Foliage VFX: Week 1 Thursday

On Thursday, I started working on the tree sculpt. I specifically wanted this part to be sculpted because it was going to be the centrepiece of the plinth and is obviously more shapely than the rest of the foliage. Combining both reference images together, I focused on using one of the references for the roots, as I had to consider how the plants would fit around the tree to match the concept, and the other for the rest of the tree. I decided to use zspheres as they allowed for flexible, snake like branches, keeping to 2 subtools so that I could separate areas and make the sculpting process easier to keep clean and neat later on:

During this process I modelled the tree over the top of the concept images to make sure the branches aligned, then later made adjustments to ensure that the tree wouldn't look flat, as I had the issue of only having one view to work from in the concept image. I had to line up the tree with the concept image several times and settle with some slight changes to ensure that the tree would look good from more than one angle.