6.
Actually, I lied. There's
one more step. We need
to Triple the polygons
so we don't get any non-planar
errors when rendering
the flowers in layout.
Before we finish up the
flower, save the single
petal as "petal.lwo".
We will use this object
later on in Photoshop
to create the petal texture.
Now that we have our basic
petal, clone it five times
around the origin to create
the whole flower (Figure
9.) You might want to
vary the pitch of each
so that they don't intersect.
Be sure to assign a proper
surface name to this object.
I'm going to call it "Petal_P_Y"
since I'll be applying
a planar image map on
the 'Y' axis. Make sure
that you turn on Smoothing.
Actually, from now on,
smoothing will need to
be turned on for every
surface that we will make.
Now
that we have our first object modeled,
we're going to want to save it in
a directory called something like
'lily'. This will be where we'll
save all our objects. Go ahead and
save the flower as 'flower.lwo'.
Leave the flower in the first layer
of Modeler, and open up a second
layer.
Creating
the Stamen
Figure
10: Adding the stamen
7.
OK, now we'll model the
stamen that will end up
in the middle of the flower.
This is very simple. Just
create a cylinder (more
like a pipe) with its
height along the 'Y' axis.
Resize it as necessary
to form a thin straw-like
tube. Give this a surface
name of 'Pollentube'.
We'll be able to get away
with using a procedural
texture for this object
so its orientation really
isn't necessary in the
surface name.
8.
Create a small elliptical
sphere stretched along
the 'Y' axis and place
it on the top of the shoot.
Surface the sphere as
'Pollensphere'. Bend the
whole object a little
bit in the top view and
rotate it so that it appears
to be "growing"
out of the Y plane. Now
clone the stamen four
or five times and give
each clone a slightly
different rotation. Put
the petal that is in layer
1 into the background
and resize the stamen
so that it's sized relative
to the petal just as you
saw in Figure
2. Paste the stamen
into layer 1 and re-save
the flower. Figure 10.
Creating
the Stem
Figure
11: Bending the stem
9.
Before we can add much
more to the lily, we need
to have a stem. Instead
of using a cylinder, we'll
use a box with MetaNURBS
so that we have more control
over the shape. Create
a long stem-like box along
the 'Y' axis. Make the
box roughly three meters
tall and about 50mm wide
on both the 'X' and the
'Z' axes. Once again,
before you hit , give
the box eight segments
on the 'Y' axis. Go ahead
and create the box, then
switch to MetaNURBS mode.
10.
Looking at our reference
image, we can see that
there is a slight bulge
in the stem at the top
just before it reaches
the flower. Since we're
using MetaNURBS, we can
easily stretch out the
top-most segment of the
stem to achieve this effect.
After you get the top
the way you like, freeze
it and align the base
of the stem with the origin
point in all views. Now
apply a small amount of
bend (as seen in Figure
11), say 15° or so
and surface the stem as
'Stembig_Cyl_Y'. Then
save it as 'stembig.lwo'.
The reason we called it
'stembig' is because we
now need to scale it down
to roughly 1/3 the size
of the original, surface
it as 'Stemsmall_Cyl_Y'
and save it as 'stemsmall.lwo'.
This smaller stem will
allow us to add more flowers
sprouting off of the main
stem.
Creating
the Leaves and the Bud
Figure
12: Accentuating the
leaf tip
11.
Our next step is to create
the leaves. Load the model
that we saved before called
'metapetal.lwo'. This
will be our basic leaf
shape. First, drag the
point at the tip of the
leaf out so that the leaf
comes to more of a point
than the petal did. Finish
adjusting the other points
around the tip so that
the leaf tapers off to
that end point and roughly
matches Figure 12.
12.
The second major difference
between the petal and
the leaf is the width.
The leaf is clearly much
slenderer, so scale the
leaf along the 'X' axis
until it's roughly half
the width of the petal.
Now it's starting to look
more like a leaf. Resize
the entire leaf until
its length is about 1.2
meters. Then apply a little
Bend to the leaf in the
face view, rotate it until
it's parallel, freeze
the MetaNURBS object at
the desired level of detail
and voila! A leaf. Surface
it as 'leaf_P_Y' with
'double-sided' turned
on and save it as 'leaf.lwo'.
Figure 13.
Figure
13: Final leaf model
Figure
14: Squashing the points
down along the Y axis
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Figure
15: Bud with stem
13.
OK, now we have one more
object to model, the bud.
This is the easiest object
to model. Create a rectangular
box about 350mm long on
the 'Y' axis and 75mm
wide on the 'X' and 'Z'
axes. Metaform the box
once and select the nine
points at the bottom.
Squash them down along
the 'Y' axis so that the
bottom of the bud has
a concentration of points
towards the bottom. Figure
14 illustrates this step.
14.
Now Metaform the bud two
more times and create
a cylinder with 16 sides
and 16 segments that's
500mm tall and slightly
smaller in circumference
than the stem we made
before. Give it a bend
of around 20° and
line it up with the bottom
of the bud so that it
looks like a tail coming
out of the bottom and
align the bottom of the
bud stem with the origin
in all views, as in Figure
15. Surface the bud as
"Bud_Cyl_Y"
and the stem as 'budstem_Cyl_Y'
and save the whole thing
as 'bud.lwo'. See? I told
you it was easy.
That's
about it as far as the modeling
portion of this tutorial goes. If
all went well, you should have five
objects like those in Figure 16.
