Discussion Trees for Orbiter

[misha.physics]

Some experiments with 3D trees (not using a tree generator yet).

Branches without leaves. Looks very good:



No textures, every leaf is modelled (too much faces, but we could use trees like these with much fewer leaves):



Palm tree. Looks very nice, but I had to delete a trunk, because I couldn't convert so much points from OBJ to 3DS to get a MSH, since I'm using 3ds2msh. Maybe I could do this with the Blender tool for MSH?:



These coniferous trees and trees without leaves look simple, but neat, and some textures could impove them:

 

[misha.physics]

I've added ~166 identical 3D trees to a base and it's quite hard for Orbiter, and it crashes when I set ~206 trees. I can't say how much vertices every tree mesh has, but there's ~56000 lines it its MSH file:




There's absolutely no need to use such a huge number of meshes on one base.

 

[francisdrake]

Trees on the Moon, in a Plato Base cupola. The trees are in the right-hand cupola only.
Some of the trees in the center appear clipped. This is caused by the sequence of the transparent meshes.

By the way, which trees would you recommend for a lunar base?

• Northern arid trees, to better survive the lunar night, or
• Southern jungle trees, to utilize the abundance of light during the lunar day?

(Note the cupolas will have an adjustable thermal protection system to block-out excessive light and insulate against the cold of the lunar night.)

 

[misha.physics]

Some of the trees in the center appear clipped. This is caused by the sequence of the transparent meshes.

You could try this for all your tree meshes:

add "FLAG 0x20" in a mesh group like this:

 

[LadyCroussette]

You could try this for all your tree meshes:

I don't think that works for 2016, btw. I remember trying it once and not seeing any difference. I think it may have been added in later versions once Orbiter became open source.

 

[misha.physics]

Oh, yes, I forgot that @francisdrake could use Orbiter 2016 here. It seems I tried it in Orbiter 2016 and it didn't work too, but works very well in OpenOrbiter.

 

[Boxx]

Regarding the shadows, I just reported an issue with @LordCroussette's Lunar bases. But I see the same problem here:

View attachment 39025
View attachment 39029

The shadows are not drawn on the Delta Glider, or any surface but the ground... weird! is there a special computation of the received shadows for the "ground" and not for any other object? (hence, the shadow of the vessel when we approach a pad on any planet or moon)

 

[misha.physics]

@Boxx, I commented it in the shadow thread.

 

[misha.physics]

Forest of giant palm tops:

 

[misha.physics]

My first 3D model in Blender:

 

[misha.physics]

A tree I've made using the tree generator add-on included into Blender:



It doesn't have as many vertices as I expected, just 14592. For example, this palm tree has 32847:



Both meshes have no textures, onle material color.

 

[misha.physics]

Just wanted to make such the screenshots:

 

[LadyCroussette]

Honestly replace the green with a basic texture to give it some details and to match the colour of the grass and it would be perfect! How does it look like seen from the DG?

 

[misha.physics]

Actually I didn't really like that, but I made it again to show the pictures below.

How does it look like seen from the DG?

It looks like that:



I should probably make them brighter...

replace the green with a basic texture to give it some details and to match the colour of the grass

I applied the ground (grass) texture to the fir trees:



It's not too bad, althouth using even low poly trees for forest seems to be very unoptimized.

 

[LadyCroussette]

It's not too bad, althouth using even low poly trees for forest seems to be very unoptimized.

That isn't wrong.

I wonder, for the 2D trees, did you try to add a plane that looks up? With another texture, it could give the illusion of looking up the top of a tree. Something like this:


Never tried it myself, so idk how it looks like in Orbiter. Here, I attached the textures I used for the example if you want them.

 

[misha.physics]

did you try to add a plane that looks up?

No, I didn't (I thought about several crossed vertical planes, namely more than two). But I think that adding the horizontal plane should be defenitely much better than just crossed vertical planes. Thanks, I'll try this way.

 

[misha.physics]

I've done this. There is an obvious problem with plane shading. Maybe it could look better with a simple fir trees, but for now it looks like:



Anyone who wants can try this, I attach the MSH and DDS files in archive, but keep in mind that the MSH file contains a flag which requires OpenOrbiter. Just add lines into your base CFG file by changing the X and Y coordinates:

MESH
    FILE 3planes
    POS X-coordinate 7.5 Z-coordinate
    SCALE 1 1 1
    ROT 0
    SHADOW
    OWNMATERIAL
END

 

[N_Molson]

I think using AI to make trees is a very good idea : a tree is a repetitive, very hierarchized structure (we use the trunk-branch model even for computer file systems!) that has a definite organization, it only requires some RNG to make it look natural.

About those cool lunar bio-domes, photosynthesis is a complex subject and chlorophyllian plants works in different ways that affect the 'CO2 intake / O2 reject' ratio. So there are 3 categories of photosynthesis :

• C3 (most common)
• C4
• CAM

Some are very smart and are able to switch from one type to another when conditions change.

The most efficient way to produce oxygen from biomass is... algae vats (by far). I think trees on the Moon would more be very beneficial to the morale of the base personnel, because the Moon is very much 'a magnificent desolation', says it all. 'No color'. Besides that, with a supply of the correct nutrients, you can grow fresh fruits, which certainly are more tasty than dehydrated food! Obviously there are also the health benefits (but if you can build a lunar base, you can put vitamins into pills).

 

[N_Molson]

Just wanted to make such the screenshots:

The place already looks much more like Earth! Those pines draw the imagination towards forests of Canada, Scandinavia or Siberia.

 

[Piorun]

The most efficient way to produce oxygen from biomass is... algae vats (by far). I think trees on the Moon would more be very beneficial to the morale of the base personnel, because the Moon is very much 'a magnificent desolation', says it all. 'No color'. Besides that, with a supply of the correct nutrients, you can grow fresh fruits, which certainly are more tasty than dehydrated food! Obviously there are also the health benefits (but if you can build a lunar base, you can put vitamins into pills).

This was also predicted by Stanisław Lem in his short story titled "The Conditioned Reflex" (from the book "Tales of Pirx the Pilot"), where we can find a description of a quartz dome in a lunar base on the far side (Tsiolkovsky crater), where the main hero, Pirx, had a unique occasion of tasting a banana from the Moon :

"The station was deceptive, being much larger than it looked. There were, besides the station proper, several underground storage tanks containing water, air, and food; and transformers for converting solar energy into electricity, housed in a wing sequestered deep inside a rocky crevasse, so that it was not visible from below. And something else, the most sumptuous thing of all: a gigantic hydroponic solarium under a dome of steel-reinforced quartz, in the center of which, surrounded by myriad flowers and large vats of algae, the main source of vitamins and protein, there stood, of all things, a banana tree. Pirx and Langner were treated to their first Moon-grown banana. With a congenial smile, Dr. Pnin explained that bananas were excluded from the crew's daily menu, being reserved strictly for guests."