A 3D model of an Eugenia uniflora tree for Unreal Engine 4. It's also called Pitangueira in Brazil
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/5acb272c-babf-467a-8ca9-fc8a31a08b55/45c0c127-5a19-4c3b-a24a-d7bbe3eb80bc_rw_1920.png?h=24a7b15f5d51bb845e3fd58c046312c8)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/5acb272c-babf-467a-8ca9-fc8a31a08b55/542e29f5-71f4-460c-832d-4b2926b0cc6c_rw_1920.png?h=438cb11ad7f00b71a48a9c7262c843cc)
I created this tree to compose the environment of my archviz projects in Unreal Engine 4
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/5acb272c-babf-467a-8ca9-fc8a31a08b55/9a1e16f2-cd0a-4aea-937c-d03375486b1f_rw_1920.jpg?h=c04d0d71eaed4b02173fb644279cb529)
There are five leaf textures in this model. Four green tones are distributed along the branches. The red tone appears near the end of some branches, the younger leaves.
I took some photos of a real Pitangueira tree in my backyard to use as reference. The leaves and trunk textures are also based on photos worked on Photoshop. With ShaderMap2 I could create some normal and specular maps too.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/5acb272c-babf-467a-8ca9-fc8a31a08b55/41dbd103-f022-4cef-9451-1fe72bc855af_rw_1920.jpg?h=d61d26a15bb08d0894bcc27dadfbeba9)
To give the leaves some depth, I created a "border map". It's an alpha texture that represents the leaf stroke. With that map I can control de brightness of the leaves borders. Make the borders brighter than the rest of the leaf and you'll create a "thickness" illusion.
The 3D model itself was created in SpeedTree - a parametric software to create 3D vegetation. When I was happy enough with the tree's shape I exported it to Unreal Engine 4 and worked on the materials.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/5acb272c-babf-467a-8ca9-fc8a31a08b55/a04407fb-acb4-4825-8bf9-fd33bb821fb8_rw_1920.jpg?h=76f2366447e293c3c8c8c4cff2224cb9)
The grass and background trees are also created with SpeedTree and Photoshop (for the textures). Real looking grass is a real challenge in game engines, because they usually requires a large amount of geometry to properly reproduce the blades. Large amounts of geometry in a real-time engine means bad performance.
Unreal Engine 4 is a game engine. It means the images above are generated in real-time and it's possible to interact with them. That's the best part of making architectural visualizations in a game engine: you can actually interact with it.