Simple quick way to make trees
I've had to explain this idea to a few people so I figured I would cut and paste a quick explanation I did for a friend just now. It's not fancy but it gets the point across.
I'm using Maya right now but its the exact same idea in Max. Using the loft tool. Make a circle and a spline in the shape of the tree you want. The main trunk part. Lofting this will take the base circle all the way to the top of the vertical spline creating a mesh...
So with this exact idea we can construct our tree without modeling anything really. First I create the main trunk and then branches liket his...
Then I arrange them in what ever way I want for my tree...
Then I just do the loft for each piece. I make the branches 4 sided because they are high up and don't need any more detail than that and it makes it very easy to modify the trunk later to weld them in...
Next just clean up the trunk mesh to be ready to weld the branches on.
Weld your branches...
And now you have a basic tree. From here you just make what ever cuts you want to make the tree interesting and have its own look...
The great thing here is that you can make tons of shapes, move parts around, add or remove branches, and really figure out your tree silhouette without ever having to model anything. Once you get to this point and weld it all together then you can add tons of cool cuts and extrusions or what ever you want to make it unique, add your additional 2D branches if you are using them, leaves and all that and your done. The other great thing about using loft is that Max and Maya already unwraps a loft for you so you have very little UV work to do on it later.
Hope this was helpful. Take care guys!
I'm using Maya right now but its the exact same idea in Max. Using the loft tool. Make a circle and a spline in the shape of the tree you want. The main trunk part. Lofting this will take the base circle all the way to the top of the vertical spline creating a mesh...
So with this exact idea we can construct our tree without modeling anything really. First I create the main trunk and then branches liket his...
Then I arrange them in what ever way I want for my tree...
Then I just do the loft for each piece. I make the branches 4 sided because they are high up and don't need any more detail than that and it makes it very easy to modify the trunk later to weld them in...
Next just clean up the trunk mesh to be ready to weld the branches on.
Weld your branches...
And now you have a basic tree. From here you just make what ever cuts you want to make the tree interesting and have its own look...
The great thing here is that you can make tons of shapes, move parts around, add or remove branches, and really figure out your tree silhouette without ever having to model anything. Once you get to this point and weld it all together then you can add tons of cool cuts and extrusions or what ever you want to make it unique, add your additional 2D branches if you are using them, leaves and all that and your done. The other great thing about using loft is that Max and Maya already unwraps a loft for you so you have very little UV work to do on it later.
Hope this was helpful. Take care guys!
Replies
I searched for the images, and did not find them. However I found some good tutorials over on the Crydev forum, and added them here. They might help you. http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentFoliage