I'm thinking about making parts of the texture from procedurals, then compositing them into an image map.

Very nice work so far, but there is a little proggy called 'Stump Maker' you might find worth taking a look at.

Looking good Connie. I will await with interest you seagull poop renderings...

Well done, Connie! 

However, the object of this excercise here is to torture myself with learning how to do something longhand :) After I know how to do it, I'll feel free to help myself to shortcuts.
(Then when someone complains about taking a shortcut and using a cake mix, I can tell them to stick it in their ear, I can do it long hand too).

Seagull poop... I may want to do without those nasty looking things. Okay, ewww, I'm eating dinner...   Seashells, need to think seashells, fish, wet noodles, metaballs...

I went to the beach not too long ago, and took a bunch of photos of a local pier... I'll probably want to turn those into textures at some point. There's some cool rusted stuff at the piers underbelly, and looks like couple of piers were burned, or heavily charred or tarred, I had a hard time figuring out what got them the way they are.

Creosote. It's made from coal tar and used to preserve the pilings. They also use it on telephone poles. My dad was an engineer for the power company and I was very familiar with the smell of creosote from a very early age. When it gets old and washed out, as in your photo, it brings out the grain of the pole beautifully!

Ken

Attached Link: http://www.linkmuseum.org/

mdb ;c)

ps: for those of you who don't know who O Winston Link is, shame on you.  here.  Educate yourselves to a master photographer. ;c)

Oh BTW Connie, fantastic work as usual.  I love the direction you're going.

mdb

Now I only have to turn some 40+ photos into textures...
Someone please tell me why I do this to myself when there's so much nice content out there?!?

The reward lies in the craft!  I would rather build my own even when there are plenty of models out there to meet my needs, though I have used others'. 

because you're generous..;) yeah, that's it, that's the ticket..;)

I know I'm allergic to creosote..good thing there's not much of it in the PC industry..;)

Just can't seem to get away from them darn SOW's, they keep popping up at most inconvenient places! Next thing you know, I'll be modelling Titanic ... or a carnival crewship knocooff full of poser glamour chicks travelling to Esprit tropics and darn SOW's may just come bubbling up and sink it. Now, how tragic would that be!!! :(

Oh, I never said thanks for the info on Creosote! 

Reminds me of the old Simon and Garfuknel hit "Spheres Over Troubeled Water".  You should UV Map those pilings with the cylinder cap option in UV Mapper.  Procedural textures behave much better on UV Mapped surfaces,  or you could go ahead and use photo textures on the uv template.

Actually, I'm on a path (one of them) of trying to teach myself Z-brush. So, as soon as I figure out what I goofed up with normals, and why my obj is importing all garbled in Z, I'll proceed to texture them in Z.  The look I'm going to try and go for is a cross between photo and painted. Sort of stylized photorealism.

I modelled them in Max, and did Cylindrical cap UV mapping before exporting to a 3DS file.  3DS Export did ask me if I want to preserve UV mapping. I think those transfer fine to Bryce, if I remember right. Now I wonder if OBJ would behave differently....

Wow, modeling in Max and Zbrush!!  I am impressed.  Feel free to ignore me and carry on.  I can't even spell properly.

Landslide animation and analisys anyone? It's boring, just plain ole boring triangulated terrain massing models. They're never interested in even going as far as texturing them. Phshaw!
But YAY, I get to use max at work... eh!

I am very impressed. All I do is model for fun and a few shekels here and there.  You are living the life!!  Do you have access to satellite infra red data?  I am looking for the fabled Lost Dutchman Mine here in Arizona and perhaps you could give me a little boost in my search.  Also there is the matter of the rumored tunnels of the Egyptian giants in the Grand Canyon.  There is also the matter of the treasue the Jesuits cached in the Superstition Mountains before they were hunted down and done away with by the King of Spain.

Satellite infra red... naah... But I do get to play with GPS, and Lidar mapping... Then we take massive, and I mean MASSIVE point clouds into autocad and/or 3d studio and model terrains, and model future developments, and model geologic formations etc...
Then we poke and prode and test and measure them, and figure what out would cost to shuffle it all around so we can build a few houses and roads...
One of my bryce rendering ideas is a descriprion of what I do for living - we make cookie cutter houses on postage stamp lots!

That image I posted, at the top right has a landslide that goes 300 feet deep. They gave me some drilling and underground resonance data, and I had to model what I think the bottom of that landslide looks like, and what we need to do to cut under it, and fill it all back with stable soil...

I draw a few splines to guide the model, then drape a mesh, then subdivide it, densify with some data points, then do a lot of soft-selection pushing and pulling till I get it to look about right, within the data parameters. Sort of like a cross between modelling a ship hull loft and a subdivision modelling a face, but with several hundred 'hard' data points that need to be paid attention to, and knowing how certain soils and surfaces react to water or air erosion, etc etc...

I'm a land surveyor/civil engineer, wannabe 3d artist, whom landed a scientific data visualization directorship at a geology firm. Hell if I know how I pulled that off. AKA Geekette

Bump mapping, ambiance, diffusion etc still need to be tweaked once in bryce, as they don't carry over very well. The big deal for me right now is that the UV mapping transferred correctly.

I didn't do anything with the rope textures, probably best to pretend it's not there for now.

Very interesting to hear about your professional life.  The only thing I don't like about the pilings is that you used an infinite plane instead of a terrain for your water.

Looks real good Conniekat! Reminds me of some of the pilings around the waterfront of Astoria, OR. Now all you need is a dilapidated old cannery building on pilings. I also am impressed at the way you use 3D apps to make a living. The idea of a landslide actually sounds like a good theme for a "fun" scene. Trees, rock, and soil blocking part of a hiway, and part of the roadbed in pieces down the hillside. Barricades and emergency, and construction vehicles all over the place. Our rainy season has hit hard here recently and there's all kinds of scenes like that repeated around here.

Hmm, am I gonna be able to tie up the ol' Titanic to the completed wharf?

Looks super, Connie! Love the textures.

Connie, you're too modest with your skills.  Those pilings look fantastic!  Wow.

Awwww, thank you guys and gals!
Too modest?  heh, I was worried I was being obnoxious!

You are fotunate to have all those wonderful (and no doubt expensive) software tools at your disposal Connie. I briefly used a system called Fledermous a while back. It ran on a Sun Sparcstation. A very powerful real time 3D visualisation and flythrough system for huge datasets of hydrographic data.

Quote - Huuuuh?  whaaa? what did I say? why impressed?  Now you got me scratching my head...
Coming from cad side, it's just easier for me to handle max, and I use it here at work for some junk... just don't get to do a lot of creative things with it :(

Landslide animation and analisys anyone? It's boring, just plain ole boring triangulated terrain massing models. They're never interested in even going as far as texturing them. Phshaw!
But YAY, I get to use max at work... eh!

ok, how the hell do you do THAT in max??? i feel like a noob now.

Quote - You are fotunate to have all those wonderful (and no doubt expensive) software tools at your disposal Connie.

Boy, lett me tel ya... The guys where I work are just AWESOME!!!! They actually appreciate a nut like me, and just about any tool I mention I wanna try out, it's on my desk the next day, almost no questions asked.... Well, within reason, I haven't asked for anything yet that costs more then 5-6K a piece.
I'm in a good spot right now, the clients are lovin' our product.

Ohhhhh ONLY a few thousand dollars. >mutter mutter grumble jealousy grumble<  :::kicks the toaster:::: you lucky goober you.

;c)

mdb 

Connie: My son had a gig like yours. He had to build websites for the local town council. They gave him an office, a phone, a pc and a desk, and any software he wanted! 
He was just 16 at the time......................

Quote - Connie: My son had a gig like yours. He had to build websites for the local town council. They gave him an office, a phone, a pc and a desk, and any software he wanted! 
He was just 16 at the time......................

That's wonderful!!! 
Do tell more about it, I love to hear success stories!
Was it through someone you or him knew? How did he get discovered, so to speak?