Camera facing foliage for trees via material

Kelda
Thu, 25 Feb 2021 19:59:29 +0000
Rendering

Hello dear people,

for the last five days i desperately searched for a way to make my tree foliage align with the camera direction via the material.

Unfortunately the math-hall (2.21) solution doesn’t work because it shrinks all billboards and merges them onto one vector.
Epics stylized foliage material solution doesn’t work either, because it only rotates on one axis but more importantly, it rotates all billboards around the object center. But for the right effect, each billboard should rotate around their own pivot point.
Im afraid we can’t use a particle system either for several reasons, one being the algorithm we made to place the trees as instant static meshes.

This GIF of Test Drive Unlimited shows exactly the effect im trying to archive via the material.

But the closest i came so far is this effect, below (made by Pontus Karlsson on YouTube). His effect works perfectly fine but unfortunatly only with UV spheres, causing in a stylized look, that doesn’t fit the style of our project.

If anyone can help me out here, you couldn’t imagine how thankful i’d be!

Best regards, Jan!

12 posts - 5 participants