Life....It lives!!!

"Le Hero Sapling"

So this is my first attempt at making some plants / foliage for my project,

thought I'd start with the plant that gets the most screen time.

Simple mesh made in Maya then exported to Z-Brush for more details and painting.

I guess it turned out ok,

not too happy with the texture on the leaves or the smoothness on them.

they do look a bit too clean as well.

I need to set up a scene for all these objects to populate to tell if they actually go well together.

I'm going for an almost realistic look but tis hard. 

UV.....

"UV of Fork-Lift Truck"

"The Truck so far"

Looks good but I have softened all normals so I don't have to bevel the edges as much.

Not so sure if this is a good idea, but it looks good.

To UV and beyond.....

"Ghostly Lifter"

This is what happens when you plug an empty .psd file into the transparency of a Blinn.

Next I've learnt that there is no difference between 2048 and 4096 texture

resolutions when it comes to a normal quality average sized model.

So therefore 44 seconds to render the above image with 4096px versus 

22 seconds with a 2048px resolution.

So this model's first stage is almost done. Then just 3 more levels of decay.

Will be interesting making plants grow up around the parts of the truck.

Also making the tyres look flat might be a puzzle too.