwidth. 500k triangles per frame wouldn't worry me greatly for modern hardware, if that's what it took.

Fill rate (pixels filled) is way more limiting.

So then if there were only one tree in the scene it would be okay on modern hardware I suppose.

Some people might want to use it and prerender the trees for 2D games etc.

And free is always free