Creating Leaves and Reflection Tools

Creating a leaf is reasonably straight foreward using 3d max, the hard part is using adobe photoshop beforehand. serveral layers need to be created one of which is filled with black, this is the outside of the leaf, and white, inside of the leaf. The orginal leaf image is then imported into 3d max so that the colour and shape can be put into the editor. Once a plane is drawn the orginal image can be placed on the planealong with the edited photoshop versions which mask out the whiteness of the images.

The image can then be shaped to look like a proper leaf. Once one leaf has been created it is very easy to make more.

Another tool that will be very useful is the reflecton tool. First you just pick a shape, in this case a torus knot and open the editor once the shape has been created. Next give the shape a dark colour and then choose the map option.

Here to can give the shape a map image, similar to the leaf, a picture of manhattan skyline was chosen, so when the image is rendered it has a shiny look to it.

This will be a very useful technique whe it comes to creating the james bond car, as most cars have a shiny glossy look to them.