Twisted birch tree trunk

[San 0]

How do you make the twists in the trunk ?

I made a trunk like Shivers tree tut explains, it's a cylinder and I used taper/bend/x-form. But I can't get it to twist like the GR-birch.

Or is the trunk made in multiple cylinders ?

And how do you put branches to the trunk, I just move them into the trunk, but how do you 'melt' the parts that come together ?

Tnx in advance.

[Biro 0]

To make the tree twist you can make the trunk with for example 6 hight segments and edit the vertices, just draw them out to different positions and you will have some nice twists.

If you wanna have a smaller trunk that is going out of the main trunk, just make a new cylinder and align it to the main trunk. Edit the vertices on this one in the same way as the main to get some twist on it.

To get the branches on the tree, I usually try to use aling, as this make them really come toghter, then I check my perspective view and see if it looks good.

[deleyt 0]

How do you make the twists in the trunk ?

I made a trunk like Shivers tree tut explains, it's a cylinder and I used taper/bend/x-form. But I can't get it to twist like the GR-birch.

Or is the trunk made in multiple cylinders ?

And how do you put branches to the trunk, I just move them into the trunk, but how do you 'melt' the parts that come together ?

Tnx in advance.

There are a few ways to do it. Here are two:

1) using TWIST-modifier.

Select your cylinder representing your treetrunk.

Click the Modify-tab. Click the "Modifierlist" pulldown-menu.

Select MODIFIER:TWIST

Set the axis to Z (probably already is but just make sure).

Enter a rotation angle in the angle-textbox.

Enter a bias (the bias causes to make the twist concentrate more to the top or the bottom of the trunk, it sorta squashes it)

There's also an effect-limiter that can be applied to it..just play the settings if you need that. You probably won't be needing the limiter or the bias tho.

FYI: the bias and the limiter will not work if you use only 1 heightsegment.

If you want to use them you have to set more heightsegments, which in turn will produce more polygons aswell, so be carefull with the heightsegments.).

2) Using vertex manipulation.

Select your cylinder representing your treetrunk.

Click the Modify-tab. Click the "Modifierlist" pulldown-menu.

Select MODIFIER:EDIT MESH

Go into subobject-editing by selecting the vertex-icon in the rollout-tab (looks like 3 dots). Vertices will appear on your cylinder

Select the vertices that are located at the top of your cylinder (should be 5 vertices with a 4 sided cylinder).

Click the ROTATION-button in the top iconbar.

You can now rotate the vertices (using the Z-axis) to make the twist you are looking for.

The best twist-effect can be achieved with a 4-5 sided cylinder. If you add more sides, the twist will be less noticable because the edges are not as sharp.

Your second question: melting the parts together.

You do that with the BOOLEAN operator. It merges two objects into one (BOOLEAN can do more then just merge ofcourse).

Move the branch on the spot where you want to have it sit on the treetrunk.

Select the treetrunk.

Select the CREATE-tab. Click the "standard primitives"-pulldownmenu and select "compound objects".

Click "Boolean" that's displayed in the menu. A new roll-out menu appears.

Set the "Pick Boolean" radiobutton to "move" (at default it is already set to "move")

Set the radiobutton in the Operation-section to "Union"

In the Pickboolean-section click the "PICK OPERAND B"-button and select your branch-object.

There you go..you just "melted" two objects together.

FYI: If you already applied materials to the objects, you will get a dialog-box asking you how the materials should be treated during the operation. Select your preference and the boolean is completed.

D.

[shiver 0]

just to expand on deleyt's very detailed help, regarding the boolean part of the operation,

you can do this with textured objects. I did it with a tree that was already textured and took

a smaller tree that was textured and booleaned it to the larger tree. It worked fine.

edit: When I say tree I mean trunk, I didn't boolean anything that was grouped.

Edited August 10, 2003 by shiver

[San 0]

Great help, thanks guys.

deleyt's post is like a tutorial, TY