Hey there-
For those of you who have been following my quest to build a tree in maya (nothing better to do?), Here is what I have so far:
The tree is made from several Lofted curves, and connected through circular fillets. The bunches leaves are each a flat that I have set up in many levels, and which rotate around the tree.
I don't think this is the best way to do the leaves, since from citain angles (such as this one) you can tell that they are flats (notice the top of the picture). First I tried doing it with half spheres to get a curve, but mapping (which is brand new to me in Maya) was not behaving - getting stretched all over tthe place.
The leaves texture is an image sequence which has them moving in the wind (If I can figure out how to make the texture animation load) - and I'd ultimately like to have whatever surface they are on moving up and down to to simulate give and take with wind and gravity.
How would you map these leaves? Would you build them on a different surface or do it differently altogether? Are there any tutorials out there that address this?
Thanks.
Aharon Rabinowitz
arabinowitz@yahoo.com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
