STEP by STEP
BUILD A DETAILED FOREST SCENE IN V-RAY
01The get the MODELS ready to USE
first thing we need to do is source the models we plan to use. In this case I’ve selected two models from the Cgaxis library. It’s always so important to keep in mind that we can make them proxy in order to have less polygons in our scene. Another important thing is to always have pivots in the base of our models; in this case we have two trees and we need the pivot in their bases, because once we scatter them on a surface the scatter will take that base. When the pivot is not located in the base we can get strange results, such as half trees scattered all over the scene. So let’s make the models proxy and set the pivot on their bases.
02 Pf SOURCE and vrayinstancer
Once we have our models ready it’s time to add all the necessary tools to create the forest in the back of our scene. First of all we are going to create a PF source: to do so let’s go to the Create tab and in Geometry we use the roll-out menu and select Particle Systems. From there select PF Source. Once placed, name it – in this case mine is called ‘PF 001 Front Trees’. Naming is important because that way we can have a lot more control when we need to turn off our particle generators. The next step is to add our Vrayinstancer; again head to the Create tab, then select Geometry and in the roll-out menu choose V-ray. This is where we are going to find our Vrayinstancer. Place it in the scene and name it ‘Vrayinstancer Front Trees’, which is again named for organisational purposes.
03 CONNECT all ELEMENTS
Now it’s time to connect all our tools to make it work properly. First we are going to select our Vrayinstancer, go to the Modify tab and in Particles add ‘PF 001 Front Trees’ (the one you created). After this, in Source Objects add both of our tree models. In this case you can add one but in order to get more variation I decided to add two (you can add as many as you like).
Now it’s time to tweak the parameters from our PF Source (PF 001 Front Trees). Select it and in Modify you will find Particle View, open it and we will find more options. First of all we are going to erase Position Icon and Speed as we are not going to need them, and instead add Position Object and Scale. In Position Object add the base of the forest mesh. This will use that base as the plane where it will be scattered. In Birth set Emit Stop to 0 and Amount to 70, and in Scale set the Scale Variation to 8%. Now hit render and we will have our first result.
04 final details
In our initial result we will see that we have a spread of trees, but it’s not quite how we want and we will also see some weird elements such as the big white boxes shown in the thumbnail below. Let’s fix all that and set our final settings to get the results we want. First of all inside the particle view in our PF Source select Render 004 and in Type set None. This will make the weird boxes we can see in our render go away.
Now let’s go to the Position Object settings. In Uniqueness set the Seed value to 12,858 – that's the value I used in this image. And finally in Rotation in Orientation Matrix, set it to Random Horizontal. With these modifications we are going to get the result as can be seen in the final image. What we did was the process for the frontal trees, but we can do the same for the background ones. Try it in your scenes, and not only with trees – this method can have as many uses as you like.