How To Create A Cactus In Maya

howdy-doody class is your profession mr. Daschle I'm gonna teach you how to free campus I always begin my intros by saying the word so or let's begin and it's becoming too much of a trend so change it up a little bit all right if you guys think of like a really cool intro for me to say and put it on the comments or something and all that's right it I was told to do like different voices different accents but it would be probably too distracting okay so let's begin underneath the View tab you have this button that says image plane and it's going to allow us to import image plane when we click on import image right so it's right here under view image plane import image now you can see that I'm actually doing this in my front view you can do this in the side view the reason why employ an image plane and my front view because this is the direction I want my cactus to be and of course I can do this in my side view and import the image plane and always move it around so it's for the view image play an import image so I want to look for my cactus image my first cactus image I'm gonna put all three images in here so this is image shape one with cactus shapes and I'll zoom out a little bit it's probably hard to find this thing you know if I press 4 it's right here there's W I'm moving this guy up and I'll put it off to the side doesn't matter how big or how small like scale this image up I can always scale the geometry down okay so I'm gonna repeat this a few more times the reason why I'm using this particular image here is because you can see on the texture it says ice by getting images okay that's not really important we're not going to use this image per se but we're going to use that geometry so is that it has color value to represent the grooves in a cactus versus the actual grooves themself so this is going to be able to I think the easier method of creating our cactus shape all right the next image playing that we're going to import it is going to be like I forgot to set my project so let me do that now if I go to file set project set it to my cactus my floating island scene and now when I go to view image plane import image it takes you directly to my source images alright so I'll take that image I'll move it over here this image here you guys can see it has the undulations and the folding of the cactus so we're going to use a different method there's several methods to create this we'll go over each one at a time and like I said you can choose your medicine which method you prefer and then I have other images of cactus cactus cactuses cacti and a lot of these have the same kind of holding undulations I think this is going to be a really fun one to create okay it will require some counting and one more image now for this particular assignment you are not required to have 800 different types of calculate I got a double of this 800 different types of cactuses in there right cacti you can use one and modify that shape so I'll sew it off with the easier one easier image first and then we'll move on all right so I'm gonna take all three of these image planes I'm gonna go out to my perspective view and I'm going to move them to the right the reason why I'm doing that is because let's see let me turn my grid on you can see that when it imports this image it puts it directly on the axes line if I were to create a polygon plane and draw that right here it's very difficult to see that if I move it over here there's my polygon plane but if I move it here it's just an outline okay so the reason why I'm going into my perspective view and highlighting all three image planes and moving them a little further back is so that I can avoid that problem create polygon plane and I'm moving in front and there we go okay so I'm simply going to use the method I've taught you guys before simple tool called extreme and I'm going to trace this shape now I can start from here and extrude press W move it up I press R to flatten that out ours to scale it wide if I press G it's a repeat tool which is extrude move it up press our skillet wide and then I get to this section here where the cactus actually splits off so I'll extrude it one more time I'll move it up like that and then I'll take this vertex point and move it to where I believe that new cactus begins and then I'll take this vertex or this edge I'll move it and now before I go any further I'm just going to move a few vertices around all right go back to the edge extrude now this is another method of doing it extremely fast just move this all the way up here like that and then I can use the insert edge loop tool which is found under the mesh tools insert edge loop I'll go to the option box relative distance from edge will allow me to create one edge loop at a time if I click on the multiple edge loops and change that to two it will actually subdivide it a few more times okay so I'll take this vertex move it take this one here move it there take that vertex there and you can see it's a little faster than the other method some of you guys will prefer to do it this way or the other way okay I think speed is always key ingredient to working on large projects and also making sure that it looks correct all right so let's do the same thing with this guy ctrl e I'll move it all the way up to the top I'll press R to scale it down like this and then we'll use the insert edge loop tool again so the shortcut for the insert edge loop insert edge loop tool is if you hold shift you can right mouse click and hold and then look insert edge loop right there so I'll take that vertex move it over that vertex move it over that one here that one there and you're probably like wondering okay this thing this cactus is extremely flat worried about it gosh you we're going to give it some roundness a little bit later so I'm just switching my insert edgeloop tool' back to relative distance as soon as I use the insert edge loop tool I can press R immediately and that's going to give me access to the scale tool if I will press for I could see it in wireframe and it will also give me just another opportunity to see this shape that are the image underneath the geometry if I press five and I see it in shaded mode there's another method I'll show you guys it's a really quick and efficient if I go to create curve tool EP curve I can create the shape of the cactus like this right that's the shape of the cactus that shape and then I can select this edge here hold shift select that EP curve and then press ctrl e to extrude now it doesn't look like much right now until I insert divisions and voila look at okay and then from here I'll simply take those vertices move them over so as you just seen they're different methods to this project now the issue I'm not gonna say issue but if you do it this way with the curve look what happens when I move the geometry nothing right but what happens when I move the curve it is attached to that so there's history attached to this geometry so I would simply click on the geometry itself and you can see in my channel box editor all of this stuff here this is called history we wanted to delete that so we go to edit delete by type history and it's gone all right and I can delete the curve now I'll probably add another insert edgeloop tool' it's the top press are to scale it wide another one down here go to the vertex and voila I'm happy with this it's not perfect kind of make the top part a little more round okay now it's always important for us to rename these things so I'll call this tag this jack cactus one I call this cactus all right now the next element to this is to give it thickness right now you can see that this face right here is like curved and that's because of the geometry of the curve that we use to extrude it from if that ever happens to you always go to vertex mode highlight all the vertices press R and scale it flat see okay now let's give this thickness very simple control E and move it forward like that now it's thick and if I go to my insert edgeloop tool' and add an edge loop right down the center I can press R which is a scale tool and outfit now what you're gonna notice is that it does get a little bit wider here but let's go into this view on the inside of this shape it's going in the opposite direction so how do you avoid that well you're gonna have to do some manual work okay I would probably start off by clicking on this edge hold shift double click here press W and then move it out manually like that okay I can click on this edge go underneath hold shift and double click just like that edge loop move out manually all right so that's that particular method and when we get finished with that we can simply press three and it rounds it so it's kind of cartoony all right all into the next cactus shape well let's actually camp out here one more time we're going to do this really elaborate cactus shape and we're going to actually use a tool called creep polygon tool all right create polygon tool will allow us to outline this shape and you can see I'm not worried about getting it to look for size I'm kind of creating a really low polygon making sure that I have a pretty good edge flow or the faces are going to be distributed properly all right and if at any time this gets confusing like you're working and you're creating this shape and like crosses each other you can simply press forward to go in the wireframe and do that now with this method I think it might take a little bit longer because you'll have to use the multi cut tool to create quads and I'll just end it right here I won't go all the way up so now I have that shape it's black I have to go to mass display reverse and then of course you use a multi cut tool which will take quite some time to connect your vertices so that you have quads all right and this is going to be a same exact method as I told you before you let's treat it and you give it thickness now fun way before I even do the fun way I'm gonna save it before my machine that's crashed on me so I'll call this cactus underscore zero zero one this method we can use different ways of creating it I'm gonna use an EP curve to create the very very top of this which I think looks something like this let me use dream wrinkly for the cactus and so this is a shape that I think the top of that looks like I think it looks like this from the very top right sometimes that and then it gets bigger and it repeats the same type of shape right I don't think I'm going crazy but that's what it counts like to me is a little bit okay so I'm going to create that shape by using a tool called the EP ker now you can use an EP curve tool or you can use a pencil tool the pencil tool for me it's a little more fluid however it will add more control points and you might say what's the problem with having more control points well it results in heavier geometry so I use the EP curve tool ooh better yet I use an herb circle alright so I'm going to create nerves primitive and then go to nerve circle and that's my circle now if I go to right mouse click and hold and go to control vertex I have just a limited number of vertices to work on this shape so I'm gonna increase the number of I know it's been a crash I knew it anytime I go into the inputs in 2018 on this particular machine it does that so think I saved it before and we're going to change the number of control vertices in a different in a different way so we push the load up file open recent files and under the your recent files when the will of death goes away I will be able to select my cactus okay well I'll open it up in here animation one floating island scene my scenes over and my cactus go on save okay so I'm going to create NURBS primitive interactive turned on and then create a circle now I'm not gonna repeat the same mistake as I did before this time I'll simply go to curves rebuild option box and right now let's hit the floor I'll change that to 8 and when I do that now I have more control vertex points but I'm going to increase that so curves rebuild and I'll change that to 12 why I have more points so I'm just hold shift and select every other point or every other control vertex press R and scale it down I don't think I have enough control vertex points so I'll change the number of span to it's a 20 apply and now when I right mouse click and hold I have more points on here do this that Bam Bam Bam I'll press R to scale them in and voila okay so this is gonna be the very tip of my cactus so what I'm going to do is duplicate this shape and it's going to sort off extremely small here I'll scale it up a little bit wider there I'll scale it wider I'll move it over a scaled up wire move it over so that I have different layers of that curve I just created and then we're going to use a tool called long so I'll scale it down really small I'll press E to turn on my rotation I'll hold J to snap it discreetly there's W and I'll move it right there at the top okay so now I'm gonna press ctrl D I'll move it up I'll scale it up a little wider control-d move it up scaled up much wider and told thee I think you guys understand process right if I always try to make this tack this accurate I would have more images and I would probably count the number of ridges but for the sake of this tutorial we just kind of keep it very simple and doing that scale it up a little bit more maybe you move it over and I can do things individually to this to this curve that will actually give it a little bit more personality it doesn't look so linear she means so robotic and so like rigid make it look more natural I guess the term I was looking for ctrl D I'm almost there bear with me I know some people like to watch tutorials where it's sped up and the person talks over it I personally like to watch the tutorials where the person is showing me their method and their thought process is tracking a few jokes but you can always fast forward this alright and last but not least the bottom ok now this is the fun part alright I personally want to make this a polygon so I have to change a few parameters so that it becomes a polygon and not a NURBS polygon because of texturing reasons I don't like to text your nerves so I always convert everything to a poly so I'm just going off with the center smallest one okay I'll hold shift and select one at a time if I select everything at once then the order is off so you that this that that is that one in that now they even doing boys and girls we go to surfaces loft option box and you can see by default it's set to NURBS I'm entertaining it to polygons quads general change it to the last option under the you type and the V type and if I change the number of U and V to a really low number like one and click apply then you can see that this polygon or this cactus is really really low poly but if I wanted it to be round I can simply click on the geometry press 3 and it gives me the somewhat of a resolution I want but if I wanted the geometry to have more poly count then I increase the number of you and the number of V 2 3 click apply and look at it's much more poly count but maybe I don't need as many polygons in the V but I want more than you so sometimes it's take some you know tweaking and that looks pretty good to me I'll press close just like that geometry I press 3 and voila now the reason why I will not delete all of these curves just yet because I can do some really fun stuff with them I can scale them I can rotate them and this gives my cactus a little bit more personality now you see I can rotate that do this I could even go so far as to selecting one of those curves clicking on the control vertex point and maybe even moving that control vertex point forward or to the right and giving that a little more personality now I know time is of the essence so we don't have a lot of time to do that and make it unique okay all right so the center of this obviously needs to be closed so I'll click on that edge loop by double clicking it I'm going to edit mesh and then our mesh fill hole voila I'm going to modify center pivot and then we could simply take this shape duplicate it move it here scale it down we can go to the vertex highlight the vertices press B which is a soft selection hold B to make the influence down a little lower and now I can like move this thing around I can rotate it a little bit press W down I'm gonna press ctrl to deselect vertices press ctrl again to deselect a few vertices rotate it move it here right ctrl to deselect more vertices I'm just de selecting the vertices if I press B you can see that control allows me to deselect the selection so I'm press B again right I'll press E to rotate press W right kind of get it there if I click on an edge double-click it will allow me to select what we consider the edge loop so double click and I can move that around you see double-click move that around to try to get that same position double-click that edge loop press our scale it up so that again this is you know for a person it's really focusing on accurate see all right I can double click on this edge we press B right move that there double click on this one move it up rotate it right W move it there and then that last one there so I'll press B again I'll select the faces here that I don't need delete press 5 I'll go through the vertices take this guy here move it in press R to scale it down press W kind of shove that right there and we're going to do that repeat the same exact process on the right side so that's looking pretty cool I could take this one control D move it over press e hold J to rotate it and then move this into place I can click on edge double click this edge move it over press R to scale it wide double click press W move it over press R to scale a little bit wider to try to match that same geometry if I hold its shift I can double click multiple edge loops and move it there you see there's our Skoda typically scaled up and at any time if you want to like rotate this you can yeah just give it a little personality little Flair a little Ric Flair those of you that know 80's wrestling he's wrestling all right let's get that to match that's the whole point is working on a little bit of accuracy again you have the freedom to do whatever it is that you want I know cactuses aren't perfect like the way I'm making mine so there we go and then we'll take that little section there I can go to vertex at any time select the vertices scale them down press W move it in alright so once I get finished with this shape I'm going to highlight all three go to edit delete by type history modify freeze transformations and then ctrl G to turn it into a group which I will call cactus to now within this group I can select the individual parts but if I press the up arrow it selects the group itself now I need to go to modify center pivot to move my center pivot and I can move this guy anywhere now the cool thing that I still have this shape alright and this shape I can use for all these curves I can use for this object here right so I'm going to move this guy up maybe I'll delete those guns on delete those and I have the round part of this object I'll turn the this section into a lofted object so I'm holding shift surfaces loft I'll take that curve and I'll scale it down a little bit so that it looks round okay and then simply just take that shape that geometry modify center pivot I'll go back to my front view I move it here I'll press three I press forward to kind of get it to match up properly and then I'll press five to go back to soft selected I'm sorry smooth shaded control D move it down press R to scale it up press W to move it up like this and again you can select rows of vertices or you can select rows of edges and double click and scale it wide okay and thank you get the drift and last but not least this and lost like the last low row I'll scale it down make it smaller this report will be in the ground so I'm really not worried about making it completely round because it will be on top of our sand dune you just like multiple rows of vertices and then a whole shift I'll go to my perspective view I'm going to select this bottom edge I'm actually going to extrude it again so ctrl e to extrude press W move it down press R to scale it down so it looks a bit more natural I'll do the same thing with that edge alright so I have these three modify freeze transformations edit delete by type history we'll press ctrl G modify center pivot and I'll call this round cactus and then we can take this entire group and I'll go to my front view if I hold D and move the manipulator tool down I can actually put this on to the surface press R and it will scale from there if I press E it can rotate any direction I want I'll do the same thing with this group press the up arrow I'll hold D and move the manipulator down and y-axes let go of D I'll hold V to snap it to a point press R scale it down and [Music] well so we have two different types of cactus well three if you will include the cartoony one and you can change the shape inside so I think that you know scale is going to be extremely important right so making sure that some of them are much smaller than others that they it looks really good and you know your camera how it transitions from the sand dune to like this mountainous shape and that is the end of this tutorial hope you guys like it and share it with your friends and family don't know how cool this is

Channel: DDA

Views: 4,516

Keywords: animation, modeling, kbuilding, gstarschool, 3d, 2d, still life, k109 animation, autodesk maya, maya 2016, maya 2017, arnold render, rendering, lighting, texturing, lookdev, mud box, uvmapping, automatic mapping, sofa, couch, pillows, modern, contemporary

Id: hUnWpJQNEGU

Length: 35min 1sec (2101 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017