[SOLVED] Trees

[Rob]

I was looking into the Unigine demos and noticed every tree thats created uses 2 materials, the stem and leaves even the palm trees in tropics are created this way

Is there a reason for this? Isnt it better to use just 1 material for better performance?

[ulf.schroeter]

depending on vegetation type mesh_leaf_base provides things like camera facing billboards, alpha testing etc which is not required for the stems. Also separation of leafs and stems allow better texture detail for both parts. In principle lower material counts provide better performance, but don't be too strict with this rule. 2 materials for high detail trees is no problem. Nevertheless usage of things like texture atlas for thousands of far away low-detail trees is still a good thing.

[demostenes]

Some time ago I was doing following test on other engine. Two materials for tree (bumped+diffuse for bark, transparent for leaves), vs one material (transparent for both + alfa mask for bark). There was very small difference in performance, which can be considered statistical error. And I agree, that having two materials is far more flexibile.

[Rob]

Oke thanks for the answers, will leave my palm with just one texture as it is then but definately see the point of using 2 textures with normal trees with regular leafs