If you are after trees you might want to try www.marlinstudios.com - they make tex/trans mapped vegetation and offer a free sample tree and branch for d/l. It's somewhat hefty downloads (1+ Mb), but IMO it's worth the toll on your ISP bill. It consists of Targa files complete with transparency info, so they'll open without further ado in Bryce and map right onto 2D pict planes. If you are a rich man (unlike me *sigh*), it seems you can buy an entire CD full of the stuff. The attached pic is a 640x442 Bryce render. Contains three dozen 2D-disperse/rotated copies of the tree, mapped onto 2D flats, plus two terrains and a ground plane. The render took just 10 minutes on my ancient PII/233. And while you're at it, www.gardenhose.com seems to be offering a few free trees as well - a bit less realistic, but IMO also a bit prettier. Your choice - although some of us can't afford to be all that choicy :-) Have fun, thip

Thanks for the info .. They look great!

They Sure do, I went to gardenhose yesterday and grabbed some stuff. you cant have enough trees. I'm on my way. Hawkfyr

Hey, those do look great. Photography really picks up those surface highlights. It's a real art challenge to paint a tree with that kind of surface form, though it should be attainable (easier said than done I'm afraid :) I've been looking at the range of contrast recently. It's what gives that sense of depth, as in the inner branches and foliage against the outer edges. I've been loath to go really dark, but as I look at these, the shaded areas are almost entirely black, and I think that constrast range really sells the trees as dimensional. Thanks for posting the great render. It's a real challenge to see if I can get a similar result. If that's possible, I'll post a PDF tutorial on what was done, along with the nozzles/tubes necessary to try it yourself. Dennis@DigArts

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