Woodmouse's Terrain and Other Randoms

[thespaceinvader]

Why are there roots without trees for them to be attached to? Why are they on the surface, when roots usually go underground?

[woodmouse]

Why are there roots without trees for them to be attached to? Why are they on the surface, when roots usually go underground?

Well... There's lots of roots that aren't underground. At least I've seen lots of them in old forests.
And that there's no trees... I thought there wouldn't need to be, I mean, they could be coming from somewhere where is trees. (next to a tree terrain or something like that)

[Frogger5]

Don't use transparency to blend them into the ground. The reason you can't see roots completely is because they are covered by dirt and grass, not because they are semi transparent. Too blurry, thats where the transparency issue comes in. Also, more contrast from the grass.

[Skater-Girl]

Hey Woodmouse, don't give up!

Criticism is not the same as "to be not nice". Come on, I've probably got more than enough criticism, and I crawl into my mouse hole? No! I'm a fan of your work and find it really stupid that you just move your tail because of some criticism.

Oh, and I know I have a bad English

[homunculus]

about the smoke from chimney.

Hmm... Ok. I'll make it a little smaller.

in the animated pictures posted there is so much smoke that it looks like there is a factory that is producing low quality alcoholic beverages.
and also, in some pictures the smoke is so dark that it looks like they are burning coal there.
if you want to animate smoke that is so large, i would rather suggest you to think of it as challenging.
smoke has a somewhat non-intuitive way of moving and mixing and swirling and dissolving, and also, as far as i have seen, it seems to have a 3d sinusoid curve to it like a screw, while the actual puffs are not really moving along the curve, but at an angle to it.
i am attempting a forest fire myself, and if i decide to try animating the smoke i tend to think of it as a nightmare.

but, fortunately, in this case the smoke from the chimney would be really small.
i would expect this 'a little smaller' would mean that the length of the smoke would be about 25 pixels maybe, and that would not be solid smoke all the way, but mostly just some random puffs of smoke would travel farther than the solid smoke at (or rather, near) the top of the chimney.

assuming they are burning wood just for the sake of heating a private house, the color of the smoke would be a very light shade of gray or maybe white would also be ok.
and, there will usually be an animated flag in front the house that would suggest the wind direction and the speed of the wind, and you can expect the wind to have a higher speed at the rooftop.
so, looking at the flag animation, the smoke would be at an angle much closer to horizontal, and break into little puffs very soon and dissolve very soon.

i think those photos posted earlier would be a good illustration:

Or, if you want a wider (but still sparse/subtle) cloud:

although, you really only get the hang of it from a real life smoke or a video.
namely, when i said the solid smoke would not be exactly at the top of the chimney, i meant that at the top of the chimney there would be a little swirl of transparent hot air which is visible in the second photo (although the actual swirling is not visible because it is not animated), and then there would be the white or almost white solid puff that looks very similar to steam when hot air becomes in contact with cold air, and that solid puff would very quickly break into small white puffs that would quickly become smaller until they dissolve in the wind.
i would expect the whole thing to be almost horizontal (except at the immediate top of the chimney) and to be about 25 pixels wide (including the small puffs traveling away from the main smoke).
maybe 30 pixels, but that would be big smoke imho.

i hope it will save you some time compared to trying to make the smoke shorter and shorter little by little.
*taking a deep breath*