peat

[Dune]

Testing how I can manage to make piles of peat blocks. Because objects don't populate onto themselves, I made a rough displacement in the central square and a small patch sized compute terrain. Had the pop sit on that, but kept the grass on the ground before the roughs, so it would stay low. Works reasonably well.
And testing a new peat worker lady from the 1800's. PT 0.5/6 53 mins.

[Hannes]

Looks great!!!! The only thing, that looks a bit off to my taste is the size of the grass. It's a bit too large I think...

[Dune]

Molinia caerulea is a herbaceous perennial bunchgrass (tussock-forming), growing up to 90 cm

[Hannes]

Ah OK. 

[René]

It looks convincing to me. The only other way to achieve this that I can think of is to simulate it in another software. Blender can do this, although I have never tried it. It would be nice to be able to populate on a population, to make a rock avalanche for example. But I can imagine that this would quickly create huge amounts of objects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg12Od0aS4U

[Dune]

Thanks René. I wanted to have a population in TG, because an imported pile of peat would be much heavier. And just to see if it worked.
What you describe in Blender can also be done in Lightwave, though it doesn't work very well (or I am not too good at it), but I also found a way in Marvelous Designer, where I imported a bunch of floating peat blocks, gave them some 'blow up force' so they wouldn't collapse, and let them fall, and they beautifully fell on top of eachother. The handiest (MD) thing is that you can even redirect each block at will.

[René]

I wouldn't have thought of Marvelous Designer right away. But it makes sense of course; this software is all about simulation and collision of surfaces. 

[masonspappy]

For a realistic peat bog, perhaps throw in a mummified corpse?

[Dune]

  I have one, and used it before in a bog.

[Dune]

One of the (1800 AD) guys I made for the peat scene.

[Doug]

What program do you use to make people?

[Dune]

DAZ. And the clothes in Marvelous Designer.

[Dune]

I needed better tracks for my scene, so I painted them in PS, and tested (with warp) in this setting. Simple shape mix would also work, though.