Good flower pedal modeling tutorial?

[Brian@Premier]

I am looking for a good flower pedal (rose, sunflower, etc) modeling tutorial.

I have brought a PNG image in as a component to use as a texture and started making components from vectors I created around the pedals themselves. Not sure if I am on the right track or if there is an easier way. I did quite a bit of photo manipulation before bringing it in to save a little time (actually didn't look too bad just on the import I have only done one pedal at this point...

I would like to see how others do this just for pointers/other methods. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Also, is there a way to preserve the transparency of the background when bringing in an image for component creation? On this example, the entire background was transparent before importing. I would like to create a boundary vector but just of the flower - not a square boundary of the entire photo.

Brian

[Adrian]

You can use the Trace Bitmap tool to create the vectors for a component like that.

Select the component in the 2D window, click the Trace Bitmap icon and set it to colour.

Select all the colours shown in the box apart from the green one and the background one. You're looking to make the part you want to trace red in the 2D window.

Click preview and then apply and you'll have a perfectly fitting vector boundary.

[mezalick]

Brian,
There are many levels of what could be an acceptable model.
Some are quick and easy, like using the Trace Bitmap and others are more intensive like creating each petal as a separate component.
It’s up to you to decide to what end you want to go.
For a middle of the road approach, you could do a bit of both as you have detailed.
Trace Bitmap and cut apart that component, but instead of creating each new petal I would look for petals that could be copied , flipping some and distorting others.
A little sculpting will also help to create unique petals.
You only need a few really good petals to create a nice finished product.
If it was easy, anyone could do it..
Adrian is correct in an easy way to create the vector boundary because to my understanding the transparency option can not be applied here.

Take your time, in the end you will have a quality piece.

Michael

[JamesB]

Brian - sage advice as normal from Michael and Adrian. I would suggest that the techniques shown in tutorial "E04 - Trout" on the Aspire disk and on this page http://support.vectric.com/tut-aspire-3d-core would be applicable to that artwork - its obviously not a fish but the concept of using a texture and "laying" that over your own modeled components is the same.

Cheers,
James

[CharlieP]

With the good quality of the sample image, I would probably increase the contrast of the image and then turn the whole thing into a component and add a small base to raise it up.

If I was to do it from scratch or a lower quality image I would follow the advice already given in this post!

[Brian@Premier]

Thank you Adrian, Michael, James and Charlie,
Just to be clear - I'm not looking for "easy" - I love the practice (and need a lot of it)! Just curious how others would tackle this same model... You have all given me great direction and some different ideas that I had not thought of. Thanks again for all your help and happy Aspiring

Looking forward to the user group meeting in October.

-Brian