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 |
<
Now let’s go on with
the plant itself. I will show
you one way, which I think
fits the leaves
we have, and it’s the
easiest.
Simply
create a Spline with 3 Points. |
 |
Now
make these points “Smooth”,
make the “Render Mesh”
visible,
and add thickness. Also use
less sides,
around 8.
> |
|
 |
Now
make the spline
a bit straighter, also make
sure, that it doesn’t
loose segments, and then convert
it into “Editable Poly”. |
Open
the material
editor,
and create a new
material
and call it “Stalk_01” |
Set
the basic parameters like
in the picture. |
|
|
Now
only add a noise map
to the “Diffuse”
channel
with following options. |
 |
Apply
it to the line, and we are
finished here. |
|
| 3. Adding the Leaves to the Plant |
|
|
| Now
we still need to add the leaves
to the plant, this will be a fast
job.
Select the leaf
and fix the pivot
at its upper edge: |
|
Place
the pivot
in the lower-middle of the plant,
and rotate the leaf like this: |
|
| Now
Mirror it, and then simply
copy it. Put the Copy up a
bit, and rotate it, like shown
here: |
 |
 |
| Now
you simply need to copy these
pairs of leaves
until you reach the top: > |
|
Still
looks very strange, but that
will change. |
|
Add
a “FDD 4x4x4”
modifier
to the whole plant (but don’t
attach, or collapse the whole
thing, that would cause more
polygons because of the leaf's
mesh
smooth). |
Then
use “Uniform Scale”
to scale the plant like here. |
|
Your
plant should look similar
to this. |
|
| 4. Animating the whole thing |
|
|
 |
Now
that we have a plant, why
not animate it? It’s
easy. |
First
of all we need to fix the
textures to the mesh. |
Every
texture that has to be animated
may not have “World
XYZ” coordinates,
that would make them stay
at the same place, while the
object
moves (only underwater
animations use this) |
So
open your material editor,
and set all your used textures
to “Object XYZ”,
or if it uses a “UVW
Map”, like the Bump
on the leafs, set it to “Explict
Map Channel”. |
|
Now
set the animation Key to 50,
and use the “FFD”
Modifier
to animate the plant. |
 |
 |
Look
at the upper picture. The
leaves
are set off the stalk,
you have to fix that by moving
the second line more to the
left: |
|
Now
select
the first key,
hold “Shift”, and move
it to the last frame.
If you render
your animation it should look like
this. |
|
|
|
 |
Well,
if you compare the plant you've
just made with a real one,
you will see a lot of differences,
especially on the colors. |
Well,
I’ve only showed you
the basics of modelling a
plant, I don’t want
to make you feel that this
is the only way. |
Everyone
has his, or her own style
of modeling. It will not help
you if you always use exactly
the way I gave you! |
Try
to make some things different
than I did, maybe you find
a better way (for you). |
Also
I didn’t use every detail,
I use on other plants in this
tutorial, because every plant
is different, and has to be
done in a different way, this
is only the basic shape! Also
the lighting, and the scene
you put it in makes important
changes on the plants look! |
Here
are some other plants I made
using this technique, as you
see every one is individual. |
|
And
here’s a scene I used them
in, again they seem to give an other
effect. |
|
|
 |
It’s
the same with animations,
the animation
above seems to be very
bad (if you look carfeully
you see what happens if the
map coordinates are set to
“World XYZ”),
but if you use your own style,
it may be better, like this
one, it uses the same kind
of animation. |
| This one was
made as a button
for my Homepage. |
|
| I
hope this tutorial helped you, and
maybe gave you another perspective
on modeling organic Objects. |
| --Thomas
Rinsch |
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