Attached Link: Vue d'Esprit Goodies

With thanks to Bloodsong who helped me realize we're rendering larger images these days, I've updated all of my Monstera/Accuba alternate leaves materials to support higher resolution renderings. If you've already downloaded any of my Monstera/Accuba materials, come on back to get the new versions. :) Plus:  These are images from the *newest* Monstera/Accuba alternate leaves materials. There are six new materials in all, 3 shown here. The Monstera/Accuba alternate leaves materials are suitable for many of the SolidGrowth plants, including Monstera, Accuba, Papyrus, Kentia, Tropic, Schefflera and possibly others. In time, I plan to update my other alternate leaves materials for Fir/Fern and for Vue trees. When I do, I'll let you know! :) Varian

Here's a closer look at one of my favorites, Trileaf. :)

all I can say is WOW Varian! Those plants are awesome!

Really great Varian. Continually shows their are few limits to how good it can get in Vue. I just saw a PBS show about Orchids, which are of course incredibly beautiful (and even somewhat erotic) flowers, and wondered why no one has ever done something like this with orchids... I recently got one of the Dosch CD's of natural plants, and as nice as they are, their is nothing about the way they are constructed that couldn't be duplicated in Vue. I seen astonishly realistic renders in Vue of C Wieds coconut palm trees, and its still almost hard to believe they are 3D when you see them. Ivy, Roses- anything should be possible as photo-realistic plants in Vue...

Beautiful, Varian, really great, and thanks! I suppose one of these days I'll have to study the technique and figure it out! So until then, I'm heading on over to snatch them up before you realize you could be selling this stuff! Err, forget I said that. ;) .... F-M, Y'know, I installed XFrog's most recent demo, and downloaded C-Wied's palm, and saved it out as .obj, but I can't get it to render correctly to save my life. I end up with large blobs of the famous Blue Gunk, and can't get rid of it. Is their some sort of trick to it? I'll post a quick picture so y'all can see what I mean.

Well, here's the palm. I seem to have lost the texture maps for it though, so this will have to do, LOL! I'm not sure where I got these leaves that I've used here, but they were in a folder named "xfrog" in my bitmaps folder. I think it might have been part of an XFrog tutorial. Anyway, obviously they didn't map right, but I don't think they ought to be expected to anyway. But I had the same problem with C-Wied's palm extures. The leaves mapped OK, but I still had the blue gunk, which you can see on this one too.

Mike, for this particular Blue Gunk, just change the fade-out color to a green that is similar to the leaves of the palm. Then you won't notice the color shift at all and it will blend right in. The worst Blue is when it make rectangles around items instead of being invisible. In a case like that, sometimes switching the material to One-sided can help.

Excellent textures Varian, as always ;). Laurie

I only had a quick moment to post earlier, so I made the remarks for Mike. Now I've got a bit more time. :) Diana and Laurie, thanks for the comments, and I hope you can make wonderful use of the materials! Fox, Guitta made an orchid material for Vue that looks pretty awesome. (Guitta's website) I downloaded it sometime last summer, but I must admit I haven't yet had a chance to work with it. She also made some strawberry plants and periwinkles which are rather ingenious. They're basically images applied to plane objects so they're quite simple, but wow, they look incredible! All of these are available on her site. I just love Vue's vegetation. It was one of the main reasons I leaped for the program when I first demo-ed it, and I'm constantly being impressed newly with the adaptable features of the SolidGrowth. I eagerly await all new SG items to come forth; I hope version 4 reveals several new items. Mike, Guitta also has a simple tutorial on her site for how to make your own SolidGrowth leaves materials. Way back when, her tutorial is how I initially learned about the possibility. I've made a few additional discoveries along the way and modified my methods, but what Guitta has explained there is still very accurate and is plenty to get anyone started on their own designs. :)

These are great plants varian... You definitely have that green thumb in the computer world... :)

Thanks very much, Paul! Let's hope it means I've got good luck with plants, and not that Diana's been chasing me with her paint bucket! :D Actually, the only plants I do well with are the 3D kind. In the physical world, plants tend to turn yellow and shrivel away when they see me coming - LOL!

Plants in the real world do the same thing with me.... :) Really does Diana chase you with her paint bucket regularly??? :)

Just when I have my glasses on.. LOL Then I can see him to chase him!

Thanks again Varian--- I went back and read Guitta's tutorial, and after also studying what you've done, it seems alot easier than I had remembered it as being. Making new tree textures seems to be somewhat more complex than textures for, say, the Monstera, but definitely worth it. :)

Varian, those are purely fantastic! You da -- oops! Thanks very much! Larry F

Thanks, Larry; glad you're still hanging around here! And hey, I can be "da man" okay. It's Bloodsong we're not too sure about (and no one has the nerve to lift Bloodsong's tail to find out -- LOL!) Glad you got to it, Mike! Yes, it's pretty simple. The real key is starting with a great image. The tree materials are a bit more complex, but not really complicated. The main limitation I've found with the trees is that you're pretty much stuck with the design of the object itself. Whereas a bunch of plants grow similarly to a Monstera plant's structure, for instance, there aren't many trees that grow "flat" like an Acacia or "round" like Vue's Orange. However, the Winter Pear is extremely versatile. :)

The XFROG program website has a fairly long tutorial on transferring plants into VUE. But it might be interesting to take the C-Wied XFROG Palm Tree "parts"- the palm fronds are really excellent, and re-construct a Coconut Palm from that material...