Creating the Palm Plant by Aziz Khan, Afghanistan

Hey guys, in this tutorial we will learn how to create palm plant with its plant pot, first we will model the plant pot and then set up the leaves and the textures,  I found the texture from google search this was the perfect one to start with, at the end of this tutorial you will be able to create any kind of opacity based plants, to start this tutorial you should have intermediate knowledge of 3ds max, and also you will be needing these textures or you are more than welcome to use your owns, download the textures from here so lets get started.

1- Launch 3ds max and start your way with a cylinder the settings are shown on the image below, you would be needing extra edges to shape this vase.

2- Now convert the cylinder to editable poly, and then shape it as showing on the image below.

3- select the top face and then use your inset operation to give it a thickness.

4- and now use the bevel operation to shape it something like on the image showing.

5- to create the mud surface of the pot still with the top face selected hold shift and move up in the z axis and then chose Clone to Object operation hit ok, this will give you an independent polygon which we can use it as out pot mud surface, scale it to fit the gap.

6- for the moment we are done with the plant pot, it's time to create the leaves, open the provided diffuse map in Photoshop or any other Photo editing software to get the dimension for overall leaf size, as you can see in the image below.

7- since we got the exact dimensions for the leaf size its time to create it inside 3ds max, so create a plane with the same dimensions later on once we fixed the textures then you can scale the size of the leafs for different small and big sizes.

8- Now apply the textures as I am providing to you on the link on the first page, a bit later I will show you briefly how to create the textures I have created here. If you apply the textures you can see the branch is very small and tiny, not like the one we see on the real life plants, we will fix fix this next.

9- Convert the plane to editable poly and then go to vertex mode, start pushing the vertices to top as image showing below to create the desired shape, and then add few extra edges along the way indicated in red, this will help us to bend the leaf smoothly.

10- Deselected it and now you should have something like the image showing below.

11- Before bending the leaf its necessary to move its pivot point to the bottom side to keep the branches in one place, nice and neat.

Note: in the image below the pivot point is not in the bottom you should move yours down right to bottom of the leaf branch.

12- Select the 2 side vertices and move them forward to achieve the curved shape, as image showing below.

13- Once you are done, select the leaf and apply bend modifier, follow along the image.

14- It's time to clone the leafs to do so go to Tools >> Array.

15- From the option box choose the settings you want to have, set the number of leaves you want, when I did this array operation I was in the top view port, as you can see I indicated the Z axis and the incremental value of 90 in the Z axis, before doing this operation make sure you are in the right view port to array or selected the right option.

16- and now you should have something like this.

17- Now use your scale tool and start scaling them in different shapes as the image showing below.

18- Let's import the vase or plant pot see how it will be looking in it.

19- Merge the plant pot with the existing scene and combine them together, you should have something like this.

20- with all these setup it’s time to start working on the textures, first I would like to start with the normal maps which is getting popular nowadays, and its widely used alternative to bump maps for its awesome details, to create normal maps we have 2 options.

1- Nvidia normal filter plug-in for Photoshop, which is free and you can download it from the Nvidia website.

2- GIMP which is also a great and free cool software, can be downloaded at www.gimp.org when you downloaded GIMP don't forget to download its normal map plug-in on their website which is also free.

Now you might be thinking which one to use, well basically I liked GIMP because it gives me sharper results than Nvidia filter, if you want to create smoother bump maps use an

Nvidia filter if you want to have sharper maps then use GIMP, in this case I will be using GIPM for normal maps and Photoshop for other maps like opacity, specular etc.

21- Open up GIMP import diffuse image which is supplied with this tut or you can use your own, and then apply normal map filter from the filter list.

22- Use these setting on the image below, or you can experiment with your own settings.

23- Export your map from the file menu and save it, here is the comparison between 2 filters.

24- We are done with normal mapping, its time to create the other maps, open up your version of Photoshop import the diffuse map supplied along this tutorial, with the magic tool select all the white background and hit delete

25- Fill the background with the white color by adding new layer underneath with the paint bucket tool, and fill the leaf shape with white color as same you did with background, save it as opacity.

26- Let’s create the specular map, again with the same diffuse map selected from the image menu in Photoshop select Black and White option and follow along the image below.

27- Delete the background and fill it with the a lighter color of the same color, as you can see on the image below.

28- Set the textures to appropriate slots and apply it to the leafs, now you should have something like the image below.

29- Select the plant pot, add your texture and then add UVW Map set it as box in the last add a mesh smooth modifier with iteration of 2 for the moment you should have something like the image below.

so here are the final renders.

final wired frame

Final 1

Final 2

Here we have finished the tutorial now on you will be able to work with your own plants, this is useful if you are into architectural visualization, if you got any question or feedback please feel free to shoot me an e-mail to aziz3d@hotmail.co.uk , have a happy tweeting, Aziz Khan