Hi Odyssey, I couldn't say since I never bought the Yucca, but alot of palms do often have dead leaves below the higher ones. Although, that's probably not much of an explanation. Maybe you should email Steve Bell at E-on's support address and give him the link to this thread so he can see the picture, and see what he has to say.

that is fairly normal I would think.. at least the ones I saw all had lower swords that were ready to shed.

LOL :-) Well, I have one at home that doesn't look like this at all :-) The leaves turn more into a yellow color than a dark grey one.... :-)

If you open up the "Summary of Materials" box and select the leaves, and go, Edit-Material, you can find the path to the image file that was used for the leaves, and manually alter it in a paint program, and load that in place, if you wish. Just don't over-write the original. :)

I'm sure that the material can be edited so it won't do that, if you want...at least in Vue4...

Do you mean the .prv file ?

Oh man, I'm sorry if I misled you... I just now noticed that the veggies are in fact based on .prv files and not bitmaps. :( Don't know what to say now...

ROFL :-) It's okay :-) I was wondering what the magic trick was to convert .prv files into bitmaps :-) Thanks for your help :-)

I guess I just ass-umed.... I've goten so used to using all these alternate plant materials that Guitta and Varian and Bernie have made, which ARE bitmap-in-origin, that I thought that so were the "originals". DOH! Actually, I never tried, and now I'm seriously wondering, just where are they coming from? I searched the entire Vue directory and didn't find anything...hmmmmmm...

This is the Magic of Vue d'Esprit :-)

'tis. :)

Have any of you tried opening the .prv with a text editor?

Is this using the Yucca with the original material or the upgraded Vue4 materials? -SMT (still thinking hard about this one...)

Actually Bill, I did. it's just a bunch of (ASCII) gibberish... nothing useful there for those of us who don't know what all those symbols mean, let alone, how to edit them....

It's with the upgraded material....... The thing is that I bought the vegetation bundle and after installing them I immediately applied the mat update from E-on's website..... So I don't know if it's a bug from Vue4 or if the yucca always looked like this.....

Maybe that's why they call it "Yuck-ahh"? I know, I'm not much help today, so I'll just be quiet now... :)

ROFLMAO :)

But wouldn't all my plants look weird if my video card settings were not right ? Everything else is just fine :)

I don't know how the rest looks like...may be they are all this while...LOL!

ROFL :)

C'mon Odyssey, ya gotta get off the floor--we're trying to help you here! :)

The question I've got is this, (and I'm not at home, so I can't check this out right now): Are the areas gray because that's how the texture they're using looks?...or is it gray becuase of one of the new tricks they're using in Solid Growth II to vary the color of the texture? -SMT

okay, you are right, I am not a good student :) I will stop laughing and try to change the settings for the light...... if it doesn't work then...... my next draw will be a yucca forest planted in an ashtray to go with the color of the bottom leaves :)

Again, I'm not at home so I can't check this, but does the Yucca have more than one material assigned to the leaves? I remember the Palm tree has one material for leaves, and one material for dead leaves... -SMT

The yucca has only one material assigned to it... yucca leaf which don't have any grey or brown on it..... Only pure green leaves :)

If you want to change the color of the texture map, just map the leaf material for the yucca to a flat plane facing the camera at 1.00 in size. Make your render window about the same size as the plane. Then you can take your material into a paint program and edit it...when you use the yucca again, just use your new map for the leaves (but name it something else so you don't accidentally overwrite anything). :) Laurie

Really, Laurie? We can do that? :/

Hello Laurie :) Thank you for the tip :) I did just what you said and the resulting leaves look just fine without any brown or grey on them..... So, might this be SolidGrowth that does this awful trick on them ?

Well Mike, since maybe you just don't know or you are being a smart guy (I thought you knew everything Mike! ;)), here's what ya do: Map your leaf material to a plane. When I said at 1.00 size, I meant the leaf material itself, not the plane (Vue's vegs are at .34 I think). That way it will just be one leaflet (or whatever you'd call it ;)). Render it as big as you can without making it pixelated. Then you can take it into a paint program and do whatever you want...change color, add veins, etc. You can even start from scratch, using the render as something to go by. I don't know how Varian does it, but that's the way I've always done it. Just remember that if you start from scratch that you will need to make your own alpha map for the transparency. If you do everything on a transparent layer, that should be easy as punch (I'm talking Photoshop and PSP here...don't know too many other paint programs). Just select the transparency of that layer, make it black and white and NOT antialiased as Martin mentioned (do that you don't get a white matte). I bought the Jungle 3D from Digi Arts just for this purpose (the Japanese maple in red looks great!). It's as easy as that. When you use your new material, just remember to set it at .34 in the material editor again :). BTW, I know you're not a smart a#$ Mike...I'm just joshin'! Laurie

No, Laurie, i wasn't being a smarta$$-- this is actually news to me. I was under the impression that they would have to have one of the two "standard" formats to work: Either a solitary leaf within perfectly square dimensions (for the Monstera, ferns, etc..), or the "X"-shaped (repeated diagonally) pattern (for the trees). Actually, it sounds like you know more about this than you're letting us in on. ;)

Hmmm...I'm curious now...does the rest of you have the same problem for the Yucca like Odyssey has?

I don't even have the Yucca, Bill-- just going by what the rest of the plants offer...

Yeah, it found violet and blue in there! Which might explain why it wants to turn greens into grays. Look at your color wheel!

Sorry to get to this late, but... * Yes, the Yucca has always done that little color-change trick, and the lower leaves usually have a grayish appearance. * Laurie is absolutely correct in the simplest way for getting one of the veggie materials to your paint program to modify or redesign. * There are different map "layouts" for different plants/trees. Some of them share similar layouts, and exchanging leaf material between them works out well. For instance, the fern, fir tree, tropic, and dry weeds all use a similar layout. Most of the deciduous trees use a similar layout to each other. This means you can use Fern leaves on a Tropic plant, or Maple leaves on a Plum tree, without changing the basic characteristics of the plant/tree forms. Hope that makes sense. :)

Hello, hello, hello...who else got the Yucca..I did not even realized it has to be purchased. Who else is getting the gray/grey?

Tell me if I understand correctly : If I change my leaves texture in a paint program or just save them into bitmaps because they look fine without SolidGrowth and then reapply to a new yucca then it would look fine ? No more grey at bottom ?

Odyssey, because of the way the Yucca is designed to render, the lower leaves are going to be blue-cast, regardless of how you adapt the map. You can of course, experiement with different shades of the green, to see how the changes in the lower leaves may appear. There is a color button in Vue 4 (on the Color tab of the material) for adding a color hue to work along with the image map. You could try setting a color there, then playing with the slider to see how much color works best in the blend. You can also check the Transparency tab and test if maybe setting the Fade colors to something other than blue might make a difference. I'd try setting them to yellows for a start...can't get to my program at the moment, so I can't run a test myself.

Thank you Varian :) I will play with those settings and see if I can get something done :)