How to make a tree in 3ds max

UPDATE! Fully multi-threaded explicit normal calculation has been implemented in 3dsMax 2022.

The models I have been dealing with in 3dsMax have been mostly internally made or purchased as .max file, which means I usually do not have explicit normals on my model. If you make a model in 3dsMax, you usually smoothing group instead of explicit normal.

But, most other DCCs are using explicit normal. Which means when you import fbx, obj or alembic. You will be likely to have a lot of explicit normals. I mean a lot. All this explicit normal also need to be recalculated when your object is deforming, which means it can have a great impact on your animation playback performance.

Recently I have learned the impact of normal calculation is HUGE. I mean really HUGE. Another reason why this issue surfaces more recently is that 3dsMax dev have beenputting a lot of effort to preverve explicit normal in various modifier. In the past, many modifiers had destroyed on the stack, now more explicit normals have preserved and causing slow down.

I downloaded a MaxTree sample file from https://maxtree.org/products/plant-models-vol-16/ 
They have the original max file and fbx file.Perfect.

I chose the biggest one, MT_PM_Albizia_saman_01_01_H, and applied animated Bend modifier.It has 4,4mil verts and 3.8mil tris. This is what it looks like in my Ryzen 2700X(kinda old… I know). I turned off real time playback.

The native max mesh from .max file plays at around 14fps. Not bad for 4.4 million verts animation.
Now I imported the fbx version of same tree. I got 0.6fps.
In other wards, max mesh took less than 2 second to play 24 frames. fbx mesh took 36 second to play 24 frames. That’s almost 20 times slower! When I check the amount of explicit normal, there were 11.399 million normals! File size also jumped from 294M to 645M! This mesh has total 11,399,301 normals. 11 million! Essentially you mesh becomes almost 16 million verts instead of 4.4 million.

First of all, this is why it is always better if you stay in 3dsMax all the time. The native data is always the best. But, if you have to get data from outside of 3dsMax. The ultimate fix issue would be converting to smoothing group and remove all explicit normals. Unfortunately, I have not found a good way to do this for 4.4 million verts model.

So, I took a little bit of time to find a solution, and here is two work arounds.

Apply Mesh Select for Editable Poly, Smooth for Editable Mesh and set to “Off in render”

Some may think “why not Edit Normal modifier?” because it turns out that Edit Normals can not completely remove normal interface.  So far the only way to completely wipe out explicit normal is applying Mesh Select modifier on Editable Poly or Smooth modifier on Editable Mesh.   Then, by setting this to Off in render, you wipe out explicit normals only for viewport and get correct smoothing while rendering.

So, by doing this, I got around 9fps. That’s a lot better than 0.6fps. That’s 15 times faster.

Do not turn on Auto Smooth on 4.4 million verts model. You don’t need to smooth anything. Just applying Smooth modifier on Editable Mesh will wipe out all normals. Same for Mesh Select, just apply it and change to “Off in Render”.

Conclusion

• Use always the native mesh if you can. The native mesh is always the best.
• Use always Smoothing group instead of explicit normal if you can.
• “Smooth” to wipe out explicit normal in Editable Mesh.
  “Mesh Select” to wipe out explicit normal in Editable Poly.
  Edit Normals modifier can not do this.
• After the model is imported, always try this if the model has animation.
• As you can read the below paragraph, having any explicit normal will make 3dsMax calculate something all the time. Even tho you have an explicit normal per vetex(Usually it is a lot more), it is essentially same as having one more mesh. in the above case, it had 11.4 million explicit normals, which means it is same as having 4 trees than 1 tree.  On top of that, this would happen for each modifier after animated modifier. So, this tip will be always valid i n the future.
• Don’t just assume 3dsMax would be slow for deforming hires mesh. If you for really low fps, always try something. It would be always case by case But, generally speaking, 3dsMax should not havce problem playing more than miilion verts around 10fps.

Technical details

One of the main 3dsMax developer, Peter Watje, game some insight about this issue. I’m sharing the full text. It is must read for any 3dsMax users who want to know the technical details. Thanks, Peter!

Mesh Normal Interface is really the correct name but basically it is an object that is attached to the mesh when you want to override the smoothing groups. It lets you describe normals by smoothing group, or by which faces they are attached to or by the user explicitly setting the value changing the normal direction. It carries around a lot of data even if you don’t have any explicit normals. So for instance if you Box and you put an Edit Normals all the normals start out as Unspecified Normals and are colored blue which means the normals are generated by smoothing groups. Then there are Specified Normals in which case the normal is still computed but the faces that are used are determined by the user. For instance if you Unify some normals they become a Specified Normals(cyan) and the normal is computed by all the faces the original normals where attached to, Finally there are Explicit Normals(green) which the changes the direction of the normal and that normal is no longer computed in anyway. All that data needs to be stored in the Mesh Normal Interface.

Reset Normals sets all the normals back to Unspecified. The Mesh Normal Interface is still there it just uses the smoothing groups to compute the normals but there is still alot of data there.

When it comes to performance it breaks down to were the normals are computed and how much data is copied to create them. With no Mesh Normal Interface the normals are created when the mesh is displayed and is actually done by a shader that takes the mesh and the smoothing groups and generates the normals directly on the display mesh. It is really fast which is why in some cases when you put certain modifiers on the stack that strip out the Mesh Normal Interface it becomes faster.

The other way performance path is thru the Mesh Normal Interface. Since it is data on an object that flows up the stack that means it may need to be copied which is a heavy weight operation. It also means that any geometry changing modifiers need to also deform the explicit normals in addition to the vertices. So when you come to the display all Specified and Unspecified Normals need to be computed if they were not already and merged with the Explicit Normals and then attached to the display geometry. So you performance is determined mainly by how heavy weight your stack was. Previously the stack was super conservative dealing with normal. It did extra copies and the deforming of normals on a single thread. We are looking at making it less conservative to get better performance but that might bring up other unforeseen issues.

A Tip in a tip

How to set modifier to work only in viewport? Right click menu of the modifier. You can set a modifier to on/off or on/off only in render or viewport.

How about making your workflow 15 times faster? Meet renderStacks!

Post Views: 5,244

Creating a wood material in 3d max

Views: 32282 Comments: 1 3ds, corona, vray, highlight, interior, material, wood material

Wood is one of the most used materials when creating an interior in 3ds max. You can get a beautiful woody texture with the right settings, as well as with a set of high-quality, seamless textures. Today we will collect the most realistic wood material for Vray and Corona Renderer. We will analyze how to make veins, correct reflection (glossy and matte), and also learn how to use ready-made shaders.

Page Content:

• 1 Tree material in Vray
  • 1.1 Option of the DIFFUSE card and Setting up material
  • 1.2 Add the BUMP
  • 1.3 Map RGLOSSINESS
• 2 Material Diffuse map and material setup
• 2.2 Overlay bump map and RGlosiness specular map

Wood material in Vray

First, start 3d max and select our rendering system in it - we will work in Vray. By the way, you can download the settings for it here.

I have already created a room with a window and light falling from it so that I can visually show the result of the settings. Open the material editor (hot key M on the keyboard). Select a clean ball and change the material type from Standard to VrayMtl.

Diffuse Mapping and Material Setup

First of all we need to load the texture of the tree itself. To do this, click on the box next to Diffuse and select the Bitmap material type.

We will be asked to select a picture from our computer.

Choose high-quality, and, most importantly, seamless pictures to create materials. The higher the resolution of the image, the more realistic the rendered material will look.

Now let's look at the settings. Wood is a material that reflects light, in order to have reflections, lower the Reflection value to 180.

Reflections can be either matte, with blurry highlights, or glossy:

• To create a matte surface, set the settings as in the screenshot below.

• To get the glossy highlight, raise the RGlossines and Fresenel IOR values.

Add a bump map Bump

So, we got the shine, but this is not enough for a really realistic material. If you look closely at the furniture in the house, made of solid wood or imitating it, you will notice that in addition to the pattern, the surface has a relief. To simulate the veins of wood, we will work with a bump map. To do this, let's drop the settings scroll to the very bottom, to the Maps section.

In the Diffuse line we have a material map responsible for the wood pattern. Let's drag and copy it to the bump section of the terrain. In the box next to the name of the card, the degree of its impact is set: 100 is the maximum impact. I set 10 to begin with.

The structure of the tree appeared on the surface. The lighter parts protruded forward, and the dark ones moved in depth, giving volume. Click on the screenshot to view the details.

Adding a specular map RGlossiness

The last step is to overlay a specular map, this will make it even more realistic: the specular map defines exactly how light will be reflected from the surface. It is not necessary to use this map all the time, especially considering that a large number of maps in the material lengthens the rendering process. But with the help of this simple technique, really beautiful materials are obtained, which look especially advantageous in the foreground.

To create non-uniform reflections, open the card scroll and click on the square next to RGlossiness. Choose Color Correction. Sketching the map through color correction will allow us to adjust the degree of its impact.

In the menu that opens, press the None button and select Bitmap.

Then we find the prepared reflection map on our computer. The pattern on my map does not match the pattern on the Diffuse texture and therefore gives a particularly interesting result.

Click the Show Shaded Material in Viewport button. My reflection texture seems too big.

Therefore, I will check the box Use Real-World Scale and change its size.

Back to Color Correction via the Go to Parent button. In this scroll, increase the brightness and slightly lower the contrast. It is better to select these material settings empirically.

This is the result, click to see closer:

Wood material in Corona Renderer

Making wood material in Corona Renderer in 3d max is also quite easy. Assign the Corona renderer in the render settings.

One way to get the Crown material is to convert it from a Vray material. But I will tell you how to create it from scratch.

Assign the Diffuse map and set up the material

Open the material editor and click on the empty ball. Change the Standard material to CoronaMtl.

Next to the Color line, click on the empty box and select Bitmap.

Find a texture with a wood pattern on the computer.

Adjust reflections:

• To get matte wood set the following settings:

• To get glossy material, increase the Giness parameter.

Overlay bump map and reflection map RGlosiness

Now we assign a bump map to the material - it is she who, as in the case of Vray, will give the material a more realistic surface. Scroll down the materials scroll and copy the Diffuse map into the Bump slot. We select the degree of influence empirically, it is better to start with small values, 0.5 was enough for me.

Next, let's map the reflections through Color Correction. In the Reflect Glossiness line, click on the None button and select Color Correction.

Then click the None button in the menu that opens, select Bitmap.

We are looking for a texture on the computer, the pattern of which will be different from the pattern in Diffuse. The map does not have to be black and white.

See how the texture lays down by pressing the Show Shaded Material in Viewport button. We reduce the map, if necessary, by clicking the Use Real-World Scale checkbox. The size is changed by the values ​​in the Size column.

Click Go to Parent and return to the Color Correction menu. Editing the Contrast and Brightness parameters. It is better to select values ​​manually. This is the result I got:

Using Shaders

Using ready-made shaders is the easiest way to make a wood texture in 3ds max. Shaders are ready-made, collected materials, with maps and settings. There are even ready-made collections of materials. Most of them are designed for Vray and are freely available on the Internet.

How to add them, read in this lesson. But what if the tree shader is designed, for example, for the Crown, but you need the same one, but for ViRay? Everything is very simple: you just need to use the material converter. And we also have a detailed lesson about this: read it here.

Lesson author: Alice Cube

Creating a realistic tree

kot3d

Hello everyone, my name is Konstantin, I work as a visualizer in a design studio, it so happened that I had to deal with the visualization of exteriors, but as everyone understands, in order to get a beautiful exterior, you need a good environment, and here I ran into the problem of modeling trees. As far as I know, there are now two fairly high-quality products for this purpose: Onyx TREE Storm and Xfrog, the first works with geometry, the second with transparency channels for foliage modeling, unfortunately, the render time in Vray is much higher when using transparency channels than geometry.

I would also like to express my gratitude to comrades: ViStas (3D Work) and Wasteland (3D Work) for help in correcting this lesson.

And so, in this lesson I want to tell you how you can simulate a fairly realistic tree using 3DMAX9 and the Onyx TREE Storm program, as well as the plug-in for Max from it. We will use the good old Vray as a visualizer. (In my case it is Vray RC5)

To obtain a quality result, of course, basic knowledge of these programs is necessary, but I think it is also suitable for beginners

Well, let's go, first open Onyx TREE BROADLEAF, and choose the disc you like, I settled on Aesculus h2

The only thing I changed was the height of the tree to 4. 5 meters

Next, go to File - Save parameters - (file name) - well, click Save

Run Max, go to Create - Tree storm - click tree, and select the previously saved blank of our tree, click open, and paste our tree into the Top window, save the file .

IMPORTANT - due to the considerable buggy of the software, we will go for a little trick, open another Max, you ask why, everything is very simple: in one file we will make geometry, and in the second we will collect it by Merge.

Well, let's get down to the fun part, first we need to separate the leaves from the trunk, for this we press Adjust - Sub objects - and carefully drag the Number of s-objects up to 1 (you can do more, this is suitable for those who have a computer not strong enough, and will not be able to replace all the geometry at once), click OK.

Next, put a checkmark on those objects that we want to set UV coordinates, and press OK again.

In principle, for comparison, you can make a comparative render, before and after. We put the Daylight system, select the Vray Sun light source, the Vray camera, I didn’t change anything in the settings, the current lowered the shutter speed in the camera to 125, and lowered the turbidity of San to 2

Well, in principle, it’s not bad, and trees of this kind can be used as a background, but what if it is necessary for the near one? This is what we are trying to fix.

To do this, make a branch with leaves in Max (the branch itself and the leaves must be separate objects), don't forget about high-quality textures.

The main thing is that the Pivot of these objects is at the bottom, and they are located at the bottom of the branch, as shown in fig. as Front,

IMPORTANT - to get the correct arrangement of leaves and branches on our pig, you need to reset the Pivot by pressing Reset Pivot and Align to world, if you did scaling, then you need to apply Reset XForm, and collapse the stacks.

We save our file with a branch, the main thing is to remember the name of the objects, return to our file with a blank of a tree, select the leaves, go to modifiers, press Replace with, select our file with a branch and leaves, select a branch, and click OK

If the computer did not freeze and did not crash, then all the leaves were replaced by branches, after that we right-click on the mouse, select Convert to - Convert to Editable Poly, the computer will think and make a single mesh out of the branches. We save the file and switch to the second Max file (the one in which we will collect everything), go to File - Merge file, select our file with branches, select branches from the list and click OK, save this file, and again switch to the tree file.

Press Undo, now we do Replace with again but on the leaves, again convert to a mesh, save and Merge into our file where we collect the tree. If you did everything right, then you should get something like this

So we return to the file with a blank, click Undo, click Adjust, in Sub-objects we do 0, uncheck the Leaf, click OK, in the end we should get a bare trunk, which we convert to a mesh, save and merge into our file, where we already have leaves with branches.

It remains only to assign mats to the trunk.

Sounds good, but now I think we can add some colors for variety.

To do this, I created a Sphere, changing the number of segments in it, and making it a hemisphere, we will use this hemisphere for seating our inflorescences, the only thing you will need to do is to convert it to Editable Poly, and delete the lower part of the polygons.

After that, we place our blanks for planting flowers on the branch, you can place it at your discretion, the main thing is not to forget about the location of the Pivot, it should be in the same place as the branch.

The next step is to create the flowers themselves, here you can already give free rein to your imagination, I did something like this

the same as for leaves and branches. We do Replace with - select our hemispheres - convert to Poly, and do Merge to a file in which we collect everything. In the same file, you will need to make a Merge of our flower.

So, the file in which we collected everything should contain the following objects:

1. Trunk

2. Branches

3. Leaves

4. Hemispheres for planting flowers

5.

Well, now let's deal with the arrangement of flowers, for this we will use Scatter

Select our Flower, then Create - Compound objects - Scatter, then click Pick Distribution Object, and select our hemispheres

As you can see, our flower will multiply by our hemispheres, I set the number of copies to 1500 (more is possible), also do not forget to check the Hide Distribution Object checkbox, after that the hemispheres can be deleted, we don’t need extra polygons in the scene.

This is what we get at the moment

In principle, you can leave it like that, but I decided to make more colors, increasing the number of copies to 3000

Well, our wood is ready, but we use it for exterior for example, we can’t, in order to fix this, you need to convert it to Vray Proxy.

To do this, we need to transfer all our objects to Editable Poly and Attach all objects to one object, it is best to attach to the trunk, and I can also advise you to rename all objects and make separate Proxy for the tree and for flowers, then you will have two types trees with and without flowers.

Well, that's basically it. "May Pinocchio be with you"

787 0 850 90

51

2008-06-02

Pretty relevant topic, given the scarce available information on the plugin

2008-06-02

Useful lesson. There is VERY little information on vegetation, so it’s definitely relevant . .. Well, everything is detailed and understandable - so my 5/5 :) Thank you, [b]Kostya[/b], for sharing your "secrets" with Us (albeit small, but useful!). Write more ;)

2008-06-02

5/5 Really helpful. And there are really few lessons on the topic of vegetation. Pts I hope that the author will not stop at this lesson and will tell about some other methods.

2008-06-02

Not bad, not bad. True, I did not understand why a separate branch should be modeled: the final tree without flowers can be easily modeled in TreeStorm itself. For leaves, replacement technology is useful, and for flowers too. But still 5/5.

2008-06-02

Hello everyone [smile=04] , thanks to the site administration for posting my lesson, also thanks to everyone for the comments, I hope you liked the lesson [smile=04] [b]Elrond (3D Work)[/b] using the example of a branch, I just wanted to show how you can expand the capabilities of the program when leaves alone are not enough [smile=04]

2008-06-02

Pitsotbalov)

2008- 06-03

Wow!!! 5/5!!! Class!!!

2008-06-03

good lesson, well done! :) 5/5

2008-06-03

Yes, the lesson is excellent, but I don't have Tree Stor, unfortunately!

2008-06-03

Great tutorial, thanks for the info. 5/5 :)

2008-06-03

Just no words... Thank you so much for this information! And I puzzled over how the pros make such trees ... I will definitely try as soon as the new computer is available, otherwise such a tree on mine can send the poor thing to the next world. 5/5

2008-06-03

And for some reason I can’t reach Number of s-objects, there are no stripes at all, and the Use Plates button is gray ((( 9[smile=17]

It's interesting... how to do all this in a SIM card... no one will give advice? Good lesson! P.S. I would tinker with the textures more, it would be more realistic ... But the geometry is great.

2008-06-04

Very timely, otherwise I can't model on onyx. And a simple replacement of materials in Free Storm with realistic textures does not give the desired result. Thank you very much 10 points!

2008-06-04

Super. Thanks.

2008-06-05

Although I didn't face the problem of creating trees, after reading this lesson I'll download the program and try to create something. Thank you! :)

2008-06-06

Has anyone else tried to complete everything except the author? for some reason, after Replace with, the branch becomes 0,0,0 coordinates, and is not replaced by leaves, can someone come across this?

2008-06-06

and one more small addition, how many poliks are on a tree with and without flowers?

2008-06-06

Thank you all again for the positive feedback, since the feedback is positive, it means that the lesson was not written in vain [smile=04] [b]to freeZed[/b] : with flowers 2 150 398, without flowers 1 856 398, but less can be done by optimizing the trunk, or by reducing the number of leaves.

2008-06-07

[quote]with colors 2 150 398 [/quote] Isn't it too much for one such tree ...?

2008-06-07

[b]to LIMIT[/b] I think it's normal for the near shot, but as they say, it's a matter of taste [smile=04]

2008-06-07

Not a good idea for the author. Because really good lesson. .. Reading it immediately reveals the shortcomings of this program ... [quote] by optimizing the trunk [/ quote] As I understand it, optimization of the barrel using Max's tools

2008-06-07

[b]to LIMIT[/b], not quite, Tristorm allows you to optimize the model right in it, but to be honest, for greater realism, it is better to make the barrel yourself in Max, and maybe I will repeat myself, in this lesson I just wanted to show the modeling method, and the rest is creativity [smile=04]

2008-06-12

Thank you.. trees are not a problem in onyx, but when you want something specific, it's not immediately clear what and how to do... at random))) And in this lesson, the author told something interesting ... Thank you. 5\5

2008-06-12

[b]to Sergei Mironyuk[/b] glad you liked the lesson [smile=13]

2008-06-12

Thanks to the author for the detailed Onyx lesson! 5/5

2008-06-20

Topic title is not correctly worded! Maybe creating a tree using a plugin))

2008-06-20

[b]Aleksey Chorny[/b] So the correct name is "Creating a realistic tree", but with what, that's another question, especially since the plugin serves more as a connector [smile=13]

2008-06-29

Horror lesson! To be honest, I've been waiting for this for a long time. ... To be honest, the only thing that I didn’t quite like was, as far as I understand, hidden advertising for ACER computers! And in general 5! :)

2008-07-02

Thank you all again for the kind feedback [smile=04] [b]Serj (3D Work)[/b] - Acer will be Maple in our language, so there is no advertising here [smile=04]

2008-07-05

people help how to make a branch with leaves? pliz

2008-07-13

it's a pity that the Treestorm plugin for 2009 max doesn't have the Replace with function anymore. Therefore, the lesson could not be completed.

2008-07-25

and I have the following picture... when I do Replace with with a branch, the tree is overgrown with branches the size of the tree itself! and all the branches upside down - in short, the porridge is full well, leaves don’t want to be replaced by leaves at all, max flies out and that’s it - maybe the car can’t stand it? don't know...

2008-07-26

Everything is of course very interesting and I even believe that everything works, but why not make all these additional, connected, branches in the onyx itself!? after all, there is a huge range of parameters, you can make at least a million leaves per millimeter))

2008-07-26

[b]sev_ere (3D Work)[/b] maybe you scaled the branch itself, if so, you need to do Reset X -form [b]Chig (3D Work)[/b] maybe it is possible, but I would like my own leaves [smile=04]

2008-08-01

[quote] It's a pity that in the Treestorm plugin for 2009 max there is no Replace with function anymore. Therefore, I could not complete the lesson. [/ Quote] Seriously?................ I wonder why.... is there any other way then? And by the way, no one has the texture of a chestnut leaf ??? rummaged in the onyx library and didn't find something...

2008-10-13

[b]Enfriz[/b] same problem [smile=11] as in 2009Max is now called the modifier [b]Replace with[/b] ?

2008-10-14

I want to upset the owners of 2009 max, there is no [b]Replace with[/b] function, since the developers could not tie it to 2009 max

2008-11-22

in 2008 max at all nothing works :( almost at the very beginning of the lesson, I ran into the fact that you can’t adjust the Number of s-objects

2008-11-22

Sorry for the turmoil! This is the only parameter in the whole plugin where you need to drop dead accurately with the mouse! :) here is the account that it does not work.

2008-12-01

Help the redneck, for some reason I can’t select a blank because it is not displayed in the Load Properties selection box http://mdk. org.ua/0gz.jpg

2008-12-01

Help the redneck, for some reason I can't choose a blank because it is not displayed in the Load Properties selection box [url]http://mdk.org.ua/0gz.jpg[/url]

2009-04-23

Please tell me how to solve my problem after Replace with the branch does not replace the leaves, but becomes 0.0 ,0 coordinates. Please help, I really need it.

2009-07-09

Good lesson. ...indeed, in 2009 there is no [b]Replace with[/b] modifier. and it's not even a modifier. it's part of the Onigs connector plugin itself. and it was in version 5.9 for the 9th Max. The way out is this: do the 9th all operations with the replacement of leaves. and transfer to 2009 mesh. IMHO.

2009-10-20

Please tell me how to export tree animation with wind from OnyxTREE to 3Dmax!!

2009-12-18

Good lesson! though I already knew this method ... I confused the moment with the branch, in my opinion, it’s superfluous, but the principle is clear and very useful .

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