Has anyone got, or knows the whereabouts of either a tumbleweed model or a tumbleweed texture? (freebie only please) Or does anyone know how to make one?

Does this suit? =) It's made up of four symmetrical lattices and two spheres.

For my method: First I create a lattice, then go to the terrain editor. From there I draw something that looks like the above image. I increased the terrain resolution to 512x512, and reduced the brush size to the lowest possible. Make sure that you don't have too many branches. Also make sure that you have enough. It's a balance thing.

Now rotate the lattice so that it stands upright. Scale it so that it is basically a square, as you can see in the above image. Make it positive. Now duplicate the lattice and rotate it 90 degrees, doesn't matter which way. Make the second lattice intersect, and group them. If you render now, you should get something that looks fairly decent but doesn't quite have that "round" shape.

So make the group positive, make a sphere and put it somewhere in the middle. Make the sphere intersect and then group it with the lattices. Now you have a rounder shape.

Looks like a possible to me, nice! But what about the texture/material for it?

Attached Link: http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/~calyxa/pearl/miracle.html

I didn't think that it was dense enough, so I duplicated the whole group and rotated it 90 degrees. All that's left now is to choose a texture. This is a process invented by Calyxa called "miracle trees"; it was originally intended to provide support for trees in Bryce4, which didn't have a tree object. You can check out her original tutorial at the link (she's better at explaining things than I am). Sorry about the long string of posts and images. =) Hope this helps.

I just gave it a trunks material; I think it was called "Russian Olive". You might want to make it a bit more grayish.

I tried the same approach in my Desperado image...works pretty nicely.

Good approach for tumbleweed is Clay's volumetric fire material, modified, ofcourse, if it's not close-up shot, it looks pretty good mapped on the sphere !!! :D

Attached Link: http://3dplants.com

Still, that's a pretty high-poly tumbleweed! You'd only be able to get a few of them into a scene with much stability... Try this site, Fran? They have dozens of free models, of all kinds. Good luck!

LSD, http://3dplants.com - yeah I looked there, there isn't any tumbleweed. Kemal, your idea sounds quite a good possibility, thanks. shinyary2, From trunks? Right.