Andrew the Orchid wrote:
> ...and today, I'm failing to model... well... I think it's reasonably 
> obviouse what it's *ment* to be...
> 
> [First with a normal flatlight, second with some more interesting 
> lights. The PLAN is to have it decorated with large numbers of coloured 
> lights... but... well, it looks rubbish enough as it is, IMO.]

Andrew,

Interesting that you thought of the this. I decided while I was putting 
up eight strings of lights down one side of my 200+ft driveway that I 
definitely needed to add some sort of christmas-lights model to my POV 
to-do list (which actually has about half a dozen things on it now...so 
much to POV, so few gigahertz. Hey, that'd make a cool T-shirt!). 
Anyway, looks like you beat me to the punch, though I wasn't going to 
model the tree.

There's something a little funky going on with the tree. I'm not sure 
exactly what it is. When you look at a real tree, you don't seem so much 
"whitespace" in between the needles. I like the side views of the 
needles, but somehow the end views look too sparse. Try making them a 
little thinner and increasing their density?

As for the lights...how about a very short fade_distance and a little 
tiny (like, about twice as wide as one of your pine needles here) 
emissive media for a flare effect? After my POVCOMP entry finishes I 
vowed I would stay as far away from media as possible (it looks so junky 
I'm strongly considering not entering it and it's taking an absolutely 
unreal length of time to render), but little tiny bits might not be so bad.

Overall I like it, so far. Maybe an outside-in perspective, looking into 
the centre of the tree, would help the needle problem. You'd still get 
the cool lights in view, but you wouldn't have to do a lot to the 
needles (maybe just a smidge denser).

The second image I think is pretty realistic. I assume the big yellow 
thing is just a looks_like sphere. If you add a bunch more lights and 
reduce the intensity a little I think you've definitely got something 
going there. The shadows help hide the imperfections of the needles. 
Plus it eliminates the need to texture a surrounding room. :)

~Mike

Overall it's quite impressive to a newbie like me, even in the state 
it's in.

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