I need to select the object and go to Modify->Convert->Paint effects to Polygons to do this.Īfter converting, the object is now a polygon mesh.Īlso, while the construction history is not deleted, the mesh can be modified by modifying the brush stroke attributes. By reading the documentation further, I find out that indeed this geometry can be simply converted into polygons. This means that I need to find a solution for this, to convert them into objects that can be rendered in mental ray. To find out if this could be an issue, I am looking through the Maya documentation that states the following: Paint Effects strokes are not supported by the mental ray for Maya renderer. At first, I encounter a problem, because it seems that the geometry, which is created with paint effects, cannot be rendered with mental ray. Here is a render of a few trees, it is rendered by Maya default rendering engine.Īfter rendering with Maya, I decided to try and see what they would look like when rendered with mental ray renderer. My first conclusions are that these trees would be good to use in the background, the only concern is the high polygon count, and I am going to try solving this issue. Apparently, such effects as turbulence can be used to create animation for the branches, for example, to simulate wind.
Then I learned that these brushes have attributes that can be altered to create more diverse looks, and a few of them has been applied, scale, gravity etc. The first impressions about the Paint Effects method is that it is very easy to use, however, the polygon count is very high, and the trees are quite standard looking. I have experimented with some of the trees, by selecting them and then painting on the scene. After trying out a few random brushes, I opened the Visor panel that had all the brushes and more than a dozen of different trees in the tree folder. I am also going to investigate other potential methods as well, for example, using a MEL script in Maya.įor the purpose of finding the best ways of creating the trees I am going to begin the research by experimenting with Maya Paint Effects, and determine whether this could end up being one of the methods to use.įirst, I had to gain an understanding of the Paint Effects and how they work, and therefore I began by going through a tutorial about it, available in Maya Help documentation. Then I am going to look into ZSpheres, and a possibility of creating basic tree meshes this way. To begin with, I am going to look into the Maya Paint Effects and experiment with it and try to find out if this method would be useful in my project. There are a few other options, rather than modeling from scratch in Maya. I am going to analyze various possible texturing methods later during the project. Another option for the tree texture that might be better though (more economical by using smaller texture) is to create a high quality tile-able tree bark texture, and use it as a colour map, and to create a normal map of it in Photoshop using a little plug-in called nDo. Also, the tree bark texture could be created with a specifically made alpha brush, and then baked into a normal map. Then I can import these basic meshes, created in Maya, into ZBrush to create more natural geometry deformations using various sculpting tools that are available in ZBrush. The image below shows a few tree meshes created in Maya. One of them is to begin with polygon modeling in Maya, and I have already tried to create a few basic meshes by simple extruding functions. I have a few different approaches in mind for the tree modeling. There is a possibility that more than one of these methods might become useful because the trees in the scene have various purposes some of them are far away in the background, and some are in close up shots, and that means that some of the trees needs to be quite basic, mostly for the purpose of showing a silhouette of the tree, and some of the trees have to be quite detailed for close up shots. Before starting the actual modeling process of the different trees in the scene, I am going to research into various methods that can be used, to learn more about ways of creating trees, and experiment with them to decide whether these methods would be suitable for my project.