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Here's a little .... diorama of DKK Since I put (as seen in photos) a dead tree ... I would like advice on how best to create the base of the trunk. .. ... I forgot .... the Chimera will have to 'be nice tanned ..... being in place for some' time (Rust Never Sleep ...)

beautiful, love the commanders hatch good realism as thats how we used to have our hatches when on ops. will be watching this .

Recon? where are the telescopes , and transmitters?

The top of the tree really ruins the effect, real trees tapper as they get taller, to fix this problem I would cut the top of the tree trunk at a 45 degree angle and take a pair of pliers and pull the remaining bark down to get a splintered effect (this is called Jinning if you want to look it up). This should make it look like the tree was hit with munitions or lightning.


Other than that I really think it looks great, I can't wait to see it painted.

I say have a bunch of troopers coming out of the Chimera with guns raised to fire at oncoming bad guys

Awesome. Can't wait to see it finished.

lol, in the first shot it looks like the guy at the back is pulling a branch off the tree
Look forward to seeing this finished

lol, in the first shot it looks like the guy at the back is pulling a branch off the tree
Look forward to seeing this finished

Looking good so far.

webmax wrote: I would like advice on how best to create the base of the trunk. .. ...

Surround it with a cone of putty a cm or two high. Blend it into the trunk at the top, and then create grooves by running a sculpting tool down it to the ground, adding in a curve as you go so that you wind up with curving root shapes with hollows in between.

Death Gear wrote:I say have a bunch of troopers coming out of the Chimera with guns raised to fire at oncoming bad guys

The chimera is supposed to be rusty hulk not a useful vehicle.

Needs moar trenches and wire!

This looks great so far - just wondered whether you're going to add craters/holes to ground, as currently it looks a little bit too flat. How about some tree burst?

i look forward to seeing this develop.

keep us updated!

Vlad

just wondered whether you're going to add craters/holes to ground

There are crater on the groud...looking to the photos they are not so noticiable....

My intention is also to fill them up with dirty water....

webmax wrote:

just wondered whether you're going to add craters/holes to ground

There are crater on the groud...looking to the photos they are not so noticiable....

My intention is also to fill them up with dirty water....

sorry - just couldnt see them in the photos - probably not enough contrast in them.
good idea with the water though - should look good once muddied up.

Vlad

for the tree trunk you can do 1 of 2 things that will end up looking really good. the first would be to use GS at the base of the tree and use a tool to push grooves into the tree that get deeper the farther down the tree you get. then have the roots popping out at the base, splitting and thinning and winding through each other. has a really good effect with minimal effort. or you can use wall patch puddy and pipe cleaners. to do this you'll need to go in 2 stages i think. the first stage is to take the puddy and build up a thicker trunk around the tree, make it with a fairly tight cone around the tree. now before it dries stick a bunch of the pipe cleaners into the tree trunk like 1/2 to 1/4 inch from the base. push them into the puddy so that they run parallel to the tree and bend them out like spider legs when you get to the base. then let it dry. but when you add the pipe cleaners in the first stage twist 2 or 3 of them together to make a thincker root that will split into 2 or 3 different smaller roots at the base. i would do it in a few different spots to add more depth. the second stage you cover the pipe cleaners in the puddy, make sure the puddy is fairly thick, so that the puddy globs up on all the hairs on the pipe cleaner. the hairs on the pipe cleaner really give a good twisted knarled look that the roots should have. then you simply weave the pipe cleaners with the puddy on them together in the fashion your looking for and let it dry. and if you want you can do a second more thinned out layer of puddy to smooth out the roots more.

will post pics or a link so you can see how it looks


Automatically Appended Next Post:
ok, found a much better expanation of the whole pipe cleaner thing with a few pictures on terragenesis, check it out and see if it's kinda what your looking for.

http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/infopages/page109.html

A little update...

I put the roots .....

LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking good.

As this is an ongoing project, I'm moving it over to the Blogs section.

Looks awesome!

I've just redone the trunk ....without any visible roots

The new roots are certainly better than the old one, but you can still branch out (hehe) and include some more pronounced root buttresses towards the base of the tree, rather than just making essentially a cone.

Check out some of these babies for instance.

awesome so far...
this looks promising...

and feel free to over look and//or ignore this completely, but seeing the hatch open gave me a pretty funny idea (or at least i think so...):
a commissar or sergeant booting a hesitant guardsmen out of the back of the chimera (or in the imperiums eyes, 'positive reinforcement'...)

sadly, you do realise that your gonna have to have some poor dismembered body hanging from noe of the branches... oh and it looks great atm