Making foliage from an object - editing normals

RPMonkey

Does anyone know how to create the scattered polygons shown in the picture under the Modified Normals text in 3ds max? I know that this is from another thread but it didn't exactly explain step by step on how to create the modified version of the object.

AtticusMars

You create and scatter the geometry yourself, the edit normals modifier doesn't create geometry it only adjusts the vertex normals of the selected geometry. There's lots of ways you could do it, I'm pretty sure 3DS Max has an object paint mode that lets you paint objects onto a surface. You could also use snap to surface and just hand place them.

Additionally, those normals were more than likely created using the normal thief script, not the "edit normals" modifier since unless they changed it since I last used it, it doesn't let you do shape matching.

RPMonkey

Ok thanks for the help :awesome:

musashidan

There are a few ways to scatter the geo procedurally: the scatter compound object or a very basic Pflow system. There are even some MCGSs that'll do it.