Another subject for this months challenge. Last month went so well, I thought I'd give it another shot. P.S., Eric, I have a wishlist for Antyhing Grows. 1.) Be able to scale the strand base. 2.) Be able to restrict creating strands in all three directions (this is a tough one). The reason for this one is that I had to create a lot of strands on sides that were wasted but C still had to chew on them anyway. 3.) I don't know how big of a pain in the patoot this is but it appears the kinds of objects you can select as tip objects are limited. Complicated vertex objects don't work and you can'y use a group of objects (like this little ant). These were issues I encountered when creating the image I just posted in the gallery. AG was used for the big green grass blades and the dead tan ones on the floor. Couldn't work it with the ants. -Kix

Kix,

I think I might have solutions to some or all of your requests.

1. Just kick up the width and use the taper to make the tip smaller. Or are you saying you want to make the base small, middle bigger, tip small again?

2. If it's something you can texture, you can control where the strands are created using the Length shader. If the shader is completely black, no strands will grow there. Elevation and Slope can be particularly helpful. Another option is create a copy of your mesh and remove the sections where you don't want strands. Make it invisible, but use it as your base object for an Anything Grows primitive. If you are just trying to control what direction they go, the Wiggle controls are the best way to do this. Wiggle alone will cause random direction. Using the Wiggle shaders will give you control over what direction the strands go.

3. You should be able to use anything as a tip object as long as it's a single object and has geometry (no volumetrics). If you've found a single vertex object that won't work, please send it to me and I'll check it out. If you want to use a group, select your group, export it to OBJ, import it, selecting the create single object option, and use that as your tip object. Check out the field of grass tutorial to see how to shade the different layers.

Please let me know if that doesn't help or you have any other questions.

Good luck,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Freeware and commercial 3D extensions
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Thanks Eric! I had built a single ant in the vertex modeler which was rough but I deleted it when I couldn't get it to work. The taper thing you mentioned is what I was trying to get at. A small base growing into a larger one, ending in a small tip. Your other ideas would cure my problems. -Kix

I think you did a good job on the ant. Just one minor detail: they have a center section called a trunk (thorax), where each of 3 leg-pairs is attached to a separate thoracic section.

I had crummy references. Thanks! -Kix

Wow Kix. Nice model. I can't wait for the day that I can model like this in C! Thanks again, and your models have always been insperational for inexperienced souls like me. -PAG

Thanks, This is actually a very simple model. The legs are made up of four different pieces which are all the same but scaled a little bit. Once I made one leg, I duplicated it five times and positioned them. The antennae are made up of two of these pieces. The head is a sphere with the taper deformer on it and scaled a little bit until I liked it. The three ribbed back end is just three of these spheres stacked up. I applied the spike deformer on one of them. AGrows would have been fine too. The middle body is a simple spline object. The jaws are two simple spline objects one duplicated to the other and the eyes are just spheres positioned appropriately. No biggy. -Kix

Attached Link: http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/TOOLS/ANTKEY/antid2.html

When you look at a photo of an ant, it's usually impossible to see where the legs are coming from, so I attached a link to a diagram that shows some details.

cool ant model carrara 2 (with bones) will be able to animate critters much easier. I made this ant with amapi 5 (comes with carrara) BT

Very Cool ANT!