First, Happy Spring! When the pussywillows pop out, it's spring in Alaska! ( Even if it snows again ). I went for a long run yesterday and collected a few examples to model. Question: I used Anything Grows on the buds, but ran into some trouble with assigning gravity and bend to get the "fur" to all go the same way. What i did was to make one bud, assign the ag fur, played with it to get it to grow to the tip of the bud, then duplicated it as a group (bud and AG hair). When I tried to assign the AG to each bud using the bud's shading domain, the AG went to the scene's alignment... Anyway, assigned as 1 model and grouped worked, then I grouped the stem to the buds/AGhair. Something funny happeded when I added a bone to the stem - it changed the AG hair to a vertex object and slowed everything down. Any ideas (other than using a shader instead of AG) to lower the polygon count and avoid changing the AG to a vertex object? I want to add bones to make changes in shape to the willows. Thanks. R

Never Give Up!

Hopefully someone can help you. As much as I love AG... i'm not all that versed in it. Love your pussy willows though... they look so real.

Christina -- "Love me but don't tell me so" Lilly Bart

My Art

Thank you Christina. I just picked up song birds from Daz. I like to make my own models, but for a small fee, there a few models that I just can't beat - plus saves me time. For the most part, if I can't find it, I make it. Has anyone seen any good model (realistic) ducks? Here is the final for the chickadee/ pussy willow. Thanks for looking. Robert

Never Give Up!

If you send you .car to Eric at Digital Carvers Guild he probably will promptly try to give you ananswer.

bwtr

Attached Link: Ducks

If you're looking for ducks, try these. Coldrake

Ominousplay, love the polar bear pic. What modeling software do you use?

Thank you, I love to be loved. I use Carrara, and want to use Hex more. But the bear is a Daz model. The seal was modeled in Hex and then finished in Carrara. Everything was set up and rendered in Carrara, with post work in Adobe Photoshop. I decided to add hair to the bear in photoshop, and highlights to the ice. I need to do post work on the bird. The ducks and models look very useful. The materials are from photos, so... they look too real. Thanks for the nice words. R

Never Give Up!

Any ideas (other than using a shader instead of AG) to lower the polygon count and avoid changing the AG to a vertex object? I want to add bones to make changes in shape to the willows.

Unfortunately bones turn everything to a VM object. You can trying turning down the details in Grows (less strands, segments, sides). The other thing you can try is a texture map and then change the strands mapping mode to UV along strand. You might be able to get by with less strands that have a transparent texture on them. Does that help? Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Carrara plug-ins

Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara and LightWave plug-ins

Nice OP.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

This still looks great, even if the AG isn't working exactly as you planned! I just purchased AG and I'll have to try this.

WOW .. that';s a really good picture...

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Hexagon, Carrara, Sculptris, and recently Sketchup.