Topiary, for any non-English speakers, is the art of grooming bushes and plants to develop and maintain specific shapes. As it turns out, you don't actually need plants for it - you can do it right inside Blender %^). Kent Tramell teaches you how in this new CG Cookie lesson.
Kent writes:
My goal was to construct a topiary that A) looked appealing and B) accurately represented the structure of its real world counterpart. Here’s how the course breaks down:
- Lesson 1: The IvyGen addon is an excellent tool for quickly generating vines and it plays a crucial role in this course. In the first lesson we’ll overview the addon and all of its settings.
- Lesson 2: Following the overview, we’ll apply what we’ve learned about IvyGen to generate the underlying branch network of our topiary structure according to a guide mesh.
- Lesson 3: Lastly we will use Blender’s particle hair tools to grow an outer shell of leaves. Then we’ll apply some simple Cycles materials and lighting for a finished topiary render.
Enjoy, and please do share your results!
Link
6 Comments
Looks like another excellent and useful tutorial by one of my favorites. I really hope I get the time to look at this. Thanks Kent for the amazing tuts you produce!
Thanks, 8 bit!
This tutorial is REALLY great! Highly recommend it to all users of Blender, from the beginner to the middle level surely. Thank you, Kent!
Thanks for watching, Kirill :)
I really love Kent. His tutorials are excellent and well narrated. If he was a voice over the radio I would fall in love lol (plus learning a ton of things).
Haha I hate hearing myself recorded. Thanks for the encouragement!