DecoLayer and SpeedTree

[MaKiPL]

Hello!
How can I get SpeedTree tree's into a DecoLayer. Because I want make a Big scene:

A small 'village styled' house, and a big forest in background - Something like this. But I have problems and have questions:

1.When selecting a 'nomal tree' as DecoLayer, a leaf texture is 'grey'. WTF?
If I place tree as 'normal' StaticMesh, texture is normal. Do that tree as DecoLayer uses only one material?
2.How Can I include speedtrees in DecoLayer?
3.If I want make that 'panorama'. Do i must do it with 'decolayers'. Isn't there other option?
4.If I make that 'big tree panorama' don't that low my FPS game. Even if I have a good computer?

[Chosker]

I'm not sure how DecoLayers work as I haven't tried them yet,
but in regards to your idea to do this, if you want the forest to only be in the background (ie. you won't go into that area at all) I'd say using real speedtree trees for that would be overkill, there's a huge crapload of trees in that image you're trying to mimic.
how about you place speedtrees in the nearest spots, then use sprites for the far away ones?

else if the whole forest will be playable you'll need some very serious optimizing, LOD, etc

[MaKiPL]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYGG2e9CEBE
Watch this, and at the (probably 4:00 been about tha DecoLayer)
Huh... maybe that isn't decolayer? Ahhh! That's FoliageMesh!

That 'll be only a background... You don't need to get there... But... If the 'crowd' system doesn't lag... It must be a way to do this... ;/... Humph... Can it be the same way as in GTA? A long-dstance trees who's have Very small polys...? At the near trees it been Speedtres, then Foliage (I don't know why it's grey). and then LOD.

maybe someone have other idea?

[F4ll_ouT]

1.When selecting a 'nomal tree' as DecoLayer, a leaf texture is 'grey'. WTF?
If I place tree as 'normal' StaticMesh, texture is normal. Do that tree as DecoLayer uses only one material?

I actually don't know what's wrong here. But trees can have multiple materials, maybe the tree has no leaf material?

2.How Can I include speedtrees in DecoLayer?

Check this tutorial:
http://www.hourences.com/book/tutori...decolayers.htm

The third screenshot from above is this one:
http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/tuto...colayers/3.jpg

If you check the screenshot a little bit closer, you can see under factory:
"StaticMeshComponentFactory"

You can change this to speedtree.

3.If I want make that 'panorama'. Do i must do it with 'decolayers'. Isn't there other option?

Dekolayers are a bad Idea because this panorama picture has ultimate too much trees. You would have low fps with a picture like this. Try to work with Billboards (2D Graphics instead of 3D models)

4.If I make that 'big tree panorama' don't that low my FPS game. Even if I have a good computer?

[Wyldhunt]

If you get them working, I advise turning off their shadows if you use dynamic lighting. Or, at the very least, leaving them outside of the lightmass importance volume if you use static lighting. That many shadows can be a huge drain on performance, and most people probably won't notice from a distance.

[MaKiPL]

I made that panorama, but my machine gets from 5-15 FPS... >_<
How can I optimize this? From where can I get billboard texture, what is' cull range? or something like this?

[Piranhi]

Cull range is the range in which the engine will render the mesh. You can also set up a cull volume to cull meshes depending on it's size.

Billboard textures are produced inside Speedtree itself, have a look at the tree's supplied with Speedtree.

Your best bet would be to create a 360 tube to surround the outside area, somewhere the player can't reach, and just create a panorama picture of a forest. You would have to make sure the player can't get above the tube though.