I think it's not overkill. If you aim at single-mesh tree, 20milion for broad-leaf tree where you use atleast 9-12 polies for leaf + opacity map for detail (always both) is just fine.
The few better trees I got hold on, where those (4-5) from Bertrand which he made with GrowFx, they were around 3-to-4 milion poly, had around 4-6 polies (+ opacity) and it shown...they were rather crude even in medium distance.
I then once tried to go for more realistic maple, of around 20meter height, with GrowFx, and ended at about 80mil. polies, + displaced trunk. Still, wasn't so perfect I wished..very far from.
I really liked the idea Alex Roman writes in his book, he made instance not of whole single mesh tree, but parts of it (few branches), which were extremely detailed. If he did it as single mesh, I believe those trees would have been quite humungous,
but as instanced branches it was managable, and of course, those are one of the best trees out there.
(but then again, Alessandro Prodan did extremely convincing ones with faaar fewer polies with Maya, I don't know how did it so well...)
I btw totally hate GrowFx, it's so far from what Tree generator 'should' look like (realistic algorithmic L-system generation and "eye-balling" with curves), every single tree I have seen looks totally wrong when it comes to nature mimicking and realism.
But it's the only plugin which can generate high quality single mesh body (for future sculpting/displacing). It's one-eyed captain among poor blind competitors. Maybe one day....
« Last Edit: 2014-07-31, 22:20:16 by Juraj_Talcik »
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