In SC4, hanging plants are almost non-existent.
Some notable examples.....Jasoncw has one or two buildings with a few hanging plants on them. Seraf has the university club with lots of hanging plants; Peg's hanging garden of babylon features them as well, but otherwise they are very rare.
Yet they appear on real buildings and with the rise of green-walls, they are also in architectural renderings more and more often.
(https://i.imgur.com/9fEfM3E.jpg)
I recently made an old mid-century department store and I wanted to use hanging plants but was quite stumped on how to get them to appear decent once rendered, until I had a light bulb moment. It has also stumped a few folks who have taken a guess at how to do it, so I thought I would share this way with everyone.
This is an extension of my previous tutorial, "Making trees the Mattb325 Way": https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=18290.0 (https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=18290.0), so you will need to familiarize yourself with that tutorial first. (It takes approx 5 minutes)
These are the hanging plants close up as modeled:
(https://i.imgur.com/mFtQ9XP.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/oDjnGqY.jpg)
So, to begin, use the AEC extended module and select either Oak or Elm (it doesn't matter which) and choose only the leaves option (uncheck all the other boxes).
For these plants, I have used pruning and density settings of between 0.1 and 0.2, and then created them as per the steps in that tutorial, collapsed to a mesh, etc, etc.
And then, here's the trick.....
.......wait for it.....
....keep scrolling...............
Rotate it 180 degrees so that it is upside down. :o
You now have a hanging plant. ::)
Copy it (or make new ones with a different seed via the AEC option), scale it, texture it in a few different shades and you'll have quite a full planter box.
As it is now a mesh, you can shave off one side to reduce polygons, such as below:
(https://i.imgur.com/zw7JB8v.jpg)
I have filled out the planter box with grass-like foliage (again in the AEC menu) and a box with a noise modifier which I use all the time and a Maxis grass texture to fill out the planter box.
But because these are optimised for Max (having been made in Max from scratch) they really don't add too greatly to render times:
With the 34 hanging plants:
(https://i.imgur.com/FRdAmur.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/sZrNUaL.jpg)
Without the hanging plants:
(https://i.imgur.com/z4NMhB7.jpg)
So those 34 objects have added only 7 seconds.
Hopefully this is of use to someone....who knows, we may have buildings like this:
(https://i.imgur.com/qzfpEtN.jpg)
Bosco Verticale Milan
Or this:
(https://i.imgur.com/Ywdrosh.jpg)
Central Park Sydney
Appearing in game very soon.... ;)
Look likes old ruined buildings with full of trees! My country Malaysia also have this! :P
Yeah, green buildings! &hlp &hlp &dance
"Life without people" nature taking back over the original land.
The Bosco Verticale tower from Milan looks amazing and avoid this "ruined building" appearance the Australian tower have.
Simply amazing - I really love your work and that idea of hanging plants is great! &apls
Perhaps we could see bulidings like these in our bourgeois districts:
(https://www.imgbox.de/users/Ralfger/Fragen/DSC_1529.JPG)
(https://www.imgbox.de/users/Ralfger/Fragen/DSC_1528.JPG)
Some residential buildings form Nuremberg, Germany
Adding to the tendency, some hanging gardens I've encountered when walking to work:
(https://i.imgur.com/qUiBtOR.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/xwldI1N.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/FM6Bhp9.jpg)
By the way, the idea of using inverted tree leaves is simply brilliant! &apls
Wonderful!!!!! &apls &apls