Cyclamen - realistic flower tissue study

Hi everyone,
this is my first post here, so please forgive me if I screwed up something :slight_smile:

Two months ago, after being infected by Andrew Price’s tutorials (he just makes things look cool and easy), I started playing with Blender. So yes, I’m a newbie :slight_smile:

I wanted to make a realistic looking flower.
The goal is to make it realistic even on a massive close-up, almost microscopic. So, this is more a material challege for me, rather than modelling (or perhaps I’m wrong?). I’m using the Cycles renderer.

In my current progress I feel that I’m missing something with the petals tissue, I don’t exactly know what. Therefore I ask for your feedback.

One note: the depth of field is very wide on purpose - at this stage I want to see the details of everything.

Cheers!



OK, so I’ve found an amazing close-up photo on Wikimedia Commons. Photo: Thomas Bresson


Looks like there’s lots of work ahead :slight_smile:

This photo should explain why I used so much pollen dust:
Imgur

Hey, welcome to Blender. It looks like you’re doing well with it. I’ve not seen the tutorial you’re talking about, but your renders are looking nice.

Thank you Frobenius for the kind word. I was talking about Andrew’s tutorials in general. I haven’t found any tutorials for flower extreme close-ups :slight_smile:

Here’s a new version with slight changes to the petal material on a high detail level. Still not quite the real thing, but I think it’s more believable now. Looking forward to hearing your critique. Cheers!


Happy New Year everyone!
Sorry for the long break. Christmas family chaos is lovely, but leaves no space to your hobbies :wink:

I’ve made a few changes: I got a proper microscopic detail level scale: the pollen particles are now of the proper size (10 micrometers) and the tissue cells are now much smaller too. I still keep DoF very wide to see all the details.


Here’s also one extreme close-up render:


What do you think?
Cheers!

Time for a view from the back:


I’m trying to get the resemblance to the photo here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaspi/89796919/ by Hick’s Nursery, Long Island, NY):


What I cannot reproduce is the effect on the stem when it bends: the curvature that is facing the viewer is brighter (and greener) than the rest of the stem. I tried with more hair - didn’t work. Any hints would be appreciated :slight_smile:

Cheers!

My blender friends… can any of you guys help him out on his work… I really think he deserves it,

Edit :

You can actually use 2 or more particle systems on 1 object, in this case the stem
If you work with weight paint than you can control the amount of hair when the green meets the orange
in this video Andrew price, skip to 44:00 Min. and see how he uses 2 on 1 + weight paint
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/how-to-create-a-post-apocalyptic-environment/

And about the yellow glow… maybe you should try to use translucent on the stem (orange part)
And than make a lamp inside the Stem (maybe this could work but probably there is another way)

I hope some blender pro will correct me if am wrong … because am a beginnernoob :slight_smile:

You really have to play with it to get the result you want


Thanks a lot, JFunProductions!
Your solution would be perfect for a still image. My plan is to make an animation (shhh, in some ridiculous future :wink: ), and this red-green balance od the stem should be then dynamic. So, the more the surface is facing the camera, the less red it should be. I’m planning to make the stem a tube within a tube. The inner will be green (ish), the outer - red (ish), and the red one will have some absorption physics:


The first ray’s trip through the red layer is quite short - little absorption and the green color wil be dominating.
the second’s trip is much longer - it will absorb a lot of red color and this one will dominate in the end. Makes sense?

Currently I’m working on the leaves (those damn things don’t have repetitive paterns, so there’s plenty of chicken work in Gimp). I’ll be posting some results this week hopefully. My 4-year-old son has many plans for me every evening, and Blender is not one of them :slight_smile:

Thanks again, JFunProductions, for taking an interest in my project!
Cheers!

I think you have made some nice progress with your flower , another nice project is this for example http://laughingsquid.com/inorganic-flora-a-collection-of-detailed-botanical-blueprints/

about the stem you can fake it with a modified texture

Hahaha that’s a lot of information I would have no idea of… am not good as you :stuck_out_tongue:
yet… well your level would take me another few years to learn… but ill try…

But yes… if some of my info would help you It would be really cool
But for the glow on the orange maybe a texture would be easier like Benny G says in his post
Just play around with it and I would love to see some more screens when you’ve made them

And remember this:
You can play with blender for ever, but your son will grow up fast… so take it easy :smiley:

Thank you JFunProduction and BennyG for your kind responses and the tips.

I’ve been working recently on a leaf model. Here’s what I wanted to achieve:



Attribution: Lehava Activity 2013 Pikiwiki Israel

And here is my crappy result:



This is the first sketch, but I’m highly unhappy about it. My wife said it looks like one of those cake decoration made of sugar… and she’s right :slight_smile:

Anyway, please point out your ideas for improvement. I got a few of mine already, but I’d like to read someone else’s ideas. And don’t sugarcoat it :wink:

Cheers!

Try to add a little bit displacement to the leaf for example and a bump map .
Some other ref. image maybe they help you .

http://teddingtongardener.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/dscf8372.jpg

Hi lech, this project is amazing! This is serious dedication to close-up photorealism. :slight_smile:
That stem idea is awesome, I think I will give it a try too…

Benny G and PostMirabilis, sorry for the long pause. Thanks again for your input.

I had to remodel the leaf completely to make the displacement work. I think I’m improving, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement. I.e. I messed up something with the vains translucency (vains are supposed to let through more light than the rest of it, even though they are thicker) and now they’re black. See here:


And a nice crop here to see some more detail:


Work slowly continues :slight_smile: Cheers!

Really nice work. So if they’re transparent, wouldn’t they show black, because of the background? Or am I misunderstanding? Anyway, you’re doing a really nice job.

Nice work!! can’t wait for more.

-J

Guys, thanks for your kind words :slight_smile:

@Frobenius.Edge
Yep, seems so. here’s the concept I’m talking about:
Imgur

The vains are translucent, but somehow they should still appear quite bright even if not viewed against the light source (like on the render). I think I need to experiment with the leaf thickness, SSS and translucency.

Here’s another challenge I’m facing: I’d be thrilled to have a closeup render of the leaf egainst the light (like the flickr photo). The problem is the complexity of the “micro-vains” mesh. Building the texture for just the few main vains was already very time consuming (I did the textures myself - they are no photos). I cannot even think about painting all the tiny guys. But without them, a closeup render would not be believable.

Any hints? :slight_smile:
Cheers!

man i love the details on the leaf