Technorganic Tree

matthewjvia

In my continuing quest to upgrade my portfolio and get myself a job, I came up with four projects that I hope to swap out for the older pieces in my portfolio. The first is this technorganic tree. I'm going for a stylized look for this one and I plan to do hand-painted textures. I'm looking for some feedback and if anyone has any suggestions on how to add to it, I'm open to ideas. Here are a few things I still plan to add:

-moss with fiber optic lights
-leaves with tiny wires in place of veins
-cracks in the bark showing more tech underneath
-surrounding environment with similar mechanical parts

DennisGlowacki

neat idea

matthewjvia

I've been refining the design some and decided to focus a lot more on the roots and remove the wires around the limbs. I'm working on the sculpt some more and the low poly is mostly done. Next, onto the leaves and texturing. I'm still looking for critiques if anyone would like to offer some.

Rick_D

bizarre concept, i like it.
some of the upper branches look a little chunky though

matthewjvia

Here is my low poly in UDK I still haven't gotten to making the surrounding environment or the leaves since I'm kind of experimenting with the style I want for this. I did thin out the upper branches.

I still have a lot of work to do on the textures. I made a first pass on the tree itself, but the metal is just flat color and the AO map at the moment.

If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve my textures please let me know. This is the first time I've really done completely hand-painted textures on this scale. I made stylize pieces from combinations of painting and photo reference, but this is new and I'm learning this as I go.

achillesian

bark is far too lumpy, look at more reference, most bark and the lines between it look like little canyons, sharper edges.

jackalope

I like the direction you are going with this. The style is nice.
I'm interested what the final product will be, and how you will fully integrate both organic and non-organic

uncle

Tree looks like it would collapse under its own mass. Upper branches are too fat.

Artist_in_a_box

Thats a cool concept and a nice direction with the texturing. Whats the story behind it? Is it a modified manufactured tree or has the tech and the tree grown together or something? Im having trouble understanding the story of it, at the moment I am siding on modified.

matthewjvia

The idea I was going for is that this some strange world where this is the natural state of this tree. The original idea came to me while I was talking to a friend about the old Beast Wars and Beast Machines TV series. I realize that at the moment it seems more like the biological and technological parts are clearly separated, but a lot of the fusion will come in when I finish the textures and particularly the leaves.

I'm thinning out the branches some more and I will work on the bark. The image below is similar to what I was going for with the bark style, but it's still not exactly right. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the species of tree I was looking at for the bark, which makes it really hard to find good reference. I've also been looking at a lot of old Disney cartoons to see how they handled tree bark.

Lucas Annunziata

Lulz, I did a "bio-mechanical" tree when I was much more n00bly. You're already off to a much better start than my finished product. god this is embarassing:

matthewjvia

Kind of a small update, but I finished the texture on the mechanical parts, thinned out the branches, and started the leaves. I may be going about this the wrong way, but since the leaves are more complicated than a normal leaf I planned to model the twigs in Maya and assemble everything then transfer the diffuse map to a plane.

If anyone has an suggestions for how to go about making the textures for the clumps of leaves, I would love to hear them. I get the idea, but it's been surprisingly hard to find good examples.

Rick_D

http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=322&t=74873

matthewjvia

Rick_D: Thanks for the link, that was helpful.

I finally got the leaves done. I think I made it much harder than it needed to be, but live and learn. I remade the leaf texture and I still need to do another pass on the main tree texture to unify the machine and organic parts. I also started work on the surrounding environment. I don't have it in presentable shape yet, but I'm hoping to have something to show in the next couple of days.

Critiques are always welcome.