A couple of Forumites were at my Christmas Open House: Bobbo and Patricia. Pat brought me a precious planted pot of pink poesies (I'm trying to avoid purple prose). I love cyclamens and the dianthus was something very, very strange and wonderful. I've grown many types of them, including some antique ones, but this clump looks Martian (thin and attenuated flowers). Neat. The viola wasn't blooming, but it had a label: "Hobbitt Billbo Baggins". (Yes, I'm sure that the spelling was deliberate.) I'm patient, but figured that it might be weeks before flowering (this being the dead of winter). A bloom just popped open, and at first glance I thought, "oh, just another Johnny-Jump-Up", and then I got down and *looked* at it. LOL! What else would you call a flower with a bright gold ring glowing in the darkness? Needless to say, I'm delighted. Mamba-Negra is probably going to want me to dissect it and scan all the petals for him, but I'm enjoying it here next to my monitor for now. :) Carolly

Carolly, That looks nice...it would be cool if he'd do some of those. Haven't heard much from him since before Christmas.

Looks more like a miniature pansy, which is basically what johnny jump-ups are when you get down to it. It's lovely. :)

Cherokee69, There are a couple of things he is working on and trying to get right. (He is even more of a perfectionist than I am. :shake head in bemusement:) He did get the poinsettias into the PoserPros freestuff. After these two wips, I'm rather hoping for a foxglove. That was also the first thing Pat suggested when I told her what he was up to. My own favorite plants are iris, foxglove, columbine... the architectural plants with nice unique structure... rather than floppy plants with any old number of petals. However, Eric is probably more comfortable with plants he has seen and grown. Summertime with more subjects to study will mean less guesswork and stumbling around. He does have a gift for getting the shape of a leaf right. His plants are immediately identifiable for what they are.

Kate, Violas, violets, pansies, and johnny-jump-ups are all basically the same thing... with differences as to size and color and how fancy the leaf is. Some of the species violets have leaves divided like little fingers, but most are heart-shaped. I have a border of pink and black pansies lying low under the sweetpeas, some English violets (the fragrant ones) under the water tap (except that they are weeds and keep escaping to every other bed), and an unknown violet in the crested iris out on the boulevard. (And, yes, there are plenty of real weeds, too. A little sun and rain like we've had for the last month and the dandelions are a foot high. sigh. I actually like dandelions, but not inside the rosebush!) Back when I was a serious gardener, I ordered 4 species violets from a rare plant nursery and that included a cute little critter: white with purple freckles. But I don't think I've seen anything as charming as this gold ring! Carolly

Carolly, Oh I know. Eric is a perfectionist. I've tested several for him and you wouldn't believe the emails we end up sending back and forth. I'll comment on something and send him on and before it's sent, I get one from him with a change he's made. The snake plant I've been helping him with is really great but he's having problems with the texture. Can't get one to do just right. He's actually redone the entire plant. Last I heard from him, he was redoing the flower blooms.

:chuckle: Oh, I'd believe you! I'm one of his testers, too. :) A couple weeks ago I sent him scans from one of my botany books with flower and leaf parts all laid out and labeled. We were discussing stamens, and it is nice to be looking at the same part of the blossom. (He'd assigned them a material group, but the stamens didn't change color when I tested them... and the anthers were so delicately tiny as to not show the change.) The new blossoms are truly nifty... the sort of thing which will appeal to insects and hummers. And they are able to take extreme close-ups. The morphs in there would allow for some truly alien or underwater plants, but I suspect that there are few people who'd want to build a plant leaf-by-leaf and many who would like to just add the entire clump all textured and ready for the pot. Carolly

One thing I like about what Eric is doing is he's making plants morphable. I love those as you can use the same plant in a scene and bend the stem to make it look like a different one. Were you testing the Hydrangea he was working on?

Yes, with and without flowers. He's supposed to have two floral varieties now, one with much larger petals. (Those hybridizers have messed with just about everything by doubling up the chromosomes. sigh.) Since he is trying for the sorts of filler plants to line foundations and bulk up perennial beds, it is essential that a couple of dial tweaks will make each plant look different from its neighbor. It is like foxgloves and delphiniums and hollyhocks... you usually don't just have one, but an entire line of them. And even if they are at the back of the border, they shouldn't look like the soldiers in front of Buckingham Palace but something which has grown in place and accounted for the growth of its neighbors. Eric's work at keeping the mesh from intersecting despite the morphs helps a lot. Most folks will tweak gently, but I've been throwing the knobs off the scale and far into negative country just to see what happens. :wide evil grin: Unfortunately, most of my experience is with wildflowers and perennials rather than houseplants and colorspots and common plants. I used to hybridize iris, though, so I have an eye as to what makes a healthy plant! (Other hybridizers were going for huge flowers, I wanted to increase the temperature range so my favorite flowers could grow in more places.) From the scenes you do for the galleries, I'd suspect that you've grown kitchen and cottage gardens? Carolly

I do prefer the antique flowers and wildflowers. I'm glad Eric started doing some of those and I hope he continues to do more.

We could probably start a wishlist? California Native Iris would top my list. With a few simple morphs (mostly for proportion) it can change to Siberian, Japanese, Louisiana, and emulate some of the bulbous types such as Dutch and English. The yellow "flags" which became the symbol of French heraldry and the "gladdens" of gladden fields are also quite close. A few iris brighten just about any picture and can add historical or mythic significance. Carolly the Unabashedly Biased

Those are cool. I'd like to see someone do some petunias. Eric did the coleus and I'm glad he did those.

Petunias? :gulp: Where's my onion!

These be OK?

:chuckle: They'll do just fine. "I'm a lonely little petunia in an onion patch." I prefer onions to petunias (their blossom is a bit too floppy, but they are generous bloomers), and think that a flowering onion would be good. Allium Moly might keep the vampires at bay for a while. :)= Carolly

Hm, last night, the internet went down when I tried to post to this thread....and that was the 2nd attempt. I think it's a conspiracy;) A Public wishlist with photos is an excellent idea....not just for me, but for deerpath, judith and all the others. Here is a quick post of some details that I've been able to manage using wings3d. I'm especially proud of the way the leaf wraps around the inner segment. I could never have accomplished this with xfrog. Also, it's a character and each segment is a body part (so theroetically it would be posable) Currently, it falls apart when you pose, but it's a start:) eric BTW, I did try a pansy, and failed misreable. However, I think the plant shape itself is simple enough, I just couldn't get xfrog to give me leaves that looked good. It might be worth trying again with wings, though.

Oh, that picture was larger than I remembered it being. Ignore the mapping (it is a proof of concept and not an attempt at a real model) Also, forgive the stubby stem segments. I was really interested in the leaf and if it was possible to get that delicate shape(this started life as a simple cylinder). It isn't perfect, but it's not bad...and unlike the xfrog attempt, there is real geometry involved so it has some thickness to the leaves (xfrog generally uses curled planes for leaves) I'm pleased with the results thus far. eric

Eric, It's definately looking good.

Eric, If you IM me with your street address, I'll send you a copy of the Iris Handbook I illustrated a couple decades ago. Just pen&ink, but it might help. I agree about having a bit of thickness to the leaves. It is more important in some plants than others. Carolly