Looks nice man, would definately blend in nice into a beach scene or something. There's, as you say, a couple of splits there on the trunk that doesn't seem to "give" anything to the silouette, so unless they'
You could use a single tiling asphalt texture, or a couple blended together for variation. Use decal meshes for everything else, paint lines, potholes, patches, plumes and penises.
As an animator I prefer the second model. Not only will it deform better, as Popol states, but it will be about 10 faster to skin weight. Since the blend and grow tools will act more predictably.
just use depth biased blends or alpha can#t remember what exactly the term was, to controll the opacity of the water, where it intersects with other geometry it will become more transparent
what sort of rig are you using? CAT and biped both allow for animation blending. If you have raw BVH files you can import them into one of these systems.
Thanks for the crits, Jess. Yeah with the grass I could try blending the base with the color of the ground texture to make a better transition or change the color of the ground to match the grass planes.
Damn, I really dig the short hair. I like the shoulder tattoo but make sure it still separates from the shirt. Almost blends into the shirt color right now.
Did some more work on the rock and the material definition, also playing around with some cracks and dents, the hardest part was trying to make it look organic and some of the color blending