Aaron2004

Hey all,

I'm looking to buy some x-card trees, bushes and plants. I don't necessarily want them for free...I know that good quality and quantity will cost some money, but is there anybody who has had good expereince with buying from a certain site, or is there a good site with cheap/free (yet quality) trees?

I couldn't find any other threads on this here...I searched for x-card and billboard...I can't think of other names you would use for this...so If this thread is beating a dead horse, I'm sorry.


Thanks!

Aaron

Aaron2004

I guess to add to my question, does anybody have any experience with Marlin Studios? Do you feel that they charge pretty competitively?

Aaron

Maxer

If you looking for an all around good low poly 3d tree try Archvisions RPC trees.

crazy homeless guy

search for tree textures or tree images. the x-card trees are just crossing planes. there is nothing special about them besides that. you can create one in about 20 seconds. other than that they just have tree images mapped to them.

http://www.imagecels.com/thumnail/113/113.html

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travis schmiesing

Aaron2004

Is RPC faster and more efficient than 2D boards?

Maxer

That's what they are basically, there is not an actual model only a place holder. When you’re doing an animation the computer will substitute an image of a tree or bush depending on where your camera is. These trees can be viewed in 360 degrees and even to an extent from the top. So as you rotate around them you able to see the different sides of the tree. If you have Max 6 or 7 you get a free RPC plugin with some sample RPC's, it may be worth it to you to check them out.

GI Dude

RPC's are very good and fast, yau can do eye catching renderings with them... the trick is that they are not hi-res, you need to tweak them in PS and above everything else, tey mess allways your GI solution

My advice...

Need a fast and reliable source for 3d entourage, use RPC's
Need cars? cheap? easy to use, for Parking lot? Use RPC's
you can use hi-res 3d models in the foreground also and make a combo of both 2d and 3d objects...

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Alex Guzman

Aaron2004

Thanks for the advice about the RPC things. My problem is that I may want to put this in a real time environment later on, and I'm sure that billboards work, but I don't think RPC will work. You need a plug in, I take it...plus calculation in real time will take quite a lot of power for RPC it seems....

I haven't seen the two compared...is RPC much better than tree textures?


Thanks!

Aaron

Bugga_Guy

Just a warning with RPC's. If you use alot, the more problems you get. My limit is about 50 before bad things start to happen - even when I click billboard feature.

Maxer

Actually RPC's use less processing power to calculate than a model would because all they are just different billboards propped up in front of the camera. There is even an option in the plugin to use billboards exclusively so this might be the answer your looking for.