Hero Tree Comp

Alright, here's the comparison of the trees... as I have them.  I'll send the cleaned up project to Steven for layout and to Cade so that he has a copy for himself.
I've already spoken to Cade particularly over how I feel about the tree; I guess I've gotten kind of attached to it in my own way, since I've worked on it for the past few weeks.

Anyway, please tell me what you think.  :)

Instance Leaves

This is the tree with the dying leaves on it.  There's one geometry, and I made 70 instances off of it, and pulled them around.  (No, I didn't make one and CTRL + d, I did that yesterday and had to start over because of it.)
There are two or three instances with the healthy color mat on them, and they are still instances; this way I don't have to have one geo for healthy, and another for dying color maps.  :)
I'll start on the intermediate now, and the healthy after that.  Cade is working on the maps.

 Intermediate Tree has leaves at 3x the original (dying is set at 2x), and has 81 leaves. (Counting the geo)

And the healthy tree leaves (yes, with little acorns).  There is the one geometry for each, 20 instance acorns, and 130 instance leaves.  Leaves set at 4x.

Hero Tree leaf size

From 1 - 4x in size, the dying Tree.

I'm going to get a little sleep, and try to wake up early to work on it some more, around 5am.
Even so, I don't think I'll be able to round it out entirely.  I'll need more time to finish.

(Edit)

I added the robot into the scene temporarily and took one of the leaves down and put it in front of his chest (this is the intermediary tree).  The leaves are scaled at 2x.

Dying Tree Leaves

I haven't made any map changes yet.  This is the tree with the number of leaves on it in the beginning.  I'll add to it from here.  (I'll stop halfway for a intermediate stage of the tree.)

There are a couple of leaf sets with the healthy color map on them, to show that the tree is still fighting.

Color maps

I've not added the leaves yet, and I'll have to check the tree over for inconsistencies along the UV borders, but here are the two color maps for the tree, one for the dying, and one for the healthy tree at the end.
Do you want two leaf groups, one for the beginning, and one for the end, or, since the tree will doubtless be in the background in many shots, do you want an inbetween where there are some healthy leaves on the dying tree color?

(Dying left, healthy right)  What do you think?

Toon shading

I think the specular map is pretty much done, and upon doing a couple of renders in Maya, I think I may have come across a fairly simple and effective way of getting that semi-toon shaded aesthetic.  In painting the specular map I made the parts that stick out brighter, and painted the receding areas darker.

(Spec map is a .png, so there's plenty of transparency to it.  Tweaked in Photoshop.)
What do you think?

I have to do the color map, and then the color map(s) for the leaflet set, and then make the arrangements for the dying tree, and the healthy tree.  Hopefully I can be done before tomorrow.

Hero Tree sculpting

Yes, I've been posting rather profusely, but that's a good thing, right? ;)

Lvl 4

Lvl 5







Which do you like better?  This is a lot of detail, but I can try to cut it back a bit if need be.
Don't mind the grays and whites, that's just a preliminary (WIP) spec map I'm painting onto the tree.  If this is going to be a normal map there needs to be some additional control on how the light hits it.

Acorn

What do you think?  (For the Hero Tree)

Leaf types and variations

http://www.scarborough.k12.me.us/high/projects/trees/glossary.htm

For the Hero Tree leaves.

What kind of leaves do you want?

Hero Tree

comment please.