Carnivorous Flowering Cactus

I am working on a surreal, cartoonish environment for AngryAnt in order to learn modeling. I am still early in the process as I have A LOT to learn. Here's my first tree during the modeling of which I learned how to use Cheetah3d after discovering Sketchup's flaws.

Although I am showcasing this work, I am also fishing for technical advice and help. I have run into a problem with how trees are rendered that I can't quite figure out.

Screen One is of the asset instantiated directly into the scene. This was my first version of the tree in Cheetah. I am using the nature shaders on their respective materials, and storing everything in a folder titled correctly. Notice how bright the spray of flowers are.



Screen Two is a revised (and improved) model imported as a tree into the terrain engine and painted down. Notice how dark the flowers are. The same asset has bright pink flowers when instantiated directly into the scene.



So why is there such a marked difference in the coloring of foliage between an asset directly instantiated versus its use as a tree in the terrain engine? Does ambient occlusion not get turned on for this shader unless it is imported as a tree and painted down on terrain?

I would actually like to ultimately use this model twice in a scene. Once as a tree painted down, and the other time as an asset directly instantiated. I am thinking in the later case that I'd give it some animations. I want a few of these trees to be carnivorous and swallow the occasional passing bird like a land based version of a sea anemone. In a game environment I wouldn't want the player to be able to easily distinguish between static trees and potential threats.

So just to repeat - does it appear that I am making some simple mistake because the asset should look identical regardless of whether it is used as a "terrain engine tree" versus as an instantiated asset? Or does the shader behave differently depending upon how the asset is used? Or could I be totally messing something up and rebuild this model? Check any particular settings etc...

Thanks in advance.

 

Occlusion Master Yog answered this for me in IRC. Thanks, Yog!

The word:
The Ambient Occlusion Nature Shaders behave differently for assets used in the terrain engine versus assets instantiated in the scene.

 

Just to wrap up this thread for future reference: Is there a workaround?

 

I am looking for a way to make this asset with bright flowers in the terrain engine as a "tree". Ultimately I think I'll only instantiate this asset directly rather than as a "tree" and therfore use it sparingly. In that case, all will be animated so that individuals at random, periodically appear to close up and swallow something. Would be cool to do this when they are bumped into by the player as well.

But I have not learned how to animate yet. Give me a few more weeks. When it comes to generating geometry, I've only been using Cheetah for 3 days.

Still I am playing with the shader, and will also brighten the texture. If I come up with something that works for the tree engine, I'll post it for you. In the mean time, I want to model a different tree - Cordyline Australis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbage_tree_(New_Zealand). I think it is perfect for a Seusish landscape.

 

Cordyline Australis alongside the Cactus thing:


A bit heavy on the polys for what it is at 941 triangles.
The Cactus comes in at 430 triangles.

 

@aaronparr: You should remove the second audio listener...

 

Will do, Gaston.

 

Gaston, you should eat four dozen eggs every morning to help you get large!

 

The plot thickens...

I've recently discovered that the dark appearance of the fuschia foliage is not seen identically on every computer. My G4 iMac shows it dark, but my wife's G4 PowerBook (with a decent graphics card) shows the bright fuschia as I intended.

Witness for yourself:
http://www.rawbw.com/~theparrs/unity/CordylineRun.html

This'll be my last update of this particular test scene.

 

Hm. They display fine on my mbp core duo: