FAO FlashGarcia --- Willows

FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
edited December 1969 in Bryce Discussion

The Willows from the Tree Lab aren't great but this is as close as I could get them :-)

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Comments

  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    Fishtales

    Thanks for saving my post question about Willow bush models from oblivion, and for your help.
    What I have been looking for are 3d models of Willow bushes that are shrub-like, spherical, and close to the ground. They are called Dwarf Willow Arctic bushes.

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  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,485
    edited December 1969

    Hi Garcia, Dave posted an example here: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53147/P180/

  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    mermaid010

    Thanks.

    That's a clever idea TheSavage64 has for creating a version of tumbleweed. I did a quick tryout of his method and then started fiddling with the deep texture settings.
    My Painter program has a Growth option in the Esoterica section for creating stem/branching 2D pictures. There are a bunch of sliders for fine adjustments.

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    It floats through the air, then drops on your head, like that floating jellyfish plant thing in Roger Corman's 1950s film, "Not of this Earth"
    Actually, trying to make a tumbleweed in Vue 9 and ending up with this monstrosity.

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    retro

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    "You talking to me?"
    "Flat screen, what's that?"

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  • Bonito LilBonito Lil Posts: 72
    edited December 1969

    >>It floats through the air, then drops on your head, like that floating jellyfish plant thing in Roger Corman’s 1950s film, “Not of this Earth”
    Actually, trying to make a tumbleweed in Vue 9 and ending up with this monstrosity.

    That was hideous, but there's always a use for a giant squid in some other project...


    Sometimes, when I want a shrub, I bury a tree up to its neck in the terrain and get convincing results. This will not help if you want your tumbleweed to tumble.

  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited December 1969

    Sometimes, when I want a shrub, I bury a tree up to its neck in the terrain and get convincing results. This will not help if you want your tumbleweed to tumble.

    Bryce would probably crash with all those 3/4 buried trees going off into the distance, "a sea of willow bushes".
    I am thinking of turning traitor to Bryce and using Vue 9's ecosystem option. The "Willows" image would also require models for the Swede, the Englishman, their clothes, the canoe, and accessories, maybe a small tent, a fire, etc.
    Bryce would keel over and croak..

    What I can't stand about Vue though is that node method for textures and functions, and that crappy camera moving method it has.

    Maybe to hell with the Willows image idea and instead replace it with, "The Tumbleweeds", "a vast sea of tumbleweeds" ...

    I remember many years ago driving at night in a thunderstorm through the state of Arizona, or was it New Mexico, and passing through a section of desert populated by thousands and thousands of tall Saguro cacti, that were lit up bright green by the flashes of lightning. They looked like an army of green humanoid mutations.
    There's an idea somewhere in that for an image.

    Meanwhile, here are another two photographs of tumbleweeds that I found searching the web.

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  • Bonito LilBonito Lil Posts: 72
    edited December 1969

    You can see a couple of trees, special aspens, buried up to their necks, in my image here:
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53147/P270/#802787
    They look like bushes with purple flowers.

    I work with a Core i3 and just 4 GB of RAM, so I have learned to use instancing whenever I can. So the row of hemlocks in this image -- one is the master object and all the others are instances. The only hardship for me, with my meager hardware resources, is that it takes aaaaaaaaaaages to render.

    If you saw saguaro cacti, you were definitely in Arizona. Although they are very much a meme for images of American deserts, they have a very limited range now.

    And tumbleweeds, a.k.a. russian thistles, well, if you had been a spectator at the gunfight at the OK Corral, then you wouldn't have seen any because the accidental import of their seeds hadn't happened yet. Now, however.... here's a photo from Clovis, New Mexico, taken just last year.

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited May 2015

    The only hardship for me, with my meager hardware resources, is that it takes aaaaaaaaaaages to render.

    About how long did the rendering take for your Diskworld image?

    I will have to start doing some rendering time tests with Fishtales tree lab tumbleweeds, and the buried trees, using the instance lab.
    I have 10 ram in my 3.2 hertz computer, but I don't know off hand about the core stuff, and my video card was supposed to be fast. But I bought this computer years ago, and also this computer has to do everything so that slows it down for CG work.

    Another variation on this "tumbleweed and willows" thing, could be possessed animated Saguaro cacti, with green faces, that reach out and grab hikers and campers.
    Here are some photos of Saguaro cacti that I found on the web for reference.

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  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,636
    edited December 1969

    @FlashGarcia - I have a Bryce 5.5 test file on my website (see sig) and many results listed. It may help you to compare. Go to Raytracing > Tests-old and Raytracing > Tests-new

  • Bonito LilBonito Lil Posts: 72
    edited December 1969

    It took 2 weeks to do the Discworld image, including mistakes, epiphanies and changes of mind, but my circumstances are weird. I'm in a long-term nursing facility and spend most of my time lying on one side or another. I can only work on the laptop when I'm lying on my left side because of where the heat vent is placed, for a maximum of 9 hours a day but often far less than that. Fortunately, I'm getting my old Dell from home; it's a Dual Core running Vista on 3 GB of RAM, but it vents out the back, so I'll be able to use it regardless of which side I'm on. I expect this to boost productivity. :-)

    Once the composition is set, I launch a spot render, then balance the laptop on the bedside table to let it work by itself, and do other stuff on my Fire. I simply cannot multitask with Bryce on the laptop without blowing a big hole in the middle of the screen bit map (minimizing/maximizing makes no difference). I can tell you that with something really gnarly, like a bushy xtree with its gazillion transparencies and an HDRi, 2 square centimeters can take upward of 4 hours.


    You'll have a job making saguaro look mean. They look innately friendly with their arms in the air like that. Now, cholla is another story. Everybody hates cholla. Two images attached; first is just a vista of "jumping" cholla and the second is of a coyote pup. Worse than a squadron of porcupines, is cholla (pronounced choy-ya)...

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited December 1969

    Horo

    Thanks.

    I downloaded the Bosta file from your website, loaded it up in my Bryce 7.1.0.74, and it rendered in 1 minute 15 seconds.

    My Hewlett-Packard computer operating configuration is,

    6 core

    AMD Phenom II x 6 1090T Processor 3.20 GHz

    64 bit

    10 GB RAM

    Video card is, AMD Radeon HD 6670

    How would you rate that rendering time for my computer, stinko, not bad, average, pretty good, fast, very fast

    Here is a screenshot of the rendering information.

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited April 2015

    asterlil,

    I hope that a stem cell medical breakthrough can repair your disability some day. I read somewhere that some medical researchers believe that damaged nerve tissue, or even dead nerve pathways, can be restored through stem cell therapy. Sounds like magic, but who knows these days.

    Hmm ... maybe friendly animated Saguaro cacti plants versus the animated evil spiny octopoid Cholla cacti. That poor little coyote pup. They had to use plyers to pull those spiny stems from it's body?

    Post edited by Retro Lad on
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,636
    edited December 1969

    @FlashGarcia - quite good result, I think, that's about the time my spare i3 machine needs when only 2 cores are used (normal priority). My fastest needs 35 seconds but it's an old slow crate meanwhile and I'd rate it between average and pretty good but nearer to average. So yours would exceed not bad but still way to go to average. No computer is ever fast enough.

  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited December 1969

    Horo,

    Well, as my old friend Mark Horowitz used to say, "tough, tough"

  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited May 2015

    123

    Post edited by Retro Lad on
  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited December 1969

    Here are two versions of a Willow bush that I made in the Bryce Tree Lab.
    The willows are described in the supernatural horror story, "The Willows", as being bushes with tender stalks that sway in the wind with the slightest breeze.
    How in the world do you visually make a bush look creepy?
    Well, I think I captured a tiny bit of creepiness in these bushes, and with the help of the Cararra modifiers a whole row of them can be made to look as if they are being moved by the winds.

    Truth be told though, to really feel the creepy strangeness of the "The Willows" story it has to be read, or listened to on an audio tape.
    I doubt if even the late great director Mario Bava could have captured the feel of the story in a film version.

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  • Bonito LilBonito Lil Posts: 72
    edited December 1969

    That's nice lab work, but I can't grok the true creepiness without context. How big are they in relation to me? Is it dark? Am I in a swamp or hillside? Context!

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Willows, weeping willows anyway, are much creepier if they don't have so many branches.

    http://www.fantom-xp.com/wallpapers/42/Weeping_willow_by_the_pond.jpg

  • FishtalesFishtales Posts: 6,119
    edited December 1969

    Is he talking about willows though as we know them? What I got fom the passage is something more like long reeds with leaves along them but coming from bushes not unlike dogwood plants.

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,636
    edited December 1969

    Weeping Willow, the first one is the real thing. I photographed it once when there was fog and I could isolate it easily and use it in a render (2nd) and I also used a Bryce one a long time ago (3rd).

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  • Retro LadRetro Lad Posts: 471
    edited May 2015

    The "context" question can be solved by reading the story. There is an audio reading of the story but I don't remember the web address for it.

    Here is the Wikipedia entry for "The Willows"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Willows_(story)

    Here is a download page for the story
    https://archive.org/details/thewillows11438gut

    I posted a map of the area where the story takes place; downstream across the Austria/Hungary frontier.

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