Attached Link: http://www.gardenhose.com/groups/new_winter.jpg

An easier way is to simply use Ctrl+L to select the "nozzles" from within the nozzles directory on the CD. Of course, loading files from a CD is slow so you may want to copy the Nozzles folder to your HD and load them from there.

You should probably avoid using the Nozzle Library feature in Painter now because it tends to distort the images whereas loading the nozzles individually isn't nearly as destructive. Here's a brief explanation: http://www.gardenhose.com/P6Fix.htm

If you care to contact me off list, I can send you login info that will give you access to updates and tutorials. That applies to any DigArts customer here who hasn't received our recent tutorial/freebie/update emails. Send to info@gardenhose.com

Speaking of winter trees freebie nozzles, there are several small demonstration versions (freebies) available for download. Nice for winter backgrounds and stuff. They're at http://www.gardenhose.com/treelines.htm Use the demonstrations link.

PS. DigArts is a commercial site. If you find that offensive, please don't follow these links.

I haven't seen Photospray since it was first released. Do you still have to paint in that little plug-in window?

Attached Link: Adobe Feature Request Form

Many people don't realize that Photoshop lacks the necessary brush technology to use tubes, nozzles or other variants of image databases (paints).

For anyone that doesn't already know what these brushes and paints can do, see "Rainy Season" in the 2D Gallery (it may look washed out on a Mac).

If you want to see this brush in the next version of Photoshop, I recommend taking a minute to fill out Adobe's feature request form. See the link above.

Message edited on: 09/01/2004 14:57

Attached Link: Palms

Can't say about nature in general, but plants can be very hard. I've just spent 9 months working on palms, date and coconut palms in particular. While the final results seem to be good, what a nightmare getting to this point.

Oddly, 3D handles palms fairly well, at least the high-end programs do. It has to do with their relative symmetry I suspect, the math is easier to work out. That same symmetry is what makes them so difficult to do as 2D media (nozzles/tubes).

The other advantage with 3D is the ease with which you can change POV. So it's easy to look up through fronds canopies, etc. With 2D, you often need a new set of tools for that. The difference is in detail, texture and realism IMO. It would be very difficult even for advanced programs to achieve the level of detail possible with 2D palms, and the render hit could be huge.

Unless you're making a game or movie where the camera tilts up and around while moving through the scene, I'm not sure 3D is the better alternative. It can be easier, but often people prefer realism, particularly if the final result is a 2D image. Where the final is 2D, "post-processing is no sin," although it does have it's own set of problems (hi Scott, and thanks).

The real challenge, other than addressing California Palms and some very neat wild grasses not attempted yet :), is distant tree foliage like the kind you see covering a mountainsides or coastal hills (http://www.gardenhose.com/farshore.hts or http://www.gardenhose.com/tropics.htm).

These are only half-finished first attempts discovered by accident while testing new tools. It's clear (to me), however, that there's a real, fast and effective solution hiding somewhere nearby, whether for pines, oaks, rain forests, etc. Achieving it will take longer and prove harder than a person might reasonably expect, unfortunately.

My 2 cents worth anyway. Interesting topic.

Dennis@DigArts
http://www.gardenhose.com

There was Niles Canyon out of Fremont or Hayward I think, but that was to Livermore. Altamont Pass was one to Fresno from Livermore.

Speaking of Livermore, my Uncle bought the old Livermore ranch in the '30's or '40s, which bordered the freeway on the way to said pass. The hills were mostly grasslands, but for the eucalyptus covered 19th century cemetary that bordered the ranch. I used to walk the grasslands as a boy, sometimes hunting jack rabbits with Mickey the beagle in the summer evenings. Fond memories those.

Attached Link: http://www.gardenhose.com

Thanks Zhann and others. Yes, my own stuff.

Bikermouse, I was thinking of Vikki in something skimpy, be it lacy or shiny :)

Actually, I used to fish for halibut on Tomalas Bay, north of SF. The Sonoma hillsides as seen fishing from a boat look a lot like that.

Your mentioning of that also reminded me of that great Eakins painting of the skull rower. It's one of my favorites.

Dennis out.

Yikes! I should do a search more often.

Yesterday's post will clear some of this up because the new tutorials explain it (for P6). Painter 5.x worked somewhat differently.

Anytime you paint in a tranparent layer, the mask is "built-in". That makes it very easy to use because there's no selection tools involved.

The only thing you have to plan for is halos or those pesky white fringes. They happen because the layer actually has a background color you don't see. With Photoshop and PSP, it's the secondary or background color on the Colors palette. With Painter, it's the default "Paper Color ." So long as those colors are made to match the layer image, you avoid fringes.

As for saving P6 layer masks, you have two options. First, you can use Drop and Select from the Layers menu, then use Save Selection to save the mask.

The other option is to select the layer mask on the Mask palette and choose Copy Mask from the Mask menu. Oddly, Painter 6 won't let you save the existing layer mask like PS will. So, you have to Copy Mask and choose New. Painter will let you load and save that one.

Let me know if you need more info. Hope this is helpful.

Hi Tesign,

You are correct. Getting use to Jungle 3D (or 2D) does take some time. When you consider the long history of art and paint media, painting with foliage is very different compared with what has gone before.

The idea of Jungle 3D is to make painting trees & foliage a lot easier and faster. And since many of the traditional painting problems are solved in the nozzles themselves, the learning curve is really pretty fast. Like you say, it just takes some getting use to.

With that in mind, we offer a series of free tutorials on painting trees, foliage structures like canopies, tiling patterns of foliage for 3D terrain models, shadow textures, etc. I think of them as training wheels, a way to get the hang of it.

Unfortunately, they're mostly for Painter and PSP. We have so few inquiries from PP users that it's hard to justify the time it takes to write them.

In a nut shell, painting trees is like making a sandwich. Three layers are usually involved. The bottom layer, or slice of bread, represents the background leaves on the far side of the tree. The trunk and limbs represent the peanut butter and jelly filling. The foreground leaves represent top slice of bread.

When they layers are finished, you collapse them to one layer, load the layer selection, save it and flatten the image before saving in a format that preserves the mask and is recognized by the 3D app.

Now sandwichs can get a whole lot more sophisticated than that, but this works really well to start. The only thing you have to remember is it's 2D space. If the sun is at your back, the leaves on the far side of the tree will be in the shade. So, you have to darken that layer after you paint it (easy enough).

Similarly, it can look very cool to have soft leaf shadows dapplied on the visible parts of the trunk and limbs. So, you preserve transparency on the trunk and limb layer and spray some leaf shadows on them.

You can even paint a separate round shadow texture for use beneath the tree, so it appears to have full volume. I usually apply a soft spot to the texture panel as that pushes the look of volume even more.

So painting with nozzles does take some getting use to because the process is so different from traditional painting. Once you've got it down though, it's about as easy as riding a bike.

Getting the perfect tree is something else, however, but that has to do with artistry and effort. I use photographic models otherwise my trees begin to look the same. (I think it's a visual memory thing).

As for a Photopaint version of Tree Forestry, maybe in the future. Since Corel owns them both, who knows what they'll do. They sure don't tell us. We find out when you do, usually later because we can't buy every new version when it comes out.

I hope this helps. If you have the time, try the tree tutorial for Painter and then apply the layer principle in PP. We include the necessary files with the tutorials so you don't have to buy anything, although you will need Painter 5+ or PSP 6+.

Thanks for the interest everyone. Have fun.

Didn't know that. We have a earlier version, but never installed it.

I'm aware the Vue does trees, though they likely look different from ours. As you say, you can never have enough and mixing looks is good sometimes.

I assume Vue does allow 2D texture mapping, and with alpha based transparency. If so, most image editors will open PSD and recognize the mask channel. You can then save as tif, or whatever ever format Vue recognizes as a texture.

Hope this helps.

Attached Link: http://www.gardenhose.com

Ug. I just wrote you a long reply and it disappeared when I tried to preview the post. Grrrrr. If the bark textures are important to you, get the Painter version. There's only a limited supply, so I'd jump on Painter 5.5 because when they're gone, they're gone. As it is right now, Painter 6 tends to blur nozzle applications so P5.5 has some real advantages. Remember also, you can always make a duplicate of your tree trunk or limb, convert it to grayscale in PSP and use it to drive a second bump channel. That applies to other types of Jungle textures as well. Last but not least, the step-by-step, illustrated tutorials are designed for Painter 5.5 with new users in mind. Whatever UI problems you may encounter should be addressed in the Painting Trees, Painting Terrain Textures and Painting Foliage Structure tutorials since they use screen captures of the desktop display. Well, it's not quite as thorough, but I think that covers it... again. Hope this helps.

Attached Link: http://www.gardenhose.com

>make sure the background layer (make sure it says >background, not layer 1, in photoshop this makes >ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.) is selected and >then make it black. Hi, What's going on with Carrara is something different. The tree textures on our site already have the adjusted background color so halos shouldn't be a problem. It has to do with the way Carrara looks at transparency. I don't know enough about Carrara to comment. Maybe one of the experts here can inform me/us. You make a very good point about masks and blending colors from antialiased edges. However, there's a lot going on with PS layers and the effect you mention can change based on choices involving New file setup (White, Background, or Transparent) as well as Background Color (from Color Picker). I think what you're identifying is the default white background present "in" most transparent layers. It applies to Painter 6 much the same as it does to Photoshop (and PSP 6/7 too as I recall). We address this issue in our Painter tutorials as well. Once you change the image background color in Painter 6, new layers will use that background color. Photoshop does this too, and with even more variables since changing the Background Color on the tools palette can have similar effect (P6 may as well, I haven't tested). In other words, new "transparent" layers draw color information from the Background image (though you cannot see it). You can even change this color information in existing layers by altering the value of Background Color using the Color Picker. To test this in PS, make two new layers, one while the "Background" layer is white and one after filling it with black. Paint on each new layer with an antialiased brush using a color other than black or white. Now Load and Save a layer mask. It doesn't matter which layer you use to create the mask. Okay, here's the test. Merge the white layer with the black background, then Load the Selection and Cut to make the selection a layer. Now move the layer. You'll see the white cut-out on the Background image. Now do the same with the image painted on the black layer (merge, load selection and cut a new layer). When you move this cut layer, there is no white cut-out. That tells you the default color of that layer was the same as the background, black. That makes the cut-out space indistinguishable from the background. You'll see a similar result if you change the Background Color Picker to black with the white layer active. It's like making a layer from a black Background image. What's more, if you choose Transparent when creating the new file you'll notice the file opens without a "Background," but with a Layer instead. In that case, it doesn't appear to make much difference what you do with colors, though I haven't looked closely at this effect. It's challenging to see how many different methods can be used to eliminate halos on 2D images mapped with transparency. The idea, of course, it to control the color blend that occurs between the antialiased edges. What confuses most people (IMO) is that there actually is a color hidden in transparent layers, at least in most cases. :) Hope this helps. Dennis@DigArts

Thanks Clint. I should add that the mapping solution came from an example posted by another Carrara user. I would have never guessed to use Multiply in Color, but without it I kept getting a white halo (from the Transparency mask). Thanks Patrick :) Dennis

Okay, gotcha. You may find it easier to paint a tree, however. As for cutting out a tree using Painter, try using Color Select (assuming they use the same term in P3D). Color select allows you to choose the background color (by clicking in it) a build a mask using that color or some expanded variation of it. It's a little tricky to grasp at first, but try this: Click to select the background color. If the background color is close to the same as the tree, you're going to find it difficult to separate the two. Nevertheless, try this. Move the S Extents and S Feather sliders all the way to 100 or 200%, whichever is highest. Do the same with V Feather and Hue Feather. Use H Extents to broaden the range of colors selected (add in yellow and blue greens). Use V Extents to broaden the range of values, (add in darker versions of the color range). The little preview window will show red where the mask is being applied. When you get what you want, click on OK. From there, you can convert your mask to a selection, Save the Selection as an Alpha channel and use that to isolate the tree in Bryce. Good luck,

Okay, here are the preliminary results. It's a different kind of foliage, so it's not meant to look like these trees. But, it does address some of the highlites mentioned before. We posted the tube/nozzle to our Paint Shop Pro Users page (http://www.gardenhose.com/pspusers.htm), so if you have PSP or Painter, you can try it for yourself. One difference is the tree pictured on the page was created at that size, something I would have said wasn't possible a week ago (at least with that detail). The tube/nozzle does a pretty good cypress, cedar and redwood too. Have fun, and thanks for posting the example. Dennis@DigArts

Hi Wayne, We've just posted a new tree foliage tube on our Paint Shop Pro Users page (http://www.gardenhose.com/pspusers.htm. There are Painter versions there as well (Mac&Win). As for using a tree pict in Bryce, you might try our free PDF tutorial Painting Trees. It's linked from the Tutorials page and will not only show you how to paint a tree using Painter (or Painter 3D), but you can skip that part and simply go to the last section which talks about mapping a 2D pict/tif to a panel in Bryce. Hope this helps. Dennis@DigArts