|
|
|
|
|
|
Modelling a High-Detail Christmas Tree
Creating Control Objects
You have now created one branch for the tree. In a moment, you will begin creating many copies of this and begin building your tree. At this point, if you haven’t already, I’d save your file.
Now that you have one branch created, you can begin shaping your tree. If you’re not careful though, things can get pretty disorganized pretty quickly. In this step I’m going to show you how to create layers and control objects for the branches, which will save you a lot of time down the road.
Create a Dummy object just below the BranchSeg formerly known as Piece 5 (the last piece you linked to) and then link that piece to the dummy. You should now be able to move the entire branch just by moving the Dummy object.
Managing the Scene
I named the Dummy, BranchControlL01-01, which means Branch Control object, Level 1, number 1.
From now on the tree will be broken down into levels of branches so the level number will become important. Each level will consist of between 4 and 10 branches.
NOTE: The following steps dealing with layers is not necessary, although I highly recommend it to help keep your scene organized.
Now it’s time to open up the Layer Manager. Tools > Layer Manager
I created 6 layers and named them accordingly:
- Branches-Even Levels
- Branches-Odd Levels
- Needles-Even Levels
- Needles-Odd Levels
- _Control Objects
- _Scatter Objects
By adding a _ at the beginning of a layer name, you ensure that it will appear at the bottom of the list. This is useful for further managing the way the layer names are displayed. You can even add numbers to the start of the names if you wish.
When adding ornaments or whatever, it can get quite difficult to see what you’re doing with all the extra geometry in the scene. Using the Layer Manager, you can quickly hide and unhide the different layers of branches. I decided to break the tree up into odd and even number layers. Depending on your use for the model, and your skill level, you may wish to break each level of branches into its own layer. I suggest keeping separate layers for the needles again so you can quickly turn them off. More often than not, you will not need to look at them in the viewport after you’ve created them so by having them on a separate layer you can quickly hide them from sight.
The _ControlObjects layer will be for all the Dummy objects used to place each branch. Again, the only reason for this layer is to keep the viewports clear and organized. Depending on how you work, the _ScatterObjects layer may not be needed. This is basically a junk collecting layer for any left over objects created when using Scatter.
Adding the needles
When I first used this method to create a tree, I added the needles before laying out my first branch. At the time this seemed like a good idea because then I would only have to create one scatter object. This lead to a couple problems I never even considered. Looking back, I think it would save a lot more time if the needles were created after the first branch was laid out.
Select your 3rd piece you created at the start; the one labelled, PineNeedle001. Create several copies of it equal to the number of pieces of your branch, in this case, 15 copies total.
Select your first PineNeedle and create a scatter object. Create Tab > Compound Object > Scatter
Pick the first part of your branch as the Distribution Object. You will see the PineNeedle jump to the object you picked. Scatter has a ton of different settings you can use, but in this case, we only need to be concerned with a small few. I recommend looking into all the other settings after this tutorial. The Scatter Object is a powerful tool.
The first setting we need to take a look at is the All Vertices radio button under Distribution Object Parameters. This will place a PineNeedle on each vertex of the distribution object. You’ll see now why we used capsules rather than cylinders.
We’ve got the right shape showing up, but it’s very repetitive. Now we must randomize the size and placement of the objects to make this more realistic, to do that we need to go to the Transforms rollout. We only need to rotate and scale the PineNeedles. I used the following values:
The rotation settings will rotate the needles 30° on every axis. The scaling settings will scale the needles + or – 20% on each axis. The Use Maximum Range checkbox will enter the highest value in all 3 text boxes. The Lock Aspect Ratio checkbox will ensure that the objects are uniformly scaled. You should now have something much more random looking. Depending on the scale of your needles, and the number of them, you may want to adjust these settings accordingly. The settings I’ve provided are merely a base to work from.
There are only a couple more settings left that we need to look at.
The Proxy radio button will force all of the scattered object to be displayed as boxes. While it might not make a difference at this point, when you have 40,000+ needles on screen, you’ll be glad it’s there. The Display Percentage will also help with this. I recommend keeping it at 20% or less. This only hides the objects in the viewport. When you render the scene, they will appear as the original objects, with all 100% showing. The final setting for now is the Hide Distribution Object checkbox. Check this so that it hides the copy of the capsule that scatter created.
Make a note of the Uniqueness Seed. You’ll want to change this with each new scatter that you create so that they don’t all appear exactly the same.
I highly recommend saving this as a Scatter Preset (bottom of the scatter rollouts) so that you don’t have to enter in all these settings for each piece of the branch.
Repeat the above steps until you have covered the entire branch in PineNeedles. You should end up with something like this:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
