Here is a project I did last summer for Wonderful Pistachios. It was a great concept by Colin Jahn. I modeled 6 master pistachios and textured them using photographic reference. In order to place the pistachios, I tried several approaches, including a dynamics rig out of Lightwave using particals to generate accurate flow. The solution didn't really give me what I wanted. Realizing I had an idea of the flow I wanted to see, I created a point cloud and used Element Move to drag points where I wanted. The falloff was perfect for creating a flow look. Once the points were in place, I used replicators base on a group of the 6 pistachios to populate the scene.
The art director felt like the nuts weren't reading, so we scaled the source up larger than life in order to make them read a bit better.
In the end, it was discovered that an error in communication had me building the file at 8x10, when it was destined for a use as a poster at 30x40 (a bin side found for a while in produce departments). Fortunately, I had managed **most** of the color work and minute nut placement inside Modo, so cranking the resolution up and rerendering solved the problem.
I did have a bit of an education process for my client on this one... the focus here was the pistachio splash, a medium shot at best. That made for interesting times when he came back a few months ago...
The final poster image
One of the master pistachios
Color Texture
Displacement Map
