To Be or Not To Be a Linden Tree

[HollyDuffy]

Some people I've chatted with do not like Linden trees they think they look cheap, but to me they're the most realistic looking trees for being only one prim. No flat textured prims to get in the way. So if I wanted to use up a lot of space filled with trees would the Linden trees be better vs. a whole bunch of alpha textured prim trees? Would the alpha textured trees create a lot of lag? I've looked at trees on the Marketplace but most are no copy for whatever reason that is, maybe just a gun to your head $$$$ thing. I can copy a furnished house but not a dam tree!  lol  Anyway, which would have less lag in creating a forest?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

If I were going to create a forest with limited prims, I'd use groups of trees that are one object.  They can be one prim, that is the traditional star shape prim with a texture on it, or a few prims with 1 or two prims being several trunks and the others being tree tops.  If you want copyable trees there are a lot sculpted clumps like the first kind and also tree kits available for the second kind., some of which include the textures, other you can use you own textures on them.  Here is one that is 10 trees for using three prims.

What causes lag in a forest is a lot of different textures.  Groups and clumps of trees like this would all have the same textures,.  To vary the forest you could use two or three different clumps and integrate them.

Each Linden Tree is one prim so it may take a lot of prims to make a forest compared to using clumps.  You can actually have a bigger or denser forest using them over Linden Trees.

[HollyDuffy]

Ok, thanks a bunch. =)

[Marianne Little]

I am not sure, but I think mesh is causing less lag, and it rezzes much faster than sculpts. 

Mesh in landscaping was a big disappointment for me though. It is made some good things with low LI, but most mesh trees that I've seen, is 5 LI and up. I have tried to link them, but the LI will not go much down. The LI can rise almost immediatly when I try to resize mesh. I bought some really nice mesh things where the LI start to jump almost immediatly when I toggle the size. Some other mesh products can be resized up so they are almost twice the size before the LI rises. No idea why... I suspect it is a technical reason behind that. If you have unlimited resources, mesh is the superior quality. But for small plots, it is too high in LI atm. They sit unused in my inventory. :smileysad:

Comparing to sculpts, a tree group, as mentioned, can be as low as 3 LI for a big group. And they can be rezized and keep the same prim count. This is good for variation. Some sculpts load faster than others.

The MP search can be a pain. But if you set the permissions to copy/modify and then refine search, you loose all the transfer stuff.

 I can recommend 3D trees by Nadine Reverie. She has a huge store inworld with all her landscaping stuff rezzed, so you can see it before you buy. A birch group of 8 trees a LI of 3. They are mod, so you can resize the group, and tint some so it looks like different trees. Rotating and making it overlap would give the impression of a variated forest even with only a group of trees.

(Edit: I didn't see that Amethyst linked to a DIY kit. A very reasonable price!)

[Qie Niangao]

One thing to possibly consider for the future is the alpha-masking ability of Materials. This fixes the old "alpha-sorting" problem of semi-transparent surfaces "fighting" for which gets drawn on top. Before, Linden plants were uniquely immune to this problem; now we can do it anywhere we want (for those using the right viewer and settings--right now, just the Materials Project Viewer).

For some kinds of prims and sculpties, this setting can cause a huge increase in Land Impact, although that can often be completely overcome by changing the physics shape type, so that's just a warning to experiment in a sandbox with thousands of spare prims before attempting anything with in-place landscaping.

The downside of alphamasked textures is that, by definition, any pixel in the texture is either completely transparent or completely opaque, so the edges tend to look "ragged" especially for lower resolution textures. You can see this effect with Linden plants, too.