Ive been struggling a lot to make stylized trees (if that’s what they’re called) in a specific way, sometimes it looks goo at one angle but in-game it like… flashes around ? as where the reference and tree style im trying to make doesnt do that, ive tried placing them in spheres and also in X shapes or * shapes and nothing i try seems to give off the same effect… if any of u have any help or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated…
This one was done with surfaceAppearance etc and it doesnt flash and gives off kinda the effect im going for… but it feels like theres not enough leaves on the tree. https://gyazo.com/1c85c8023cf6f099dacf9a5e70818635
Thats all the examples i have, ive been trying so hard to make trees in this style that looks fluffy, soft and pretty like the examples shown as i think they look good and theyre my favorite type of tree. so im really hope that some of you out there can inform me how to do this effect correctly.
yes i originally saw that video but it was only for sphere styled trees, which looks somewhat fine but i think still caused a bit of that flashing issue i posted above, but im mainly looking for how to create the World Zero styled trees (the red/yellow/green ones in that section. as i cannot create those ones with spheres.
First and foremost, always use SurfaceAppearance for the texture of the leaves.
In tree creation, the leaves are represented as a bunch of flat planes cramped together which causes shading issues that make it look unnatural. So, we typically fix these by editing the vertex normals to make the leaves act as a sphere (or its intended shape):
Source: Foliage - polycount (Click for more details on vertex normal and foliage creation)
Editing Vertex Normals in Blender
Add a Sphere object and resize accordingly to the shape of the leaves
(Sample of a Realistic Tree using the same technique)
Please don't forget to like and mark this as a solution since it is time-consuming to write detailed and easy-to-follow help!
If you have further questions, I’ll be glad to assist you. Good luck!
so uhh as for trying this myself, its not exactly very specific how i put the leaves on the sphere like that, in the first image, and once i have all the vertex normal modifier open, how exactly am i modifying them? like what am i putting in for it to give off this effect because i cant see to get it to do anything or look different and how do u select foilage instead of the outer sphere?
Relax, you’re doing great! You managed to edit the vertex normals.
What we are actually doing is correcting the shading of the leaves. We are modifying how light will hit or bounce around our object. How do we do that? We modify the normals. Normals are a property of a face which tells us where the surface is facing. Why are we doing it to this model? Since we’re modelling a tree, we want the shadows and highlights of the model be like a tree in real life. The problem is that our tree model is just a jumbled flat planes intersecting each other so the shadows and highlights are not situated in our desired places. So, we trick the render engine to treat our object like a sphere when hit by light.
Purple lines represent the normals. Default Normals vs Edited Normals (Look at the shadows and highlights)
Notice how the shading is like a sphere after editing the normals?
Roblox’s DoubleSided Property causes weird shading issues in stylized trees but it is a great feature in realistic trees. What you can do instead is duplicate the faces and flip the normals. It will add more polycount but it wouldn’t hurt much since your foliage contains just a few planes.
so technically what youre saying is i did it correctly…? it looked good in blender but once it went into studio it still had that shading issue, is it because i had double sided enabled? and i should turn that off…?
Am i just not adding enough leaves in blender to achieve this or?
(heres also how it looks if i add more leaves in studio instead of blender, still not rlly giving off the right effect, double sided is also turned off and transparency is at 0)
i also made that shape in blender probably different than the first few images you posted, so im also wondering how you did it because your way is probably easier it seems i just cant seem to figure out how to start it, such as where u have your sphere, then u put the leaves on it (not sure how u did that), and then u went right into editing the normals. id like to do it that way instead of the way i did it if u could inform me on that. @AngryAero
I’m thinking that this is still a Blender problem because I forgot to teach one important option before adding the normal edit modifier. You need to make sure the auto smooth option is turned on:
If that still didn’t help, hit me up on Discord (AngryAero#9312). You’ll get a faster response there.
If you’re getting frustrated, relax. I’m here to help you. It is my fault for not explaining it well enough. I know we’ll get there soon. You’d be creating awesome trees!
yes i turned on auto smooth, and i created that one there by copying many of what i made into eachother in roblox studio which is pretty laggy lol. ill add u
This one looks quiet similar to what you were asking for, I think maybe tweaking it’s properties (aka transparency) a tad bit more may make it look better.
@AngryAero Two years later I know, but assuming you’re still offering help on this I have a question about the Duplicate-Flip Technique you recommended.
How do you flip the faces without flipping the split normals? Front Faces: Back Faces(Flipped): I’m using the Mesh > Normals > Flip function
When the flipped back faces are applied in-studio it gives off the default shading that doublesided would.
I ran into some issues with the texturing while using my own methods. Wanted to clean slate understand this rather than keep trying out bizarre techniques that after two days haven’t improved it…
i dont really understand what im doing wrong 
