+1 The tree looks soft and under-defined as well. Great concept and good job bringing it to life. Here's a good start: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hand+painted+textures
''Because every quad is made out of two tris.'' But isnt it 2 polygons rather than 1? and arent you supposed to keep the Polycount low? see what I did there?
yeah, disable SRGB, set unpack_Min to -1 on all channels, and then play around with either TC_Normalmap or TC_NormalmapUncompressed (the latter halves the resolution and mathematically reconstructs the blue channel in exchange for not compressing the texture).
keep in mind. if it is an alpha for something like plants (solid black and white), you want to use Blend_Masked. only Blend_Translucent (to my knowledge) will take all 0-1 values for an alpha.
CrazyBump 3.1 crashes on Startup for me with a "Memory could not be read" Error. Even installing the 1.1 .Net Runtime again ( had 1 and 2 installed before ) doesn't seem to help.
Actually, the recent version if 6.3.0-2 from March 1. After installing 6.2.0-5 ZBrush 4r3 couldn't recognize the tablet. While 6.3.0-2 works like charm.
It's a common bug. Just go in the UV editor, grab 1 UV and wiggle it. Then undo. It should fix itself. Just make sure to delete history before saving and quitting in Maya.
I just got a rejection letter from a studio I applied at probably this time last year. It's all random. Response times can range from 1 hour to months.
my biggest complaints: 1. get rid of the tree background, as it doesn't fit my monitor. go with a plain background, or something that tiles but isn't garish. 2. centre align everything.
Here's an old thread that has some more ideas, plus images and links. http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=65751&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1