How to Create Leaves (Alpha Plant) in Maya 2017

hey guys this is Monica academic Phoenix plus and today I wanted to show you how to create NASA plant as you can imagine trees and plants take a lot of geometry but in the industry that use alpha maps to give you a sense that a plant exists if you guys want to download this tutorial you're more than welcome to I have the files and source images at academic Phoenix plus com the first thing I'd like to do is create a pot so I'm going to go ahead and go to my front view I'm going to go to create curve tools EP curve tool and I'm just going to make myself a quick little pot I'm going to go ahead and just kind of drag a little get all the six out of a second and let me go along here a little base and end it here press Enter go to right-click control vertices you can go ahead and tweak the vertices so it's not set in stone so don't just don't hesitate about grabbing these vertices and kind of tweaking it a little bit more just making sure that it looks a little bit more rounded right-click object mode let's go to the main area now might have evolved this the key to revolving is that I'm working on the center of the grid and my curve actually goes around it so over here under surfaces we're going to go to revolve and this is my pot so now the other challenge though is that right now this is an herb so I'm going to convert it modify convert NURBS to polygon options just make sure control point is selected and then tessellate okay you can see that at this time this is what it looks like if I press three it looks more like its companion here by the way this can still be influenced so if you wanted to make some changes to the curve or anything you still can I'm going to go ahead and convert my normals because right now they're going the wrong way I'm going to go to mesh display reverse there we go that looks better so now I can go to the curve let me hide this one actually there we go right-click control vertex and the fun thing is that this is still being manipulated by the curve itself so you can still tweak it once you delete the history though it becomes permanent so just be very careful about that so it's up to you if you want to keep tweaking it and just go ahead and just make it a little bit more realistic let's go ahead and go to object mode now if I want to keep this permanent I go to edit delete by type history now when I manipulate the curve it's not going to be effective because I deleted a connection I'm going to hide it just in case I need it back and bring this up a little bit okay so this is going to be my potted plant so next I'm going to create stem so that there's actually something to put the leaves on this is just a regular cylinder I'm going to go to my inputs and increase my height give myself a little bit of geometry I think it's a little high probably on the subdivision axis I'm going to drop that down to 12 and yeah I mean it's organic so just kind of make sure that you move things around a little bit so it looks organic you know it's it's on all directions just make sure you're manipulated in different directions so that it looks a little bit more custom you just want to make sure that it actually is flawed that's what makes it real when it's flawed but I'm going to cover this with leaves so I'm just going to go ahead and leave it like that edit delete by type history modify freeze transformations and I go ahead and save before something terrible happens to my scene so let's get to the fun part so what I really want to do is create leaves using alpha Maps I'm going to grab a plane and I'm going to scale it I'm going to make it a little bit longer I also like to reduce the geometry to 1 so subdivision with an hi to 1 let's see edit delete by type history modify freeze transformations so you v's planner map options we're going to use a y-axis because it's going up and down make sure they keep image width and the height ratio is on and apply let's take a look at our UV s go to object mode turn it again object mode alright so we have our UV this isn't a zero to one space 0 to 1 0 to 1 and let's go ahead and export it let's go to image UV snapshot it's really important that you always set your project already set mine so I know that it's going to put it in my images so this is going to be my leaf EB step 20:48 it's a little high I'm going to go to 1024 probably that's too high too but we'll just it like that we can always reduce it make sure it's a tiff and click ok let's go to photoshop alright so now I'm going to go to images and open up my UV snap here's my UV snap and the first thing I always do is go to channels and delete the alpha-1 because I don't need transparencies I'm going to make my own here's my layers I double click on this and change this to UV snaps so I know this is my UV snap create a new layer bring that underneath and I also like to change this to screen just take a look at my previous tutorials on how to texture and this shows you how to actually texture this is kind of like a more advanced lesson so just keep that in mind that I'm just going to fly if it is a little bit ok so we change this to screen so what screen does is is if I paint on this you can actually see underneath the UV snap looks let me undo that there you go now we'll lock it select this - these are the areas that you're not going to see I like to make sure that I cover it in grey so I know that I'm not going to use it so modify contract I usually use 10 pixels and then I create a new one and I'm going to use 50% gray that was a shift backspace 50% gray this is going to be called my border alright so that lets me know that this is no one's going to see this aspect of it keeps it nice and solid no extra information and this is where all the magic happens alright now I already have a leaf so I'm going to go ahead and grab the leaf here this is a PNG so it has transparencies let's go ahead and control a control C control V control T you guys get all that now the tricky part is how do we make sure that transparencies get seen so when you're working with alpha maps you've got to make sure that there's a little bit of a border between heat between the actual leaf and the background or the reason why is because when it has this anti-alias that can cause for problems so what I usually do for my background layer is shift backspace then I use my foreground click okay and you can see that there's a little bit of a green line it's actually your entire Lea so if I scroll in here you're going to see that it's a little bit of a white and that's a little white dot and that's actually Photoshop trying to help you kind of blend things together naturally but unfortunately when we're trying to do alpha maps we don't want that blend select my leaf so ctrl click on this little thumbnail select my by contract and probably just one pixel in a contract and then I'm going to delete it oops ctrl shift I which is invert and then delete it should hopefully get rid of most of the anti-alias all right let's say that we want to make an alpha map let's go ahead and ctrl click on this little thumbnail let's go to channels and this is little button right here we're going to click on that that's going to create an alpha map for us automatically so that's really convenient okay I'm happy with that let's go ahead and save we can always change it that's what we keep layers let me see that as a PSD actually so I have my layers because I am going to flatten it layer flatten image yes for discarding and ctrl shift s and then go to Tiff's again I'd like Tiff's it's going to replace this one that's ok click yes and ok let's go back to Maya right click assign new material I'm going to use a Lambert for now I can always convert it let's go to my Lambert 2 this is going to be my leaf I'm going to go to color file and it automatically goes to source images so I should have control shift s save this into my source images here's my leaf color I'm going to turn off layers save okay let's go back to Maya there's great person number 6 if it has an alpha map it automatically grabs it into the transparencies which is great now let's say you want to use the AI standard material so instead of a Lambert let's use some more advanced one or the new one for Maya 2017 which is there Arnold shader okay here's a little troubleshooting guys notice that my Arnold is missing here it could be multiple ways why my Arnold just kind of disappeared but it's really easy to turn it on Windows settings the Preferences plugin manager and I have to scroll down until I see this thing called MTO a which is Maya - Arnold go ahead and load that assign a new material here's the Arnold just like that and let's grab the AI standard alright so we have this little guy right here I'm going to edit delete my history here I'll just want my tabs to be smaller let's go to color you see how it's diffuse color click on the little checkered go to file go to the little folder and right away you can see the difference between a Lambert and the AI standard you can see that it doesn't connect to the transparency right away very similar to a lot of other 3d packages we actually have to create a separate map for an for transparency and I already have one and it's right here this is what we need pretty simple to to make this I'm going to go back here what I'm going to do is double click on my layer two I'm going to use color overlay and I'm going to change this to white layer one click on D on your keyboard to go to default shift backspace foreground color click OK that's going to turn it black and go ahead and get rid of my border and there you go easy peasy ctrl shift s I'm going to save this as a PSD for now this is going to be my alpha and then of course I'm going to go to my source images make sure this is a tiff leave alpha no layers save looking right going back to Maya now under the AI standard I'm going to go ahead and collapse everything what I'm looking for is actually refraction and you can see that there's an opacity let's go ahead and click on that little folder go to file and then grab our leaf alpha you're going to notice that nothing seems to have changed let's go to Arnold and go ahead and render it out this is what happens with Arnold you can't see anything so let's create some lights so create lights I'm going to use two directional lights usually when I light I usually just go one way this direction really fast lighting like just so I can see what's going on another direction and maybe just reduce this a little bit the intensity can be a little heavy because there's two directional lights so let's go ahead and reduce that and now when we go to Arnold and render which is over here you can see the leaf now that I place it on the environment you can see that it's black your might be asking well what happened they have a map we seem to have done everything right what's interesting about Arnold is it's actually a very sophisticated shader so let's go ahead and select this guy right here so we're going to go to our shape notes right here there is an Arnold tab right here so we'll open that up and then you see how this is a big turn that off right away you can see the difference there's the let me look just so you guys can see it there it is now you can see that the plant now is transparent so perfect I'm going to shift insert edgeloop tool' just I'm going to clean up my best just a little bit so cleaned us up by adding a couple of edges like that that one delete select that one and delete and I'm also going to move my pivot point over here so it's going to make it easier for me to place it then I'm going to scale it down because it's tiny it's a leaf after all I'm snapping it so V middle mouse snap so let's take a look at what it looks like just one sad looking leaf but that's okay we're going to make a bunch another thing is that this is really flat so shift right click insert edge loop tool and I actually like to give it a little bit of depth just a little bit just give it a little bit of depth it's going to make a big difference I add another one just maybe grab some vertices move this up maybe just to the left a little bit just give it a little bit of may not seem like much but it's going to look a little bit more realistic so how to duplicate this ctrl D rotate I have you know leaves are different sizes and scales so I always recommend that you you know make it different scales you know like just kind of create a little a little bundle of leaf make sure again that they're rotated in different directions ctrl D I'm literally just ctrl D away duplicate duplicate duplicate and then scale them several directions and of course you want to kind of take a look at it and see how does it look and you can see that I'm get starting to get a bunch of leaves I also like to ctrl D and I'm going to rotate these and it's fun because they still you can see that automatically I'm going to get different locations that's going to be really helpful I so start placing these up and down the branch so I'm going to move this down a little bit maybe scale it a little bit ctrl D go up to start going up the tree and it's going to take me forever so I'm going to go ahead and so like this duplicate move it up over to the side make sure everything's somewhat matching again just kind of rotate things around rotate it and you just continue that until you have a and this potted plant needs a pot so let me assign material this is going to be an AI standard click on this and I already have a texture so I'm going to go ahead and open it and right away you can see that this isn't really working and part of it is because of the UVs I don't like it I'm going to go to you V's from the local mapping and now already it's looking significantly better so actually very much happier with that so now I have this nice little potted plant I'm going to give it this some dirt so I'm going to grab this I'm going to select that and I'm going to grab these guys let's just double click shift double click UV planar mapping options from the Y apply alright assign any material I'm going to create a new material this is going to be dirt so Arnold AI standard it's going to be dirt again I like to label everything dirt grab this file grab that and already have a texture for dirt so let me find it there it is open so at least now that's going to look a little bit more like soil which is going to sell it a little bit more like that not too shabby not bad the whole purpose of this tutorial was to kind of show you really fast how to create alpha jelly in Arnold it's a new process compared to mental ray and there's a couple places I could tweak I can go into Photoshop and tweak it now so let's go back to here let me open up my leaf that I was working with my working file is in images so I'm going to go ahead and grab my leaf color so let me ctrl click that select modify contract let me do two pixels this time ctrl shift I delete so that's going to look a lot better and I go ahead and save ctrl shift s I'm going to go to my source images and change this into a tiff and I'm going to replace this one no layers save yes okay up they don't like it that's okay control shift s source images and this is going to be my TIFF and I'm going to say color too just to make my life easier no layers save okay go back here click on our little leaf leave standard click on this the diffuse and grab that it refreshes everything and now with this looks a lot better just a couple other things we could add to this we can add bump map we can add specularity masks we can do a lot more to this item but that was just a really quick introduction on how to create transparencies in Arnolds and also how to create a plant very very quickly I hope you found this useful and thank you so much for listening i truly appreciate it please subscribe to my channel share my tutorials with your friends and let me know what i can do to make your heart stronger alright I will see you next time

Channel: Academic Phoenix Plus

Views: 69,168

Rating: 4.9003892 out of 5

Keywords: How to, Create leaves, create alphas, create plant, plant, leaves, maya 2017, autodesk maya, arnold, arnold renderer, diffuse, curve, 3d model, cg model, 3d artist, 3d art, cg art, cg artist, photoshop, adobe photoshop, attributes, transparency, opaque, alpha, cg paint, layers, Photoshop 2017, Photoshop CC

Id: 1xvfeFInNuM

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2017