Better trees

For starters, if you don't give a **** about trees (you're the "my eyes are always on the track" dude), i respect your opinion and to each his own. This to avoid the inevitable replies of that nature.

This thread however is for the tree huggers among the AC crowd. The graphics whore inside myself is getting triggered whenever i see Kunos trees. The track and tarmac look great, the cars and their interiors look fantastic, the buildings and surrounding artifacts look up to today's standards... but dammit those trees look out of shape a lot of the times.

Cross shaped uninspired trees that would look in place at a mod track are just way to common of a sight in AC in my humble opinion, so to touch up the graphics department updated trees at this stage of the game's life cycle would really enhance the overall eye candy IMO.

For example in AMS, a game that runs on a graphical engine that isn't as modern as the one we have in AC, they are able to make their trees look like they're almost 3D:

 

Most kunos tracks use Y trees not X trees because X trees look so bad.. But there are several methods that can be used to get better looking trees.
The big problem with trees looking so bad is because they are flat planes and you inevitably end up seeing some trees from the edge of the plane.

Obviously full 3d tree meshes are out of the question, as they contain anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 polygons per tree..Trust me, having 6 million polygons in just a handful of trees is NOT good for Kseditor or for AC itself

My first try to combat that problem is to use what i call Star trees, its essentially 2 X or Y trees but one is rotated 45 degrees so instead of having 3-4 planes you have 6-8, which gives it a more full bodied look. I also don't use the same texture on each plane.
I start with a full 3d model of a tree (consisting of about 400,000 polygons) and render at least 4 different shots of it (front back left and right) and you map those in order on the planes, so if you have a branch sticks out on the left of the tree, as you look from the front you will see the other side of the tree which also has a branch sticking out (but it's a different texture used) That works ok, IMO it looks better than a standard X or Y tree but it's still not great.

Another good method is something you can do within Race track builder called Complex objects, which is basically a hierarchy setup. You create a mesh for a main trunk, create a few major branches and then you create a few minor branches+leaves. The whole thing consists of maybe 8-10 parts. You can then tell RTB to apply the minor branches+leaves to the major branches (and add some randomness to it) then you apply the major branches to the main trunk (again using some randomness) and what that results in is a semi 3d mesh. And each time you stamp down the entire tree they all come out looking slightly different as the branches are never in exactly the same place as the previous one. So you can have say 50 oak trees all look slightly different, but they all originate from the same few basic parts. You can also then attach a basic X-Y tree to it as an LOD object so you only have the more complex version on screen when you get within a certain distance..

Here's the video tutorial on doing complex trees in RTB. It should explain better what i mean (im not great at explaining things sometimes)

 

Nice and insightful post @Nobby76. I suppose that's the technique they are applying in AMS? I complimented them on it thinking they might be actual 3D ones, although that wouldn't make much sense considering the limitations of their graphical engine. Dev replied they were 2D but that they used a 'special technique' so I suppose that relates to what you explain here.

 

You could get away with a part 3d part 2d tree. Actual 3d mesh for the trunk and main branches as they are basically just cylinders, then like with the complex object trees, use a bunch of flat planes for the bundle of shrubbery on a stick (minor branches lol)

This is slightly off topic, well very off topic, but, i noticed your avatar lists you have P1 P2 and P3 packs did you buy the season pass, or pay for the packs individually? i would guess a season pass. I made the mistake of buying them separate as i was literally counting down the seconds until the DLC went live (and the season pass came out about 5 mins later) so although i have paid for all 3, i guess it's saying i only own 1 right now. where as a season pass could say you have all 3..

 

I bought the season pass and have also listed all three in my profile.

 

ahh ok that will be why then. It was something i had noticed the other day with a few users and knowing i had already paid for all 3 i was surprised it didn't say the same for me, so i presumed it had to be down to the season pass.
Cheers for letting me know.

 

I don't have an issue with the shape that much, but the colors are atrocious on most tracks, those bright green rounded trees are very bad, killing the immersion big time.

Just compare the colors and shapes (RBR) with the amazing trees on VIR...

 

Indeed it's a mixture of decent ones vs those that look out of place/ dated. I agree on the bright green ones, if you drive around Spa you have a lot of sections with ugly looking trees IMO.

Bright green 'y' or cross shaped ones:



Unimaginative wall of 2D pine trees:



And each time i turn the corner @ rivage, i get annoyed by this sight, both the ones that are placed on the slope that look very unnatural mixed with another wall of ugly 2D pines right behind it:



They look like they could have come straight from the PS2 era

 

Oh yes, Spa might be the best (worst) example of that :/ Also i've loaded up Magione the other day, i haven't loaded it up probably since the Early Access, and boy does it have ugly trees..

I don't want to hate on Kunos tracks though, other then the trees they look great, and are a great compromise so that they work on even lower-end hardware, but i just wish they'do some tree update for original tracks.

 

IRL Spa, trees near the road behind the safety walls are weird looking and colored like that. At least in the spring/summer, because only the pines and some others survive in the winter with their foliage.



Kunos usually needs photographs when they make a track, because the laserscan doesn't give them the real life graphics. So in terms of graphics they always base themselves on real life, but we know the game has limitations in terms of looks, mostly because of keeping the game accessible FPS-wise, as we know is possible to have games with more realistic graphics/nature. But Spa in AC remains a realistic representation, even with those small bright-weird green trees near the road.

 

Yeah i went back myself and looked up some youtube onboards, and you have a point that with regards to where they place certain types of trees, they do try to mimic real life.

It's just that they look ugly

For example on that slope in my last pic, there are indeed smaller trees there that look similar, but they aren't as copy pasted and color wise they mix better with the slope itself :



vs:

 

This is where @LilSki 's idea for a variant of the grass shader (but for trees) would really help, where you could use a colour tint variation texture on the basic tree material.

One tree texture and one tree material, but a multitude of hues and tones

 

I might be wrong, but I think Automobilista trees are totally flat 2D planes... at least I remember noticing that on a replay when the camera was high above looking down at the track. That said, on regular gameplay they look amazing and you never notice anything wrong with them. They could almost pass for 3D trees.

That said I don't think flat 2D trees would work for Assetto Corsa because of the lighting. Unlike AMS, AC uses real time lighting, so flat 2D trees would end up occasionally casting shadows in the form of lines... not good

Still, I'm pretty sure the trees of AC could be improved. Just look at Raceroom... I think it uses a similar Y-shaped tree system but they generally look much better than AC trees because of the more realistic shapes and colors (and they even move with the wind). Also, for some reason on R3E you rarely notice the ugly vertical intersection of the different planes of the Y shaped trees, unlike AC where it's noticeable very often in several tracks and it brakes immersion a little bit for me.

That said, before addressing the trees I think Kunos should take a look at improving the look of the skies in the game... specially in cloudy/overcast conditions. They look way worse than the trees and pretty much every other sim has better looking skies (the cloudy skies in AMS look amazing).

I don't want to sound too critical tough because overall it´s still a great looking game with the best looking cars in the business, and if we look at AC visuals as a whole, I think it's still the best looking sim in spite of it's flaws

 

Luckily us PC users can mod the clouds, if you haven't seen the G&B weather mod on RD check it out i recently installed it and its quite the game changer. But yes standard clouds are not very good either.

Basically the lower half of our screen looks great (cars, tarmac, kerbs and buildings), but the upper half (trees and skies) kinda screw things up.

G&B mod here: http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/good-and-bad-weathers.11194/

 

Part of the problem is the textures themselves. You can do quite a bit more with simply better looking textures. In order to make a quantum leap, you would need to etiher alter the implementation technique as mentioned above, or invoke some new technology.

There is also a severe lack of variety in the trees. On some tracks you have 4-5 trees making up the entire track, which results in a lot of repetition.

 

@LilSki, halp, what ini parameter should I change so all my tracks have trees like these?

 

Those are my tree textures that I made. I posted them in the shared resource thread a while back. There are 8 different tree texture on two 2k textures. Each tree with a slightly different hue to try and make it more random.

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/i...-use-share-yours-too.20610/page-6#post-590522

 

Must admit, I've been noticing the last few weeks how the trees are beginning to let the game down visually. Improved tree certainly would add to the overall immersion.

 

The more recent tracks like Brands Hatch and Red Bull Ring have better overall tree textures. Spa is indeed lacking in the tree department.

 

It's almost a game breaker now, those older Kunos tracks. I have been spoiled with great mod trees and more recent Kunos tracks. Nordschliefe has good trees, i would just copy and paste those to other Kunos tracks.