Making of Squirrel in Winter by Al-Haitham Jassar, Jordon

Now I modeled the nut, which will be the main focal point in the image (the squirrel's treasure). I used a Bezier Curve for this.


Then I went through the challenge of making good looking hair for the squirrel. It's not that easy to control hair with the current version of Blender, but the ability to cut and style hair will be implemented in the future versions, sweet!

To make hair in Blender I applied a static particle system to the mesh. I separated the tail from the body so I could give it a different particle system (in the next version we will be able to apply more than one PS to a single mesh I believe). Here's a screen shot from inside Blender


Good materials are the secret for achieving realistic hair. I made the map input to "strand", and also gave the hair a low alpha value. A test render…


Once I was satisfied with the hair result, I made falling snow by applying particle systems to a couple of planes (the emitters).