Rendering Bristles

cheneymax

Hi everyone. Once again I have found myself sitting on the edge of my bed in the morning, wondering what the new day would bring, then sitting on the edge of my bed at night, and realizing I have done nothing of any importance all day. So, I have decided that I will start yet another SU project , this time, a surprise for my father.

Our family is in the brush industry and my father has invented an architectural surface out of brush fiber, cleverly called 'BrushTile'. Basically, I want to make a render of a single tile that he (or his salesman) can use to pitch the idea to potential customers.

My question to you almighty SU gods is, What is the best way to get a realistic render of brush bristles. An HD picture or a complex model? Oh and it's probably important that I'm broke so payware software is out of the question. I have enough experience with Kerkythea to do some stuff, and I'm always looking for an excuse to sit down and learn Blender. Just so you know, I've seen the Blender hair modelling, but it looks more like fur. What I need is rows of tufts...like a broom.

Oops...Didn't mean to make it that long.

Thanks in advance,
Max

cheneymax

Alright maybe a picture will help people understand...

Here is what an individual tile looks like.

This is a wall of tiles with beveled edges.

DareDevil

Look for grass tutorial, I think you can use the same ways.
For me, two different ways :

modeling real geometry with Make Fur plugin
use texture with alpha on planes like in this tutorial

gullfo

it may be that unless the view is close enough to notice individual bristles, just making a texture which simulates it will suffice. i've been playing with rendering a large lounge space which was originally going to use bristle tiles but when viewing the room, all the minute details simply blurred together after rendering and anti-aliasing for 20 hours, so a texture replaced it and the rendering time was then reasonable and the results were ok. we've since moved on in terms of aesthetics. recommendation - you'll have to play with different views to determine if complex geometry and materials does it, or simply seamless texture.