Back to nature

Arbaro trees with mentalray shader

I've wanted to add foliage to my scenes for some time now, but I didn't have the processing power required for rendering polygon-heavy geometry with my old laptop.  Now that I've got the desktop machine with a bit more power, I have investigated this little gem of a programme:

http://arbaro.sourceforge.net/

The procedural maths which the programme performs are very clever allowing you to make anything from a little desert tumbleweed with dried looking sticks and twigs, all the way through to an elaborate oak - when you know what you're doing.  Sadly with my tests I the sunlight seems to catch on the shape of the helix which is used within the tree, so it looks a bit unnatural from that point of view.

Low poly leaves with a very rough texture - needs improvement

I haven't delved that deeply into Arbaro yet, but I'm pleased with my results so far.  The geometry of the leaves in this example is too low quality, but that can be improved within the programme, and obviously some decent texturing wouldn't go a miss either.

Displacement rug

Mentalray Displacement

Well it took me a long time to get the settings right for this, and the render time was way beyond what I'd hoped for.  The tutorials I've seen for Vray displacement seemed to be faster with better results.  I'm not sure if there's still something I'm not doing right, but I worked the number of subdivisions carefully to give me as few as possible.

Rugs

In my ongoing efforts to learn more interior rendering skills I followed a few tutorials on the hair and fur modifier.  Here's the result:

Sheepskin rug test

...and a closeup