Root lattice texture?

[Shoggoth]

Is there anyone willing to whip up a texture for me? I hate to ask; I'm slowly teaching myself Blender so I don't have to go around asking people to model stuff for me, but I'm absolutely terrible with GIMP and Photoshop. I have an idea for an Age that is primarily composed of an immense layer of roots - essentially the entire biomass of the Age is a single tree with a root system that spans the whole visible area. The upper layer of roots, at least close to where the player will be, is to be modeled, while the lower layers and the areas further away will be one or two planes with a root texture on it/them (with alpha to show the layers of roots and ground below). Most of the other textures for my Age would be fairly easy to find online, but I'm not so sure about this one.
Alternatively, maybe someone could point me in the direction of some good free textures for this sort of thing?

[Jojon]

If you have a scanner and a plant that has grown out of its pot and has maybe been a bit underwatered recently, try to lift it right out of the pot and scan the nice flat underside -- you should be able to create a suitable alpha channel by simply luma-keying the image -- making it tile may be a bit more work. Hmm, Jamey always seems eager to help with texturing.(...) :)

[Shoggoth]

I don't have any plants at my apartment, unfortunately, and I doubt my parents would let me de-pot any of theirs and get dirt all over my scanner (which they bought, of course). I'll send Jamey a PM, though. Thanks for the advice.

[Jamey]

Sure thing Shoggoth! I can most likely come up with something you'll like

Let me know what kind of a tree root you had in mind stated in as much detail as you can, and let me know exactly what kinds of things you're looking for in the texture in terms of color, shape, and other small details in the texture so I can make you something that will perfectly fit your needs

And if I find a texture off-hand in my gallery that may work, I'll let you know

[Shoggoth]

Cross-posting from my PM to Jamey, just in case anyone else has any ideas:

The roots should be pretty thick, since the tree is sending out all these roots to pretty much cover a whole continent. I imagine them as kind of light in color and fairly smooth, more so than the bark on a terrestrial tree. They would be pretty mossy, so the dominant colors would be light brown or tan and a mossy green, with maybe some lighter-colored green lichen thrown in there. I was considering two layers to make the roots look like they form a kind of canopy above the "forest" floor (they'll be viewed from above, from the point of view of the tree itself). The upper layer would be mostly large roots and have big gaps with alpha transparency so you can see the layer below. The lower layer would be the same, but with smaller, more closely-knit roots. Under that would be the ground, again visible through the gaps in the root texture.
I guess the top texture would have to be pretty big to avoid noticeable repetition, since it'll form the landscape of the Age. You'll basically have a huge "plateau" to walk around on, which is the flat-topped tree, and over a 500-foot drop you can see all the roots spreading off into the distance, probably cut off by a mountain range. The mountains would probably be covered in foliage, too, maybe even more roots, but you don't have to make a texture for that if you don't want to.

I'm definitely going for a "woven"/lattice kind of look here, with the roots intertwining all over the place, trying to spread to every place possible.

[Chacal]

I doubt my parents would let me de-pot any of theirs and get dirt all over my scanner

Tell them it's for Art.

[Jamey]

How does this look?:

Show Spoiler

It is tilable both horizontally and vertically

I hope this suits your needs Shoggoth Let me know what you think

[Shoggoth]

Wow, that's excellent! It should do nicely for the top layer. For the bottom, I might be able to find a root texture and apply some alpha myself, since it's meant to be more closely intertwined than the top (most of the root textures I've found have been a combination of roots and ground, with the roots all very close together).

[Jamey]

alright, glad you like it

Send me a PM to let me know if you need anything else