Nira's VFX Blog
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Tag: Tutorials

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Advanced & Experimental Personal

Week 4: Trees Modelling in Maya, & Previs

In this week, I started to research tutorials to model trees trunks, branches, and leaves in the most effective way, to then begin to model the trees of my environment. I also put together a previs to see the dimensions of the space.

As I am not that familiar with organic modelling, I researched some tutorials to see what was the most efficient way to model a tree. I found the following tutorials that explain step by step how to model a tree’s trunk and branches separately, how to create different variations from the same original model, and how to put everything together once we have our parts modelled. I think this way I will have different variations of trees to fill up my environment and not having to model them one by one from start.


Tree trunk modelling (Alex Cheparev, 2021)
Tree branches modelling tutorial (Alex Cheparev, 2021)

For the leaves, I found a separate tutorial that shows how to model them in groups to then pile them up in different shapes, and ultimately, add them to the tree branches.

Leaves modelling tutorial (TrimitKala, 2020)

Following these tutorials I started with the trees modelling.

Curves used to shape basic trunk model
Using a cylinder that has been deformed to add a more organic shape in the base, I extruded the roots and trunk. Then amended the tape and added a twirl of each element
Original shape
Duplicated the original shape with the curves and then tweaked original and duplicated again to have different variants

Before making the branches and leaves, I wanted to see how much space I had in the environment and how the trees would fit ini it (dimensions). So I expended some time positioning the trees in the space until I reached a preview of how the environment would look like with the pyramid included.

Environment previous

I also made some renders of the frames to see how the camera movement would look like.

Camera movement with wireframe on to see depth
Camera movement previs

References

Alex Cheparev (2021). Maya Extrude Tool – How to 3D model a tree trunk (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ls96NCgcc&list=PLAlv9GvsMvnMCUwPx_gcXaCj_yHYdIPqD&index=64 [Accessed 30 April 2023]

Alex Cheparev (2021). Maya Extrude and Joint Tools – How to 3D model tree branches (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDgvyGPqa4&list=PLAlv9GvsMvnMCUwPx_gcXaCj_yHYdIPqD&index=63 [Accessed 30 April 2023]

TrimitKala (2020). 8. Creating the Leaves in Maya, ZBrush | Tutorial 8 | Making 3D Scene Step by Step (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycu3A_vf-YU&list=PLAlv9GvsMvnMCUwPx_gcXaCj_yHYdIPqD&index=61&t=49s [Accessed 1 May 2023]