Creating a Realistic Forest in Blender using Billboards (low poly Planes with tree images)

[@ReclamationVI]

I actually needed this rn, in the middle of building a forest scene 🤣🤣🤣 appreciate the legit perfect timing!!!

[@BlenderSecrets]

Good luck!

[@jim-wallace]

You never cease to amaze me by the clarity of your teaching ! So many others would have take 10 minutes or try to sell us another add-on👌🙏🙏🙏

[@DanielGrovePhoto]

Love this technique! However if you don't want your trees to rotate like a gimble pointing towards the camera regardless of being stuck in the ground use Locked Track constraint with Z as Track Axis and Y as Locked axis.

[@nuke2625]

yes thank you. i was thinking how to do this.

[@choo_choo_]

Billboards are great until you add so many that it tanks render time to the same degree than if you had used actual meshes. All of those alpha effects add up. Eevee can use clipped alpha which can mitigate things somewhat, but Cycles is going to chug hard no matter what, even more so if you turn your transparency bounces up. If you're looking at a forest from on high, it's fine, but if you look straight ahead at one it's gonna cause issues.

[@Velta_Nox]

Just like you saw in older games like MS-DOS, PS1 and more. Good nostalgia. :D

[@johnjoeparrot]

A playlist of Blender Secrets is amazing. I'm going to burn these into my brain

[@19CarlosGomez64]

Thanks for explaining this technic in such a clear way!

[@kodiakbluefox6643]

Oh my god... you're just too good for this world :D

[@sahilsen]

This is amazing. Looking forward to trying it out for different things... And some normal map light tests!

[@BlenderSecrets]

Oh yeah, you can totally combine this with Normal maps for great results. I should get on making a follow-up video about that...

[@lassekalhauge4801]

Great tutorial - thank you so much. Keep up the good work. Best regards from Denmark❤🇩🇰

[@9b8ll]

This is brilliant. This is very useful for any billboards. Amazing vid as usual

[@im_Dafox]

Thanks a bunch for that, was thinking of something similar for an upcoming project but this was much clearer and straightforward :]

[@bigsky7617]

Has something changed with 4.0? When I set up the particle system, the instances don't track to the camera as the original image plane does (tried with and without applying the constraint, and restarting Blender before making the particle system). With the instances selected, the ground plane is also selected, so if I add the constraint it also applies to the plane. Any ideas what I'm missing? Thank you!

[@timkreutzkamp8519]

You can also use the Photoshop Tree Filter to easily create your tree planes 👍

[@СергейОмельницкий-ш6е]

Very cool. Thank you

[@westernvisuals]

Thank you for shairing

[@stylie473joker5]

I actually learned something today ahahh thanks a lot

[@shadowdemonaer]

Bro this is literally so fantastic!!

[@pile333]

Nice. Pretty like browser games method. Does it work also with the traditional multiple intersected images method? I guess it would be more ram consuming.

[@GinoZump]

I have a problem. The original tree follows the camera rotation just fine but the particles ignore the track constraint. They seem to only be reacting to the camera when you navigate inside of the mesh but not outside. Though even after recalculating normals, flipping them it also doesn't work.

[@WektorGH]

great, thanks!

[@GinoZump]

if the particles don't rotate for you, use a geometry nodes setup and just plug the rotation of the tree into the rotation of the instance object.

[@kinjoyokai367]

I would also be interested in that nice fog you showed (or is there already a tutorial?)

[@asgharalishakir3980]

Sir I have question .Let's understand, I made a Human model and made his hands separately, his feet separately and his head separately and then I joined them with control j .And can there be any problem in rigging the model?

[@gorkskoal9315]

wiicked! this rocks! thank you!

[@juanlucadapaixaosilva4048]

omg thank u VERY MUCH FOR THIS

[@EislenKenny]

I can see my plane/png rotates but the my camera is not rotating/looking at the plane, what am I doing wrong?

[@nic-ori]

Thanks.

[@dcry1003]

would this also work with gscatter, like would each billboard scatter still have its modifier work?

[@muuuuuud]

Simple and to the point, i like it. Well done! :)

[@VValkyr]

Technically you could also generate a normal map for the trees, subdivide the plane a couple time, and add custom normals modifier with spheere around the plane as the source. Think they wouldnt look so flat then

[@pepitoboi1001]

Is there a way to do this with geometry nodes or is it much harder?

[@TylerDane]

Where do you get the tree pictures from though?

[@willyra]

I need this thanks ...

[@aundbmusik]

My trees are in the right position until I press object rotation. They are rotated for 90 degrees and lay on the ground but move with Camera, although i setted the origin of the image to the bottom 😢

[@Fe.2024]

i found it: go to particle properties, check advanced, enable rotation option and set orientation axis to "none" hope this fix.

[@aundbmusik]

Fixed the same way 😀@@Fe.2024

[@ipzee3748]

Thanks, been trying to figure it out for an hour

[@hasanhuseyindincer5334]

👍👏

[@Manveer_Dhindsa]

i set the origin of the planes to the bottom but they still show up in the middle of my ground plane

[@caencfy4702]

Do this also apply to the grass?

[@CameronKiesser]

I wouldn't say this is realistic at all, but it's a good quick and dirty method and the best methods for many things are quick and dirty.

[@AlexisRivera3D]

I think this works well for background (far away)

[@CameronKiesser]

@@AlexisRivera3D Considering the size of screen and resolution, it might have to be really far away.

[@DanielSMatthews]

Can you add a second tree that always orients toward the sun light and only casts a shadow but is otherwise not rendered? And if you do that you set the visible camera facing tree to not cast a shadow?

[@darrennew8211]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKW4hGuHidiJkKM tells you how to make it react to light and cast proper shadows and etc.

[@DanielSMatthews]

@@darrennew8211 Thanks!

[@EmaSans-tu5eg]

I need always a image with black background ?

[@ThisIsDownstate]

you need a png image because it can have a transparent background.

[@HARDstone3d]

Particle system? Hair? Not super awesome Geo Nodes? Why?

[@ankitanimationstudio]

I want to create a youtube channel like you

[@SkSafowan]

But how to make those realistic those looks vary fake

[@darrennew8211]

And if you want something that reacts correctly to light and casts shadows, it's not a whole lot harder: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKW4hGuHidiJkKM

[@gokulsarma2648]

You should've uploaded this a week ago. U weren't there when I needed you...... 😭😭😭😭. JK...Also Thanks bro... 😁

[@NigraXXL]

Oof, mate. This is a nice trick to pass a quick scene with some trees in it, but in an era where Nanite is making high complexity models viewable in real time without LODs or without using billboards, it's a tough pill to swallow...

[@choo_choo_]

Nanite is essentially just adaptive subdivision. That's about it. It's not groundbreaking tech. It's been in most softwares for a while, it's just now being added to real-time game engines. It's still not a magic bullet to reducing scene complexity.

[@nlas6878]

NOT WORKING