If I want to model say, a tree, with animated leaves, and other assets like foliage, what’s the best program to use?
I’m not sure what it’s like to model something in Blender and import it. But I’ve heard that there’s a toolkit if you use Maya or 3dsmax called ART? Is it just easier to use either of those two programs to make assets?
speedtree would probably be the best/easiest program for making trees.
I could be wrong but last time I checked the ART tool is only usable with maya(not ) and is for rigging human charactors.
–edit–
here is the thread about ART https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?2447-Animation-and-Rigging-Tools-FAQ-Known-Issues-and-Feature-Roadmap
I don’t really want to spend another $20 a month on speedtree when I could model them myself. Plus I want to make my assets from scratch.
And yeah, not sure what I was thinking about ART lol.
well you could pay the $20 once, spend a couple of weeks making loads of trees and then cancel the sub, that way you could get loads of trees quite cheap (it will also save you a lot of time so you could then put more time into making other assets). If your going to model trees in a 3D app they’re all probably about as good as each other, they are all capable of modelling anything you would need, best thing you can do is try them all and see which one is easiest/most comfortable for you to use.
Sounds like a good idea. But have you heard of Forester Pro? It’s a one time payment of $20. I don’t know if it’s worth it or not.
Not worth it. I’d follow 's suggestion and get Speedtree for a month. Give one month of your project to making plants with Speedtree and you’ll get all sorts of plants fully optimized for UE4.
Does that comply with their licensing? Didn’t realise you only paid for the time you use it! So modelling assets in a month, canceling sub and then putting assets in a commercial game (without an active subscription to Speedtree) is allowed? If so, that is AWESOME!
I’ve heard of it but not used it, I think I saw some trees made in it and they didn’t look that great to me where as speedtrees can look awesome, even basic speedtrees look good.
yep, the guys from speedtree said any trees you make with an active sub are yours, so if you can make 1000 trees in a month it would only cost $20.
I would also recommend you to use speedtree. Otherwise just create them in your 3d program + take a look at this thread to see how you set up a material, wind,… and other stuff about foliage -> with that way you can also create pretty good trees 