it's been a while

so haven't posted in quite a while, this has been due to a number of different things, christmas shopping, dissertation, my other unit but mainly it's done to me being tooo LAZY!

what's been going on?... not much unfortunately, things seemed to have really slowed over the holidays.

i have been assigned the job of modelling a tree.
there are a few shots in our storyboard that have a tree to one side which really helps crop the scene nicely and helps draw the eye towards the main focus of the film (our two characters)

the tree is a maple, here are some of the reference images i looked at








this tree needs to be believable, can't be having one that sticks out like a saw thumb, it needs to be fairly photo realistic.

i first looked into a couple of different ways of creating a tree in maya

the first being modelling it from the ground up literally. first creating the trunk then adding the branches to get something a bit like this



the only problem i found with this was the fact it looks too empty, to literally go in so in depth to create a photo realistic tree like this would take forever and would be highly complicated. the amount of large branches wouldnt be a probelm but if you closely at a tree it has thousands of smaller branches.

the good thing about this would be a way of making the leaves. i found a tutorial on creating leaves by attatching them to particles then create them using ncloth so they move in the wind.

have a look.(follow link to part two after)



the bad thing is if i only do the major branches then it will look too empty, especially considering its a maple tree.

after some deliberation i have decided against this, i think it would be a pretty insane idea to attempt this.

and also i have discovered a new, quicker and easier way to give the impression of a large amount of branches, leaves and detail.
by using the paint effects tool you can generate a number of different organic models, and it just so happens there is an option for maple trees :)

unfortunately the brush for the trunk of the tree is rubbish. it looks like this...




its a bit too skinny. and the textures aren't great.




so i have decided to use the paint effects only for the branches and leaves. then model the trunk from scratch.