Tutorial 3 Adding materials to objects - Leaf

The next part of this tutorial was to create a more complicated shape and apply a material to that too.

After downloading the image of the leaf:

I used photoshop to make adjustments to the image.

With the magic wand tool, I set the tolerance to 60 and then clicked on the white background. I then created a new layer and filled the selection with black. For best results, I made sure that the black overlapped the leaf slightly so that there are not any white pixels between the black layer and the leaf using the stroke tool.

I then made a new layer below the current layer and filled it with white.





I saved this image at the same location as the original leaf image.



After creating a new project in 3D Studio Max, I created a plane with 30 lengths and widths in the Perspective Viewport and opened the Material Editor. Similarly to the plank of wood, I imported the image as a bitmap and created a new texture. (see below)

In order to remvoe the white surrounding the leaf, I opened Material Editor again and under the opacity tab, I imported the black and white image which I created in photoshop. Now, the white background is not visible because the black and white image is acting similarly to a Photoshop layer mask.

Like when I created the plank of wood, I used the bump technique to make the leaf look more realistic when it is rendered. After applyin this to the plane, it started to take shape more as a leaf. All I had left to do was modify the polygon's vertices with soft touch on to make it look more rounded.

Then I rendered the image and this is the final result:

This is my image after I rendered it.

This is a close up of my rendered leaf.