Question About Blender & Sapling

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#1

For lack of a better place to ask this, I created a Christmas tree with needles in Blender’s Sapling add-on (posted it in Weekly Challenge 25). It is very high poly count…Verts 584,646; Faces 380,274, Tris 760,548…but, it rendered well and didn’t slow my Mac down too badly. Despite it’s high poly count, I would still like to use it in the future to append for landscaping. So, I have a couple of questions…

  1. Can/should you join the leaves to the branches if you have the correct material already assigned?
  2. Anyone know of a better way to make 3D trees that have a lower poly count than Sapling? Is that even possible?

Thanks Everyone!

#2

The leaves are a particle system. You can convert them to mesh in the Particle Modifier, but it will be a huge hit in performance. I wouldn’t advise using this function, unless you plan to export your sapling.

For lower polycount, you could use a decimate modifier once the Sapling curve is converted to mesh. Otherwise, you could try to model a low poly tree, using a Sapling as reference.

#3

Thanks, Svetlin! I wasn’t overly optimist about joining the leaves but had to ask anyway…just in case my thought process were going in the wrong direction. :blush: I am pretty sure hand modeling is going to be the way to go and set up my own leaves with particle system but, was hoping to avoid that for a number of reasons. I appreciate your response since it verified what I had been thinking.

#4

. edited out…

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