I thought you guys might be interested in the final result last night. The winners were Diversity, a tremendously original and inventive dance act. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJIz8BgRQc0 Second, was Susan Boyle, reprising her first offering, seen at the start of this thread. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc2elS5rNkI Third was Julian Smith; also reprising his original performance...but giving an unabridged version. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Cr-1iQQ2E Sound about right, but I think I'd have switched 2 and 3 around. akf Tenor/Accoustic guitar/Blues Harp

I just bought one of the new U3 memory sticks with 160 times the entire storage capacity of my first real PC. Amazing when you think about it. Mind you, that old machine itself is pretty amazing when you consider that little more than a decade before the Enigma code breakers at Bletchley Park were using Colossus machines that had thousands of the old glass radio valves as logic gates and no onboard memory at all.

Got this interesting comment on these from one of my clients this morning: "It looks graphically good but it needs some torches, moss and lichen, and some signs of age, repairs, history, battleworn. Your castle looks like it is ready for final inspection, like it was made for a theme park…"

What are the textures used in the smaller one?

Great work. Defiantly has a lot of mood in the image. I agree with bytor about the castle being a little too bright for the sky.

Note that when it comes to economic crises and hardships for people,extreme and populist tendencies always gain ground. It should be up to the wiser thinking of those more wealthy to help the less fortunate out of this situation (no, please do not think of military aid in this case).

Tom - I am getting excited! I see huge potential with this... as soon as the planting plan gets finished I am going to try a full landscape with you ground covers, shrubs, and trees... look for it in a week or so!

@solo said: You know you are from Texas when.... ~Finally, you are 100% Texan if you have ever heard this conversation: "You wanna coke?" "Yeah." "What kind?" "Dr. Pepper." Damn right!

Hey All, A couple of people have asked so I'll clarify here: Bundle 3 contains half of the same trees included in each of Bundles 1 and 2. (If 3 is more popular than 1 & 2, I'll be switching to that format for all future offerings.) Sorry for the confusion. Best, Tom.

@unknownuser said: aw phil, that's too bad.. you must be an old guy.. i'm still seeing 20/20 and they're coming in clear to me.. then this image should really get you excited. [image: HW2k_pixel.jpg]

Great work Tom. These are some of the best images so far.

Richard, the trees have been the focus on a couple of posts lately, but in this case...well, here's my site: [image: swFp_easthavenarial.jpg]

A nice variation on an old gag.....

Yes, exactly.

@tomsdesk said: Richard, mainly showcasing the trees I suppose...though not as blatantly as here: http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=17149 Hope you can help out with the render app conundrum. Good luck with that Tom. I think for rendering they probably lack a bit of detail and are a bit flat, the ones that Kwistenbeibel made up with my old "Tree Factory" are probably about as light on as you could go for rendering. Cutouts can work if you have a great enough collection of very high res maps that show a variety of shadow casts, though these are often better added post processing. Just fo shadow casting (hidden to the camera) these are probably fine though even a fairly simple cut out works well for those! Though someone will possibly prove me wrong! Though I've got a massive collection of 3d skp trees and pretty much no matter how good they are they still produce pretty poor results in renderings palm trees aside! Though probably 90% of work is done for areas that palm trees are only seen in James Bond movies! Good wishes with this project mate!

I don't know anything about the inner workings of SU either, but I would guess that to display a shadow from an edge, the app has to treat it like a thin face, about similar as when exporting a model with the "export standalone edges" enabled. So I would use it only when absolutely necessary. Anssi

Thanks All...and yeh Adam! Darren, I figure I'll follow Pete's lead and see how community pricing works out: hopefully volume will make up for a slim profit margin :`)

looking good tom mike d

Yeah, I just noticed that, Mirjman...thanks. I have to make a single image into a component in order to allow SU to change the color: but since some of the render apps need the images exploded, I'm going to test using a png material instead of an unexploded image...then I can get rid of all the components inside the group of leaf faces. I'll test if this is faster with a hundred or so trees.