Realistic Orange

The purpose of this tutorial is to give you an understanding of lighting and texturing as well as a basic understanding of some lofting techniques. I can't stress enough about how important lighting and texturing is when modeling. These two things determine what your picture looks like. Will it look cartoony, or realistic? There aren't many tricks to texturing and lighting. You have to practice, practice, practice. Look at real world objects when modeling to see how the light shines off on object. Observe everything about it.

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1. The Create tab under 3D shapes click Sphere and make a sphere.
2. Go the Modify tab and click the Noise button.
3. Find and click the Fractal check box.
4. Change the X, Y, Z axis to add a bit of noise to your sphere. Oranges aren't perfectly round.

Now for the textures! I created my own by walking to the store and purchasing two nicely shapes and evenly colored oranges. One for cutting, one for eating. I then used a scanner to scan in the orange peel. In Photoshop, I touched up the image to make it seamless. Here it is:

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You may use my texture for the tutorial if you wish.

I also grabbed the top of the orange in case I needed it. (It ended up not really showing up in the render so it may not be necessary, but here it is anyway):

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Here's the BumpMap:

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First you will need to select just the top faces of the sphere.

5. Click the sphere and go to the Modify tab.
6. Click the Sub-Object button and choose Faces.
7. Select the entire orange. It should turn red to signify all faces being selected.
8. Scroll the whole menu on the right down until you reach the Edit Surface menu.

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9. With all the faces selected, change the Material ID to 2.

Also notice the Select by ID button. You can later use this to select face based on their previously assigned material ID.

10. Scroll back up and click the UVW Map button and choose Spherical from the list.
11. Now select just the top faces, like so:

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12. Change the Material ID to 1. Again click the UVW Map button but this time choose Planar under parameters. Later this will make texturing easier.
13. Go to the Material Editor [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

14. Click the button on the right that says Standard.
15. Choose Multi/Sub-Object for the list and hit OK.
16. This allows us to have different textures textures on different faces on the same object. Now, to add the textures to the Material Editor......[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

17. Click Material #2.

The blank boxes/buttons (the one circled has an "M") are where our maps/textures are stored.

18. Click the blank box next to Diffuse.
19. From the list choose Bitmap.

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Now you need to look for another wider blank button that says bitmap next to it, under Bitmap parameters.

20. Click it.
21. Choose the orangetext.jpg I made. Click OK.

You will see a section under Coordinates that says Tiling. You may need to adjust this to get the orangetext.jpg to be the right size on your orange. I set mine to about 2.5

Absolutely make sure you set the material ID!!!

22. You should see a button with a "0" on it. Click it and choose 2 for the orangetext.jpg material. This sets the material ID.
23. Click the back button. It looks like an arrow pointing up. Then click Material #1 and add the texture for the top of the orange. Again click the "0" button and this time choose 1.

Apply the texture using the apply material button[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]. And of course click Sub-Object again to deactivate it.

Now for the stem using Lofting. You can use a cylinder or something else but this will look best.

24. Under Create go to 2d shapes and select circle.
25. Draw a small circle with a radius as wide as you want your stem.
26. Now select line and draw a line as long as you'd like your stem. And curve it a bit.
27. Go to the 3d shapes menu and from the drop down menu choose Loft.
28. You will see a button in that menu that says Get Shape. You should still have the line selected at this point. Click Get Shape.

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The line is your path, and you will be causing the circle you made to follow that path and form an object. You can do this with almost any two 2d shapes.

29. You should now see what looks something like a stem. Like so:

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The way you get the bigger top is like so.....

30. Without deselecting anything, click the Modify tab. Scroll down until you come to Deformations. Click Scale.

You should see a screen like this:

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See the curve in the line? Think of the think black line in the middle (or below my line) as the center of your object (stem). Play around with it. In the material editor make one sphere a dark brown and apply it to the stem.

Now for the leaf.

Again I made my own texture by going out into the yard and picking a leaf from a bush and scanning it in. here it is:

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I'm sorry, I like to use high resolution graphics! Again, you may use this for the tutorial.

You are now going to fake the shape of the leaf by using an opacity map. <DING!>

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I'm sorry, I like to use high resolution graphics! Again, you may use this for the tutorial.

You are now going to fake the shape of the leaf by using an opacity map. <DING!>

In an opacity map, black is TOTALLY transparent. And white is TOTALLY SOLID. Any gray color will be more or less transparent depending on its darkness. The more dark, the more transparent.

31. In the material editor click the blank button next to Diffuse and choose Bitmap. Click the wide blank button next to bitmap. Add realleaf.jpg.
32. Do the same thing, but this time click the blank button next to Opacity and choose realleafopac.jpg. And don't forget to check the 2 sided check box.
33. Now go to the create tab and click the 3d shapes button. From the drop down menu that says Standard Primitives choose Patch Grids.
34. Click Quad Patch and make a patch.
35. Increase the Length and width segments to 4.
36. Go to the material editor. Apply the material to the patch grid.

You may want to toy with adding bend modifiers to the leaf to make it less flat.

37. Move the stem and the patch into position. Place them on the orange where you see fit.

The finished product should look something like this:

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