AM - Gday Alex

Looks like the years of scribbling and doodling have paid off. You have a great style and your project has some great potential.

The tree is a perfect example of a good reason to use Zbrush or MudBox. As I've mentioned before it will be a good idea to model in as much of the shape as possible in XSI and then add the bark detail with Zbrush. You could really go crazy with this and get a seriously detailed displacement map.

I like what you're planning to do with the windmill, ladders and walkways. There is a huge amount of potential for this one and I'm keen to see your progress on it. I don't know what your plans are for texturing later on, or if you are going for a clean or dirty style, but personally I think some nicely integrated moss would be great.

One thing I always get my modelers to do is place a scale reference object in their working scenes eg: human, matchbox. It really helps you plan where details go and how sharp a bevel should be, or how tall a door should be.

Also, depending on what type of shots you want to render out it might be a good idea to model an extra high resolution section of the tree and a building or two. You can have a nice wide establishing shot, but then crop in on a section and show off a great point of view within the tangled limbs.

Once you have decided on the placement of your buildings, I'd dump them under a node and move them to World 0,0. Then you can line them up next to each other and start adding in the detail. This way you can keep some consistency with your models and also easily compare how they are looking against one another. When you are happy with them you can place them back inside the tree limb and start integrating them and making them feel like they have been there forever.

Keep it coming!