How much detail are we putting into the various background assets?
Using my MG trees as an example, one can’t see the roots at all from the perspective of the photo.
That said, if the goal is to be able to “walk around” in this environment, at least a rudimentary root structure should be modeled.
I could also have floating bunches of leaves, and nobody could see that they aren’t really attached to limbs. . . from the perspective of the photo. Walking around the floating leaves would become really apparent.
2. From a workflow perspective, applying modifiers is one of the very last things I’d typically do before handing things off to somebody else. (I’m using the skin and a single level subsurf modifier to hand create the MGtrees.) I don’t think we have to worry about it this week, but it sounds like pretty rapidly I’m going to need to apply those modifiers and clean up the trees. . . which makes any further modifications of them a lot more manual. It really. . . finalizes the limb structure.
The answer to 1 will also affect 2. If we only need to worry about the perspective from the view of the original artwork, then I really only need a very few main limbs. If we need to be able to walk around the tree I’ll need a lot more branches.
