Material

Overview

Every Alpha Tree has a powerful material that allows you to customise almost any aspect of its appearance.

You can control the leaf and trunk colour independently, add a percentage of dead trees, randomise colour, saturation and brightness and even control the intensity of the shading.

Want blue alien plants for a sci-fi scene? Just change the leaf colour to blue, and you're done!

Want a desolate wasteland? Just increase the percentage of dead trees!

Just want a normal forest? You can use the material to tweak the hue and look of the trees exactly to your liking.


Interface

The values are split into different categories:

General

  • Translucency strength: The amount of light that is allowed to shine through when there is a light source behind the tree.

  • Normal map strength: Controls the amount of "3D" shading on the tree. Setting to zero will give a very flat, almost shiny tree, while setting to one can give very harsh shadows.

  • Shadow sharpness: This controls how much extra "round" shading is added on top of the normal map. At zero, the tree will, again, look quite flat, while at one the tree can look very angular.

  • Fade distance: This distance from the camera before the trees start to fade out to be completely transparent.

  • Fade speed: How fast the trees transition from opaque to transparent when the camera gets close.

Leaves

  • Colour: The colour of the leaves.

  • Amount: Provides a gradient between having no leaves and having all of them.

Trunk

  • Colour: The colour of the trunk

Dead

  • Colour: The colour of the dead trees

  • Amount: The likelihood that a tree will be dead (has no leaves and is slightly lighter). Zero is no chance and one is 100% chance

Randomness

  • Strength: The amount of randomness to give each tree

  • Hue: The amount to vary the hue (colour) by from tree to tree

  • Saturation: The amount to vary the saturation by from tree to tree

  • Value: The amount to vary the value (brightness) by from tree to tree

Snow

  • Amount: Whether the tree will have snow on it or not. This adds snow based on the normal map, so faces pointing up will get more snow.

  • Height: The height of the snow.

  • Brightness: The brightness of the snow.