Tangling with Textures

Tangling with Textures

Postby Jennifer_P » Sun Dec 16, 2007 5:13 am

Well, I just tried to make a texture for the lepidodendrons. I started off with a picture (which turns out to be gigantic) that I took of its bark:
http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/7479/goodpicoflepbarkbw6.jpg
After much hassle, I finally produced this not-quite seamless texture before giving up (...for now).
Image
And the result (this is the good side of the tree--you don't want to see the other side, trust me. ;) ):
Image
Not bad for my first shot at texturing, eh? Don't answer that... :roll:

I think the bark is one of neatest things about lepidodendrons. Back in the day, lepidodendron bark was thought to be the squamous skin of giant fossilized snakes and was therefore called "snake stone." (Can you imagine snakes a meter thick? That would be seriously scary!) And can you guess what feature prompted someone to name the tree "lepido" (scale) + "dendron" (tree), the "Scale tree"?
The way the scales are produced is related to the way the the tree bears its leaves, which is veeery different and much more interesting (in MY opinion) than how trees bear their leaves nowadays. See, when a lepidodendron is young, it resembles your basic telephone pole. And straight out of the trunk, at the top area of the pole, grew a bunch of grass-like leaves, somewhat like the tufted tail of a lion or elephant, or a bottle-scrubbing brush. Except the leaves probably didn't stick out that much--they reached 8 inches long, tops. So as the tree grew taller, I *believe* the older, lower leaves were shed, and where they once grew the little diamond-shaped leaf scars which can be seen in the texture were left on the trunk. Of course, new leaves were produced at the top as the tree grew up.
It wasn't until the tree reached maturity that it branched and produced the nice bichotomous crown that all of my lepidodendron trees have at the moment (no babies in my simulation yet). Remember what "bichotomous" means? It just describes how branches split apart into smaller branches; for bichotomous branching, a branch splits in two and then those two smaller branches each split in two, etc. etc. Too bad we don't have many bichotomously branched trees these days; I think they would be neat to have around. Of course, so would the dinosaurs. Sigh... But if you look in Er'cana (or your Relto, if you have the page) you can see some trichotomously branched plants. They'll have to do I guess.
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Re: Tangling with Textures

Postby Whilyam » Sun Dec 16, 2007 7:41 am

The only problem with that texture (well two issues) is 1: it needs to be rotated 90 degrees so the scales are properly oriented 2: it needs to have a texture behind it (I suggest stone since that will look more like real bark with the line overlay). I don't know what graphics software you have, but things like Photoshop can take care of this sort of thing.

Also the size. If the scale texture is 256x256, you can (and should depending on what you're working on) make that texture larger and more detailed. It all depends on what the prevalence of your texture is going to be. If it's going to be everywhere, 1024x1024 might be a good size to put it at, with lots of details. If it's, say, a flower petal texture or a leaf texture for leaves far overhead, then 256x256 would work better, even down to 64x64.
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Re: Tangling with Textures

Postby bluewyvern » Sun Dec 16, 2007 9:09 am

I think it is properly oriented -- it's sideways in the texture image, right? But the scales should follow the line of the trunk.

What does look odd is on the undersides of the fork on the bottom, where the scales are pointed down, not along the length of the branches. It looks like they're oriented correctly on the top face of the branch, though.
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Re: Tangling with Textures

Postby Jennifer_P » Mon Dec 17, 2007 1:25 pm

Ooh, age creation tips--my favorite! :) Let's see here...

So then--Whilyam, for #1 Bluewyvern's got it; I unknowingly made the texture sideways, not really thinking about how it would be displayed on the UV window in the end. So then I had to rotate the lepidodendron in the UV window to make the bark point the right direction. Then there's the matter of how artificial the texture looks; I definitely agree it needs an nice organic background behind the lines. I think it would be something smooth, although after considering it I'm a little puzzled as to just what that smoothness might be. According to Wikipedia (going to have to look up their references on this :geek:) the leaf cushions/leaf scars were photosynthetic and hence should be green. Further, all the other artist's reproductions I've seen of the Carboniferous had the leaf cushions looking smooth instead of rough and wrinkly or peely like the bark I'm used to. I haven't looked into tropical trees though, so I suppose I'll need to do that when I replace the texture. Of course, I don't know if I'll have time to do that before my project is due at Tuesday midnight, so I might just have to live with it for now. I've still got to model the ferns and the Sphenophylla, then create textures for them both + the lepidodendron leaves, and then learn billboarding. :|
Ah yes, and thank you for the advice on texture sizes. If you should use 1024 x 1024 for your most-used textures, then I'll certainly be needing that size for the lepidodendrons as they're going to be one of the major features of the Age.
Then there are those roots. They are very messed up, in more ways than one. First, they're not supposed to be standing off the ground with a space you can walk through under the tree; they're supposed to be sitting flat. Second, they're not supposed to have a leaf cushion texture at all; lepidodendrons didn't grow leaves on their roots. Third, pretty much all I did to make the texture line up with the geometry was to make the main trunk match the bark direction--the rest of the tree is textured every which way. So the roots are a big mess, but I don't have time to fix them now unless I have extra time on my hands on Tuesday.
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Re: Tangling with Textures

Postby Whilyam » Tue Dec 18, 2007 8:21 am

It might help to "randomize" them a little. Otherwise it will resemble a grove of green sticks. Just select some area of the tree and move or rotate it a bit so they're all unique.
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Re: Tangling with Textures

Postby Jennifer_P » Tue Dec 18, 2007 12:02 pm

There's one thing I remembered to do anyway. You can't see very many trees in my screenshot there, but pretty much all of my trees have some rotation applied and show a unique amount of roots. I scaled a few of them too. For some reasons, there's just nothing more visually distracting to me in an Age then a texture that repeats or an obviously cookie-cutter set of objects, so I made certain that that didn't happen. :)
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