NancyGormezano

and just to be complete here is the noizy ground pattern that I created in painter to repeat on the big ground plane - pattern done in another project (originally for a stone wall type thingy)- applied 50% to a ground plane group which had dark green as the surface color. again MORE NOISE

And here is the emitter - looks nothing like leaves - but has a gradient applied (black to white) - I colored the non visible with ...ummm...puke mustard so that you can see the shape of the emitter

This is the tree - with two emitters but using the same image for both emitters - but each emitter colored by a different decal - mo' noize mo better

Like I said before - I used 2 emitters - I found that if I tried to use something that resembled a leaf - it looked too fakey (which I usually love - I love FAKEY) - this is the tree with two different emitters, each colored by a different decal - pretty - but not enough variation or noise.

I decaled the canopy surface with two different images, to use for coloring the leaves - the decals were both images from previous projects I did, -just liked the mix of colors in the images - and also added an image to all canopy patches that was just a blank (alpha all black) so that the canopy would be invisible, but that the hair (leaves) would take on the decal colors here's the decal images on the canopy (1st is used for emitter 1, second is used for emitter 2)

Here's the tree in wire form - (beautiful canopy shape - lovely limbs) - as I said before - procedurally generated - I did click a few buttons - does that count? Probably not.

Uhhhh, bluhhh...Model? Me? Wait a minute youse guyzzz - this is all procedurally generated - the tree is from marcel's plug-in, the leaves from Hash hair, & the ground plane is 1 big FLAT patch with image added (repeated 10 x 10, seamless). And of course the sky is a rotoscope (actually 2, cloud form - superimposed on a squished gradient) Now I will take credit for all the textures used...Details to follow.

One thing I've noticed is: if you're going to give him hair (of the Hash kind) - you REALLY don't have to worry about lumps. All modeling sins get obliterated. (Maybe not ALL, but creases for sure) but as an exercise in purrr-fect modeling - Spline on as usual.

Great stuff ! I'm not normally attracted to "realistic" 3d, and especially not inanimate objects (THEY WON'T BE FOR LONG as you keep sharing them and people like Vern & Johnl are lurking about) but your stuff has a certain quality about it that is very appealing... I can't quite figure out what it is that you do to make them so convincing - perhaps it is the very good attention to detail with curves & textures, materials.

And now: The original hot off the render press from AM

I was so inspired by Will Sutton's tree - that I had to give it a go. I had a leftover tree from when I was playing around with Marcel Bricman's Treez plugin - added hairy foilage - (2 emitters, 2 diffuse color decals) - When I rendered - decided I didn't like the colors - went into photoshop - changed to Grayscale, added the mountain horizon in the background - tweaked the contrast - Produced something very unusual for me - not cartoony - not really real - but pseudo-tromp-d'oeil... Will also post the original rendering

Both effects very good John - as usual - Thanks

Just found this in my stash - probably got it at a community college class (DeAnza College, Cupertino, CA) on animation (class taken around 1991 - Now those were the days, and of course, I still was probably the oldest person in the class): O'Donnells' Laws of Cartoon Motion I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of it's situation. (Think Daffy Duck walking off a cliff, suspended in mid-air until he chances to look down - only at this point does 32 ft per sec squared take over) II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes. (Toon characters are so absolute in momentum that only a telephone pole or outsized boulder retards their forward motion, absolutely.) III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to it's perimeter. IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear. (Eg, Spooky noise will induce motion upward - usually to a treetop, -or - The feet of a character who is running need never touch the ground, especially in flight) VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once. (Eg, character's head may be glimpsed emerging from cloud of altercation due to tooth & claw fight, at several places simultaneously) VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. VIII. Any violent rearrangement of Feline Matter is impermanent. IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. X. Everything falls faster than an anvil. (Hope you enjoyed - and since time has passed and new laws of the Toonerverse have been discovered - be free to add your own)

One other trick I use - may not be appropriate for you - but since I use an emitter most of the time - I usually shade my emitter from dark to light so that I don't have to use shadows & yet I can get variations of intensity along the length of the hair - sample emitter attached: (purple background is just so you can see shape - and I use a tga file so that I can have a proper alpha). (ooops - just noticed that hair color of puppy is very close to the decal color - Sorry to post this info - if it's not relevant or you already know this)

I was using an image emitter so it may be different for you, but I found that the ambience setting & ambience color for my model (or groups with hair) in combination with the brightness property for the emitter would produce that washed out flat & gouache look - Since I don't really understand how they interact but... For an experiment try ambiance color set to black (or intensity to 0), and brightness of the emitter to 100% - The hair color then (in the modeling window) should probably look the closest to what you are using for your decal driving the color - work from there with different combos... I usually always do fakey stuff, so I usually want my fakey hue, saturation, intensity for the hair... shadows will also make it look darker (if you haven't found that out by now)

That's excellent - looks realllllyyyy real..

I also wanted to mention I thought the mood, lighting, setting was quite nice as well - with a hint of mountains? in the distance - (tho perhaps tree is a little too centered). As a variation, it would be interesting to see a print-type rendering, reminiscent of an Ansel Adams type winter day in Yosemite, done in B&W of course. I assume when you allow the hairy-leaves to sprout - you'll consider changing the season? to repeat, very beautiful. (And I'll be a hot bidder for the secret decoder ring for the Hash Fellows group when the next one shows up on ebay)

Oh yeah - and beautiful tree by the way. I sure hope there isn't a lot of good discussion going on in secret among you elite people that the rest of us plebians are missing out on ? Don't leave us flopping in the wind please.

I think the proper term is femellows.

Fantastic - wonderfully appealing guy - perfect animation - Bravo!

You can very definitely use decals to control the color of hair (as well as length): 1) apply decal 2) under images section for the decal, where type is defaulted to color, change the type to Other 3) then under properties driven, rt click - select add property 4) choose diffuse color hair on the patches where the decal has been applied will take on the color of the decal Search for my fwuffy in wip - thats how I did it - and I also used decals for length of hair, along with an image for the hair emitter - which gets colored by the decal as well http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...indpost&p=77638 How to use hair in the documentation online also discusses this

Perhaps inside of mouth should suggest "growth rings", and teeth might have touches of fuzzy green moss (from not brushing properly? - ewwww yucky)

Absolutely a Terrific tree Model ! Wonderful character - like the idea of texturing - but feel like the texture needs more depth to suggest something more "barky" - maybe add a bump map for deeper darker, more defined creases in the texture..

thanks for the comments y'all - Robcat: Yes the yarn is an image map - I'll give some thought about "unsquaring" the ends. I was thinking originally of going for the look of cut yarn - as if to suggest someone had actually "sewn/knit him up"... might try using two image maps for emitters so that the strands don't look so regular Johnl: Yes I'm starting to animate him - using dynamics so that the hair moves, as well as giving the red tie dynamic constraints as well - might have some tests to show manana - so far render times have been reasonable (20-30 secs/frame at 640x480) ... Still having problems with grooming - very tricky, scary, tedious - the old adage of 80% of the work takes place in 20% of the time is turning out to be very true of course...it's that remaining tweaky stuff that drives me crazy -

Needs mucho work - but I like the way it's progressing. Been playing around with creating a model with hair, and trying to get something that might have reasonable rendering times for animation - - so I've been keeping the density low (lower than I'd really like) - And hoo-Boy have I been struggling with the grooming (yikes what a spaghetti nest of string!), resorted to fakey lighting, shadows, 1 pass, etc... BUT this image at 640 x480 rendered in 37 secs! I could live with that...(I'm really really impatient) Will be working on cleaning up the face (too confusing - image wise) - fixing the bald spots... comments welcome