modeling/texturing shrubbery

[A]

I am replicating a painting in 3D using Max, and I'm having problems with
some flowery bushes. I would like them to look as much like the painting as
possible.

Here's part of the painting: http://southwind.tzo.com/amanda/cafe6.jpg

I've tried using overlapping spheres with bump and displacement, but that
looks pretty crappy. I can't really get a good layered look. I was going
to set up a PArray on top of the spheres for the flowers, but my experiments
with that haven't turned out well either. I'm not going to be getting
really close to the bushes with the camera, but I need something a little
better than my sphere plan. Can anyone suggest anything?

Thanks, Amanda

[Daric Priest]

Opacity mapping?

dp

BTW, ambitious project.

[Allan]

a displacement map? I have found that these are quite handy.

IF you make a displacement map with the 'flowers' pushed up, you can after
colourize the displacement map with flowers and they will all line up with
the 'bumps'

You need a large amount of polys for it to work properly but the effect is
good.

I am posting a poser prop that I did yesterday using a displacement map (I
will call it DISPLACE) in the alt.binaries.3dstudio NG

"Daric Priest" <dpr...@dupernews.com> wrote in message
news:idnrlukl0d42qbirm...@4ax.com...

[Henry Chinanski]

Hi There Amanda,

I posted a picture to alt.binaries.3dstudio titled " Flowers for Amanda " I
used a simple flowery looking object as an instance for the particle system.
If you require more detailed flower and need it fast. Visit
www.turbosquid.com and use "illusions3d" as your search term. You'll find a
rose model I created it's free so go get it and remove all but the flower
itself and use that as an instance for the particles.

Best regards,
Hank

"A" <ama...@southwind.org> wrote in message
news:Gdd79.26440$Xa.10...@twister.southeast.rr.com...

[Adrian Myers]

What is it about your attempts that doesn't look right? I mean even
if you had perfect geometry, the vast majority of the work (probably
all of it really) will be in material and rendering engine setup, and
I would be very impressed if anyone could get an impressionistic
effect like that in one pass with no compositing.

It looks like a borderless variation on Toon Rendering is called
for, which is great because MAX can do that with the Falloff map type
For that, make a Falloff Map in your Diffuse channel, change its
falloff type to Shaded/Lit, set the two colors up accordingly, then go
down to the Mix Curve, add two points to the line, and line them up
vertically for the tight transition you need, then go back to the
material properties ad crank Self Illumination up until it's well
balanced with the scene lighting (or alternatively crank up the
Ambient Lighting in the scene or add a bunch of Ambient Only omnis...
most of the lighting effects will come directly from the colors you
select per material anyway). With the correct lighting I'm sure most
of your solutions will look closer to the painting although you'll
still need some sort of post render filter to get the brushiness, if
you're after that.

For the leaf/flower geometry you might just try a bunch of
meshsmoothed spheres with 5 sides or so with noise applied or some
random vert pushing (at the low-poly stage), or a similar effect with
arching quad patches. Then use whatever technique you prefer
(patches, spline cages, NURMS, whatever) to set up several surfaces
for use with the Scatter modifier (Create -> Compound Objects ->
Scatter) to generate bush and flower level detail and maybe that will
work? There are enough different shapes of flower per plant that you
might want to use a couple overlapping scatter objects with different
geometry sources to get the correct effect, or Attach a couple
different shapes together and Scatter that shape... scaling and
rotation effects from the Scatter might create the diversity you need
although I suspect that normal alingment will become an issue.

Anyway, just a thought.

-adrian

"A" <ama...@southwind.org> wrote in message news:<Gdd79.26440$Xa.10...@twister.southeast.rr.com>...

[A]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the advice. Henry, I think I can use your
simplistic flower idea, I might try something similar. Adrian, I think
you're right about the rendering, my teacher suggested using motion blur-
which looked OK on our simple test. I don't have the lighting set up yet, I
planned on doing that after texturing- it's a learning process.

Looks like I'll just keep playing till something works...

Thanks, Amanda

"A" <ama...@southwind.org> wrote in message
news:Gdd79.26440$Xa.10...@twister.southeast.rr.com...

[gruhn]

It's not really an answer to your question, but I am reminded by your source
material...

Have you seen Reyes's "NRP Reyes"?