Cholla

[choronr]

Cholla; it comes in several varieties like Jumping Cactus, Teddy Bear Cactus and others. Never get too close to it. It could be painful. The long needles contain tiny, almost microscopic needles which will stick with you for days and almost impossible to remove. The nickname Jumping Cactus comes from the fact that if you brush up against it, a segment will break off and stick to you. What is really amazing is that the wild desert burros can actually eat these plants with no ill effects.

I've been struggling lately with the population of plants where the Painter shader and/or the Distribution shader will not perform and effect any selected distribution of plants. The only thing that does work is populating without their use. The problem with that is that you roll the dice with hopes that the plants will show up where you want them – if not; you try a re-seed several times until you get what you want. In the case of this scene, I had to zoom forward, changing my POV to bring the plants closer up to the foreground.

Thanks to the many (you know who you are) who helped over the months to help me better understand and use this program.

Anyway, this will be my last render for a couple of weeks after I recover from a surgery on Monday afternoon ...see you all soon.

[Tangled-Universe]

Hi Bob,

Nice work again. I like the plain and the mountains in the background, good sense of depth and vastness.
The stones might be a bit denser, especially the smaller ones. It would be nice to have a really gritty soil here I think.
Then you could add a sand surface-layer with intersect underlying enabled in displacement intersection mode to fill the spaces with sand.
If you'd like I have some examples for that and I can help you with it of course.
The soft-shadows settings are quite high isn't it? I mean, big diameter especially.
The samples could be slightly higher, see some noise here and there but really not disturbing at all.
I think the soft-shadows look very good by the way

I wish you strength on Monday and the days/weeks after and hope you'll recover soon from your surgery!

Martin

[FrankB]

pretty evil cacti, Bob :-)

Hope you'll be back, fresh and recovered, soon :-)

Take care,
Frank

[choronr]

Hi Martin and Frank,

Thanks for stopping by; and, I appreciate your suggestions and comments; and, will try them out. Today is prep day so I'll be away from the PC for most of the time ...talk to you guys soon.

Regards,

Bob

[rcallicotte]

Can't wait for you to come back as well as to see what you do next.

[arisdemos]

Nice scene , and I really like the sky and distant mnts. The incredible thing about the Cholla or Jumping cacti is how deeply the spines are actually driven into one's flesh when the segment of the plant springs outward towards the person being enpaled. As youth I once worked on a friend for over two hours using a knife to cut off the cholla segments and then needed needle nosed pliers to pull out the dozens of long hard spines buried over two inches deep into his leg. by the time I finished there was blood everywhere and the guy's thigh was swollen to twice its size. So if you see this cacti,... give it plenty of space.

@ TU I like you suggestions for improving the foreground in this image, and is there a possibility that you might put out a small tutorial on the actual procedure of producing this type of desert ground?