Arbaro

[archie]

WmH has pointed me to Arbaro (and provided two great images), a nice free tree generator, already featured by peer on this forum long ago.
Now we have many new users and I would like everyone interested to share experiences here.
It works nicely with a smartfolder in cheetah, every time you render in arbaro you can check the actual appearence in the cheetah editor.
Render times get long of course, and for closeups texture mapping is obviously required.
I have not yet finished a postable result, below is the standard *lombardy popular*, suitable for sketchy type scenes.
The leaves are exported in a separate object, so you can tweak them with normal scale etc. or triangulate squares and crumple for bent leaves.

Contributions appreciated !

[SurfingAlien]

nice start, Archie!
for the first day you're really getting in touch with Arbaro...

hope to find the time to follow you there...

Cheers,
Alessandro

[archie]

Originally Posted by SurfingAlien

nice start, Archie!
for the first day you're really getting in touch with Arbaro...

hope to find the time to follow you there...

Thanks Alessandro,

this thing is really really promising.
It depends on the texturing skills, how close you can get...




second2.xml.zip

[archie]

I'm totally in love with this little app!
After 24 hrs already some neat results,
so big thanks to WmH !

[TankJon]

Really nice. I like the depth of field effect too. How did you do that?

[archie]

So no-one is sharing their rendered trees with me here ?

That's very sad.

I'm barking and leaving now.

The bark is not yet finished, but for the leaves I made a neat bumpmap in order to achieve really prohibitive render times.

And it works !

Only I don't like it cause the things are not bent, but for leaf bending I need more than one quad.

Maybe I do an unbumped texture on a once subdivided and crumpled triangle or whatever.

Originally Posted by TankJon

Really nice. I like the depth of field effect too. How did you do that?

Hi Jon, thanks for stopping by;
there is a Depht Of Field tag in Cheetah that does the trick !

[Hammer]

Found this thread about creating trees to use in Cheetah scenes. I downloaded the Arbaro software and having a hellofa time trying to figure out how to use it. I was able to open the Arbaro software but I really don't understand how Java works. I opened it and saved a tree as "Wavefront obj" but Cheetah doesn't recognize it with an "open file" or "import file" command. I want to place my newly created 32 Ford Roadster Hot Rod in a realistic outdoor setting. Been spending a lot of time searching for tutorials on Vimeo, YouTube, and this forum. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Hammer]

Are there any tutorials on how to use Arbaro to create trees to use in C3d?
Thanks.

[bemdesign]

Originally Posted by Hammer

Are there any tutorials on how to use Arbaro to create trees to use in C3d?
Thanks.

None that I know of. But here's what I suggest.
1) Launch Arbaro (double-click arbaro.jar - if Java is installed on your machine, it should open up the arbaro window).
2) Mess around with the settings to create the tree you want (use the description panel at far right to get a clue about what each parameter does).
3) Click the "Create and Export Tree" icon/button up in the top menu.
4) Make sure to select Wavefront OBJ for file format and click the UV coordinates for stems and leaves
5). Despite your best efforts, Arbaro will save your file in the root of your user directory. So find the file there. It will not have a file extension. Add one (.obj).
6) Open Cheetah and import this file. And there's your tree. Usually in lots of parts. I suggest grouping them together in a folder.

Hope this helps!

[smboerner]

If I can add a couple of suggestions ...

If you are running Lion, make sure that Java is installed. (The installer doesn't include it by default, as it did with previous versions of OS X.) If not, you can download and install it from the Apple website.

If the arbaro.jar file won't execute when you double-click, you can run it from the terminal window. Launch the Terminal application (located in your Applications/Utilities folder). Change the default folder to the one that contains arbaro.jar. For example, if arbaro.jar is in a folder named "Arbaro" in your user folder, type this after the prompt in the Terminal window:

cd ~/Arbaro

Now run the jar file:

java -jar arbaro.jar

Once the Arbaro GUI opens, you can make your tree. Click the folder icon to load the default trees -- usually it's easier to make a new tree by modifying one of these. Click the "Create and Export Tree" button and follow bemdesign's advice above to save it out as a Wavefront OBJ file.

It's a little clunky but it works quite well. I like the fact that you can optimize the trees and make them very lightweight -- important when you have hundreds of them in a scene.

Search YouTube for a couple of tutorials on how to use Arbaro. They assume you are also using Blender, but the info also applies to C3D.

For more info on Arbaro, the theory behind it, and suggested input parameters, see the author's original paper here.

Steve

Edit: Didn't realize that you'd already tried YouTube. Maybe you overlooked these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uabftHFJar8
(Don't believe the video title. Arbaro works fine on Macs.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXsqc_6BwBU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uabftHFJar8