For the group project, I was asked to model a Flower.
My idea was to create a psychedelic flower to match the vision of the project. So I started with a primitive polygon by modifying its vertexes to make it looks like a proper petal. Then I copied it many times as needed with duplicate special.
Later I modeled the pistils in different shapes.
The difficult part was regarding the forked pistils. However, I used a primitive cylinder and the edge tool to cut the top face in half. Now I could extrude both faces to create the fork shape I was after.
Next, I wanted to sculpt the petals so I used the grab tool to mold the details to make it look realistic.
In order to rig the flower, I used the Bind skin tool to combine the mesh with the joints. However, the procedure was inefficient, as it would make the render time longer, in addition to this I had problems with the texture. I created a texture map in Photoshop to replicate the colors I wanted for the flower, then I used a UV snapshot of each petal and combined the two in Maya. This was inefficient as I should have created a single texture map for all of the petals, again affecting the render time.
With this in mind, I wanted to restart the petals. I recreated another primitive polygon and ensured all the history was deleted. I animated the petal using Blend Shapes, to recreate the bloom of the flower.
Finally, I redid the texture map in Photoshop, in order to fit all the petals onto it. Once happy with that, I needed to light the scene for compositing. I used a sky-dome light and imported a screenshot from our footage in order to create the right lighting conditions.
Final
Since the texture was quite messy I decided to change it again. However one pistil’s texture was not read as well as the shape editor used for the petals.