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After a false (but very educational) start, I finally got something usable from 3DCoat. I do have Blacksmith 3D, but compared to 3DCoat it's clunky with a very unintuitive UI (in my opinion). While Blacksmith 3D might generate a more Poser friendly texture, 3DCoat is much more artist friendly, so quick and easy results (well, easy after a bit of experimenting) are within reach.

This is to show how nice 3DCoat paints both diffuse and displacement layers:

 

For this model, I painted three layers at once; diffuse, displacement and specular. The specular is set pretty low, so it doesn't show up in the screen shot. The colors also don't show up as well in the screen shot. They are dark and bit subdued, but I plan to let the foliage I create be the color for this model (just waiting to get back to Anything Grows).

 

I did bring the model and textures into Carrara (no renders, sorry) and got some good results. Carrara also showed me some areas where the texture was a little iffy. A quick trip back into 3DCoat should take care of them.

I exported maps for diffuse, normal and specular for the model. After seeing it all in Carrara, I'm thinking of going back and exporting new maps for those channels as well as a displacement and luminance map. I think the luminance map might add some of the lost color. We'll see.

 

After some minor work in 3DCoat, I moved the model over to Carrara and loaded the textures. They came in just fine. With a little work in Carrara, everything came out pretty well. The luminance and displacement maps turned out to be unnecessay, so I didn't use them.

My only problem was that when I was painting and doing touch up in 3Dcoat, I painted across seams in a few places. This prevents me from using translucence or SSS on select parts of the model. My bad. I didn't forsee the issue. My bad again. If I really wanted to I suppose I could go back to Silo and model in the extra bits so I wouldn't have to cross UV seams to paint. I might. We'll see.

Anyway, here's what he looks like so far. You can't really see the details on such a small image, but I couldn't figure out how to get the image in here without having to scroll all over the place. 

I'm going to send this one off to the New Worlds people and see what they think of the color scheme and textures. If I get the go ahead, I'll move into Carrara and Anything Grows. Can't wait to play with that.

AMAZING!!

"This prevents me from using translucence or SSS on select parts of the model. My bad. I didn't forsee the issue. My bad again. If I really wanted to I suppose I could go back to Silo and model in the extra bits so I wouldn't have to cross UV seams to paint."
TUTORIAL!! TUTORIAL!!  

Well, good news. New Worlds has approved the go ahead for this texture set. Now, I get to settle into Carrara and have a go with Anything Grows. I'll be testing things tonight.

I found out that the ivy .obj files I got from Ivy Generator standalone generated quite a bit inside the geometry of my figure. I was going to use the ivy vines as a base for Anything Grows since the Ivy Generator leaves will not show up in renders no matter what I do. My early tests with Anything Grows did not hide all the poke through. It might be impossible to delete the poke through vines because there are a ton of them for each ivy set I generated.

I may end up going back into Silo to create some of my own ivy geometry for Anything Grows to use.

We'll see.

OK. I had to do some thinking on how to best use Anything Grows in Carrara for this figure. What I finally decided on was to extract bits of geometry from the figure in Silo so the Anything Grows base would match the contours of the spot where I wanted to grow things. I then imported the new geometry into Carrara.

I set the new geometry base to transparent (Anything Grows has the option to set the base to visible or not, but it doesn't seem to be working in this instance). Right now I'm using planes with my textures on them for tip objects(leaves). It all took a bit of sorting, and I learned a bit more about how Anything Grows works in the process.

After some shader adjustment and further Anything Grows adjustment I came up with the following test image. My biggest question/concern is should I continue on with planes for tip objects(leaves) or should I model a more curved surface? I can't decide if it would be worth it to create dedicated leaf shapes. That's going to end up being a lot of geometry as well as add to render time.

 

"I learned a bit more about how Anything Grows works in the process." TUTORIAL TUTORIAL!!! 

Only you know what's best for your workflow, but the texture leaves you show here look great. I would say geometry is not really necessary, although you might consider Dimension Theory's technique of creating a flat custom spline or vertice object that fits the outline shape of the "leaf", so you save on rendertime with overlapping transparency layers.

You say TUTORIAL one more time, and I'll write one. I mean it!

I did attempt to create a vertex object to match one of the leaves, but it didn't turn out to well. It did well enough to make me try again, so that's on the list.

I need to play a bit more with Anything Grows gravity settings. My biggest concern is that the leaves look a bit stiff. I may be too close to the project to make a good judgement.

I'll be working on it again tonight, so we'll see what happens. Once I get the leaf thing settled, all I have to do is extract some more geometry patches and grow some more foliage on the figure. After that, I'll be ready to move on to the final renders.