Hi guys,

I've been doing some searching around and I can't find many topics on the subject.

I'm a final year Masters student and my thesis scheme involves a fairly intensive, medium sized rooftop park land - I'm looking for ideas and suggestions on how I can represent this in my final images/presentation. Seductive images over-flowing with rich bio-diverse selections of foilage next to more cultivated grass is what I am thinking.

Rendering this type of image (my work flow is SketchUp to Artlamtis (1 or 2) to Photoshop) can look a bit sparse and forced - i.e when you use fully modelled 3D Foilage. I would prefer I think to 'paint' the planting in after the initial rendering, with Photoshop. I was thinking images like those attached.

I'm open to any suggestions/links to tutorials or just images that make SU Landcape look awesome! I only have about 3 weeks to the Final Crit so any advice is gratefully recieved!

Cheers in advance,
G

Have you thought of trying Piranesi (http://www.informatix.co.uk/piranesi/product_information_overview.shtml)? It seems like the right tool for your task.

And please do not hotlink your images. Attach them to the post (3 maximum).

Thank you for the reply sigue2000, my apologies over the hotlinking, I thought I'd attached them - I will edit straight away.

Having done research all of today, Piranesi is looking like the way to go (although I open to suggestions!) but having played with the Demo, I'm wondering what comes with the full version in the way of Library Cut-outs? The website mentions many thousands of example cutouts but I'd like to see whats there (especially for plants).

I've been browsing the forums to try and find any user librarys of plants or tutorials for creating "creeper" like plants with Piranesi, but no luck yet. Any suggestions?

As per my post edit, the other two example images are included here (f this is against forum rules, I will of course take them down). These are of the Highline park in New York.

Piranesi is looking like an excellent program - the Stamp tool I think, or possibly the Multiple Cutout, should do what I need. I could really do with a few pointers though! Any tutorials or example would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
G

You might also try using cutout textures created from foliage images in photoshop and painted onto a ransparent surface (similar to fencing). For rendering you may want to look at Podium (plugin that runs in SU). http://www.suplugins.com/

Thanks for getting back to me Jason, appreciate it!

I think I'll be going for a combination of Artlantis 2 and Piranesi as I think I can get a really good out put with those - although I'll have to learn Piranesi as I go!

Podium looks ok, I played with it a while back now, but I found it to slow and inprecise compared to Artlantis. There is more support for Artlantis in the form of freely available 'billboards' and the like - useful when going for this heavily planted landscape look.

Cheers
H

This is the sort of test output I have so far...

Indigo (http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/showpost.php?p=113733&postcount=32)?

most landscape architecture images are usually rendered in Photoshop and are usually 2D overlays... in my experience

This is the sort of test output I have so far...

Looks good except for the leaves growing inward. :confused:

Yeah, I noticed that! Bit of a pain but I think I can flip that in Artlantis. If not its not end of the world for the scale I'll likely be doing it at.

Really like the Ivy Generator, its surprisingly good fun to work with!

How about photoshop brushes. I have had some good results with them.
Here's an example of them used by Swanke

http://www.pushpullbar.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=34232&stc=1&d=1192075265

Here is a set of grass and vegetation brushes for photoshop developed by http://midnightstouch.deviantart.com

I have attached them in a zip archive. Hopefully they will help, as i think they should be easier to handle than having to model everything.

Thanks for that one Ed-man!

You're welcome enzyme :)

You'll find more PS natural brushes here:
Obsidian Dawn (http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com/nature.htm)

And a lot more here (http://www.freeres.info/free-photoshop-brushes.php).