Using the Split Polygon tool, start cutting in geometry in the path and shape of the leaf veins. You can also cut in geometry to help with bending later. Figure 2.4 demonstrates what I mean.

Once you are finished cutting, you can select the faces that make up the veins of the leaf, but deselect the faces that are on the very ends of the veins where they merge into the tips of the leaf. Apply an extrude command and pull the veins out slightly.

The reason for not extruding the faces at the tips of the veins is that you want the vein geometry to blend back into the main leaf mesh. You can do this easily at the ends of the veins in the next step.

Select and delete the two faces on the end of each extruded vein. Then, use Edit Mesh → Append to Polygon Tool to close the gaps between them, as portrayed in Figure 2.5. You can also reference the video supplement on the DVD for more details regarding this step.

When all of the veins are sufficiently blended, select the edges of each vein and apply a Bevel to them with an Offset of approximately 0.6.

The Select Edge Loop tool, which you can find in the Select menu, can help select the vein's edges quickly. With the tool active, simply double-click an edge, and the entire loop of edges will be added to your selection.

Figure 2.4. Cutting in the veins and folding detail

Figure 2.5. Blending the veins into the leaf geometry

Now you'll bend the leaf geometry to make it not so cardboard-rigid and straight. First change your menu sets from Polygons to Animation (either through the interface or by using the F2 shortcut key). Deformers are under the Animation menu set.

With the leaf mesh selected, select Create Deformers → Lattice. You'll see a wire box appear around your leaf.

The lattice deformer simply modifies a large number of points using a cage of fewer points. This helps by making large changes to a high-resolution mesh much easier to manage.

After applying the lattice, in the Channel Box on the right, change the following settings, which are found under the Shape node named ffd1LatticeShape: S Divisions: 2; T Divisions: 4; U Divisions: 5. This gives you a better density of lattice points to work with based on the shape of the leaf.

Right-click the lattice and select Lattice Point from the marking menu that appears to activate component mode and gain access to the lattice's points. Manipulate the lattice points to bend the leaf into a concave shape like in Figure 2.6.

Figure 2.6. Deforming the leaf into a concave shape

Delete the history of the leaf (Edit → Delete by Type → History in case you have forgotten). Deleting the history removes and bakes in the changes made to the leaf by the lattice deformer (as well as all previous modeling operations, if you haven't deleted the history before now).

With the leaf still selected, return to the Polygons menu set (F3) and select Normals → Soften Edge. If your leaf is like mine, you'll probably notice it become covered in dark splotchy colors. This is because you need to adjust just how soft you want the leaf's normals to be.

After applying the Soften Edge command, click the polySoftEdge1 Input in the Channel Box to access the Soften Edge command's options. Change the Angle setting to about 80 degrees, or whatever value works best on your model. The goal is to remove the majority of the splotches, yet avoid obvious hard edges in your model.

Rename your model HiLeaf.

Create a polygon plane by going to Create → Polygon Primitives → Plane. Switch to the Side view to view the leaf head-on and left-click and drag to create the plane surrounding the area the leaf is within (Figure 2.7).

In the Perspective view, move the plane forward until it is completely in front of the leaf, with none of the leaf's parts intersecting it. In my case, I moved it forward about 8.1 units. Rename the plane Leaf.

Click the polyPlane Input options in the Channel Box and make sure that the Create UVs setting is set to Normalization Off.

You also will want to ensure that the plane's surface normal is pointing to the front, or away from the HiLeaf mesh. You can check this by selecting the Leaf plane and going to Display → Polygons → Face Normals. This will make the green line that represents the normal direction of the plane's face appear.

If it's pointing the opposite direction, select Normals → Reverse. Otherwise, click the Face Normals display command again to turn it off.

Now you're ready to start generating some texture sources. Switch your menu set from Polygons to Rendering. Then, with the Leaf plane selected, select Lighting/Shading → Transfer Maps.

In the Transfer Maps dialog box that opens, make sure that you slide your Search envelope percentage down to 0, if it's not already.

Select the HiLeaf mesh and load it into Source Meshes. You'll notice that your Leaf plane is automatically loaded into Target Meshes since it was selected when the Transfer Maps options were opened.

In Photoshop, open your Leaf_Normal_source.tga file. Copy its background layer by dragging it onto the Create New Layer button at the bottom-right side of the Layer palette. Rename this copied layer SmoothDetails.

With this new layer selected, select Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur.

Adjust the Gaussian Blur settings to blur the layer by 4.5 pixels. Now the normal is definitely softened, but maybe a bit too much in most areas. Why not make the blur effect take effect only where it's needed rather than all over the whole thing?

With the SmoothDetails layer still selected, click the Add Layer Mask button on the bottom row of buttons on the Layer palette.

A layer mask is a grayscale image that is associated with a particular layer in Photoshop and acts as an opacity map: Where a layer mask is colored black, the layer is invisible; where a layer mask is colored white, the layer is visible. To apply white or black coloring to a layer mask, you have to make sure you select the mask, represented on the layer as a second preview thumbnail.

Select the layer mask and fill it with black, making it entirely invisible.

Then, with the mask still selected, start painting in white over areas that need to be softened. Make sure you are using a soft-edged brush. You want to remove unnatural hard edges that are visible in the normal map.

To soften the blend between the harder edges of the leaf's vein into the surface of the leaf, you'll change the opacity of your brush's painting strength. With the paintbrush tool still selected, at the top of the Photoshop interface, change the Opacity value from its default 100 percent to 50 percent.

First, paint over all of the veins with white using the 50 percent opacity brush. This will make the veins have a softer appearance once the normal map is applied in Maya.

Change your color to black and paint over the ends of the veins, softly blending them into the main surface of the leaf. In Figure 2.9, you can see my final layer mask and resulting normal map.

Open the Normal_Source.tga file again, if you don't still have it open from the previous step.

Select the Magic Wand tool (you can press W on the keyboard). With the tool active, at the top of the screen, change the Tolerance value to 0.

Select the original normal source layer (not the softened one) and click anywhere outside the leaf.

The Magic Wand tool selects pixels of similar hue values. The Tolerance setting adjusts how exact the hue value has to be for it to be selected. With the tolerance set to 0, you're telling it to select only the specific color of the pixels you click. In this case, the tool will select the entire area outside of the leaf on the normal map. This is the perfect selection with which to create your opacity map.

With the region outside the leaf selected, create a new layer and fill the selection with black. Press Ctrl+D to deselect.

Create a new layer and fill the entire layer with white. Move this new layer to be beneath the previous one. Select the black layer and press Ctrl+E to Merge Down with the white layer beneath it. The result gives you a new layer that contains a white silhouette of the leaf with a black background. This is your opacity map!

Save the resulting black and white image as Leaf_Opacity_source.tga.

Select the leaf plane and press the Insert key on your keyboard. This toggles Edit Pivot mode. Move the plane's pivot point to about where you would expect the leaf to meet a vine—where all of the veins converge in the middle. Press Insert again to exit Edit Pivot mode.

With the pivot moved to where the leaf would meet its vine, you can more easily position and rotate the leaf when you have the vine mesh completed.

In the Side view, select Create → CV Curve Tool. By left-clicking, create a curve that will represent the path of your vine. You can see mine in Figure 2.11.

Shrink your leaf to be a correct shape next to the curve, as if the curve was the vine the leaf had grown from. I shrunk mine down about 0.2 percent from its original shape, but the amount you scale it will depend on how big your leaf originally was compared to how big your curve is.

Curve snap (hold the C key and middle mouse button, and click and drag on the curve) the leaf to the curve. Because your pivot point was moved to be at its connection point, the leaf will run along the curve at the correct position to represent the idea that it had grown from the vine.

Duplicate the leaf and position the new leaf on the vine. Rotate the leaves to point downward and to point in different directions so they aren't all uniform. Scale the leaves so that they begin larger near the top of the vine and shrink to be much smaller near the vine's tip.

Create another curve and curve snap the first point to the first curve before creating the rest of it. This way, the new curve looks like it is a branch growing off the vine.

Figure 2.11. The path of my vine

Continue placing ivy leaves on both curves. Eventually, you should have something like Figure 2.12.

Figure 2.12. The ivy leaves positioned on the curve

Select Create → NURBS Primitives → Circle. Click and drag to draw a small circle approximately the diameter of the vine you want. Mine had a radius of about 0.75.

Under the makeNurbCircle1 Inputs in the Channel Box, change the number of Sections to 4.

Select the circle and Shift+select the main curve that makes up the long vine. Change your menu set to Surfaces. The Surfaces menu set contains menu commands that mostly relate to working with curves and NURBS surfaces. Select Surfaces → Extrude → Options.

Make the following changes:

Click the Extrude button. A polygon tube should be created, running along the pathway of the curve you had drawn. Repeat the extrude step for the smaller vine's curve, creating a tube for it as well. You should have a result similar to Figure 2.13.

Take the opportunity to adjust the vines' shape by manipulating the Curve Points on your vine curves. When you're happy with the shapes, select both pieces of vine geometry and delete their history.

Go back to the Polygons menu set. Select the vertices at the tip of one of the vine meshes and select Edit Mesh → Merge To Center. This will combine and collapse the vertices together to make the end of the vine into a point. Do the same for the tip of the other vine section.

Select the row of vertices next to the tip on one of the vines and scale them in. Select the next row and scale them in slightly less. Select the next row of vertices and scale them in even less. Continue until you have tapered the ends of both vines, making them look like they are thick near the top and become thinner as the vine grows near its tip. You can make the top, or base, of the vine thicker if you need to.

Figure 2.13. The vine geometry

At this point, your leaves may need to be repositioned to more closely match the new vine meshes you've created. Go through and position them so that they are accurately attached to the vine.

Open a good leaf source image. The one I used is called Leaves0051_S.jpg from www.cgtextures.com. It shows a nice amount of detail in the leaf's surface as well as some good vein detail that you can use. I'm going to grab the vein detail to use for my own leaf.

Click the Polygonal Lasso tool and at the top of the screen, make the Feather value 5 pixels (px).

If you're following along with me, select the main vein down the center of the leaf with the lasso tool until you have the entire vein selected.

With the Move tool, click within the selected area and drag from your source image into your Photoshop file. This will drop the selected leaf vein into your file. Reposition and rescale it with the Select Transform tool to make it fit along the middle of the leaf.

Repeat these steps, selecting source pixels from the leaf image and moving and positioning them on your texture to create the vein details.

Select an area of leaf surface detail and move it into your texture underneath your vein details. If your selected detail contains any veins, remove them by using the Clone Stamp tool. Copy the leaf detail around until it covers the surface of your leaf. Merge all of the surface detail layers together into one layer.

Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer on top of all of your new leaf details and make the Brightness −11 and Contrast +25. These (and all such future adjustments) will be entirely dependent on what your source image is. If you're using a different image than me, then your adjustments will vary.

Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and increase the Lightness to +20. Rename it Highlights. Fill the mask with black and, using a soft white brush, paint in the mask to apply the adjustment layer's effect. Paint along the edges and veins of the leaf. Once done, you should have something like what you see in Figure 2.14.

Create a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and adjust this one's Lightness to −25. Rename it Lowlights. Fill the mask with black and then, using a soft white brush, paint in the mask to apply the adjustment layer's effect. You want to paint around where the leaf merges to its stem and also around the leaf's surface between the veins to add some color variation.

Find an interesting "grime" image from your texture sources. I chose the speckled grime image that's on the DVD called dira002.jpg. Using my example, I copied the image into my Photoshop file and adjusted its blend mode to Multiply. Scale and position the grime the way you like it. Rename the layer Grime.

Lower the Grime layer's opacity to about 50 percent.

Figure 2.14. The leaf's diffuse

You'll add a little color to the leaf so it's not just green. In a real project, you'd probably want several different leaf textures: some with color variation, some just green. This way you can have variety in your foliage in the game's presentation.

Choose an interesting color for your foreground color and green for your background color. I chose a red hue. Apply the gradient so that the color you've chosen is visible toward the tip of the leaf. Rename the layer Color.

Change the layer's Blend Mode to be Soft Light and lower the Opacity down to about 50 percent. I chose the Soft Light blend mode simply because I liked the way it looked. If you prefer a different look, feel free to choose a different style.

Save your file as a 32-bit targa file and name it Leaf_Diffuse.tga. Save your Photoshop source file too.

Right now, the leaf texture is 1024 × 1024. This is huge for a leaf's texture! The level of detail that you actually need for this leaf is much smaller. Think of it this way—even with an HDTV, the largest resolution on your television screen is 1,080 pixels wide. So to have a 1,024 pixel-wide leaf texture would mean that the leaf would need to fill the TV screen to make the most of that texture's resolution. I think it's safe to say that in most cases, you don't need your ivy to be focused on that closely. So, at most, you can probably imagine the leaf will be at least a character's arm's width away.

With that in mind, open the Leaf_Diffuse.tga file you've just made and select Image → Image Size. Decrease the width and height to 128 × 128. This will blur your texture significantly.

Select Filter → Sharpen → Unsharp Mask. Make the Amount about 50 percent and the Radius about 1.0. Click OK.

The Unsharp mask filter was able to sharpen the details on a per-pixel basis, bringing all those details you spent so much time on back into focus, even at such a small resolution. In Figure 2.15 and Figure 2.16, you can see the final diffuse texture and how it applied in Maya onto the leaf meshes.

As before, in the Front or Side view, draw out a curve using the CV Curve tool coming off of one of your main branches. Once you get a nice curved shape using around 4 to 5 points, position it in the Perspective view so that it's accurately positioned on the tree branch.

Duplicate this curve and position it around the tree. Scale them up and down slightly to ensure they aren't all identical. I placed about seven branches (Figure 2.24).

Figure 2.24. Secondary branch curves placed around the tree

Just as before, create a small Nurbs circle to use as an extrusion profile. Perform extrude commands for each branch curve and adjust their shapes to create a tapered affect from their base to their tip. When complete, you should have something like Figure 2.25.

First, hide your tree geometry while you work on your leaves. Select your entire tree. In the Layer Bar (found under the Channel Box) create a new layer and name it Tree. With the tree still selected, right-click the layer and choose the Add Selected Objects option. Click the V icon next to the layer to toggle its visibility off, thereby hiding the tree from view.

In the Top view, create a small branch with leaves growing off it. First, draw out a curve that is mostly straight with some slight curvature to give it a natural look. Extrude a Nurbs circle along it and taper the ends just as you have done for the other branches you've made.

Select Mesh → Create Polygon Tool. Using your left mouse button, drop points into the shape of a leaf, similar to Figure 2.26. Press Enter when you're done to finalize the action and create the polygonal object.

Figure 2.26. Creating a simple leaf shape

Press the Insert key to toggle Edit Pivot mode and move the leaf's pivot to the base of the leaf, where it will most likely meet the branch.

Move, scale, and rotate the leaf to place it on the branch. Duplicate and repeat this process until the branch is covered in leaves to your liking. Scale them in such a way that, as the leaves approach the tip of the branch, they get smaller and thinner. Toward the base of the branch, the leaves are thicker and larger. Mine ended up like Figure 2.27.

Think of these as your tertiary branches. Rather than spending precious geometry on them, you'll give them a 2-polygon plane to give the illusion of more detail.

Figure 2.27. Positioned leaves on the branch

Apply a new Lambert material to the leaves and give it a forest green color. Apply another Lambert to the branch and give it a brown color.

Now you'll render an image of the branch to use as a texture for your tree. Select Window → Rendering Editors → Render Settings. These settings control how Maya renders an animation or a still image. Under the Common tab near the top, scroll down to the Image Size section and change the width and height to 256×512.

Under the Maya Software tab, near the top, change the Anti-aliasing Quality setting to Contrast Sensitive Production. Under the Multi-pixel Filtering section, make sure to deselect the Use Multi-pixel Filter check box.

The multi-pixel filter tends to blur your textures, especially if your textures are dealing with any kind of text or small details. I generally just turn multi-pixel filtering off as a rule.

Back in the top view, in the panel view menus select View → Camera Settings → Resolution Gate. Also check the Vertical option rather than the default Horizontal, if it's not already. You should see a box appear. Position your camera as best you can so that the branch is within the box. When you have it positioned, you can render it by clicking the Render Current Frame button at the far right of the Status Line (Figure 2.28).

Save the render as branch.tga.

Create a new layer and call it branch_source and put the branch geometry into it and hide its visibility. Unhide the Tree layer.

Figure 2.28. The Resolution Gate centered and the rendered result

Create a polygon plane with a width of 25.6 and a height of 51.2. Make sure the Normalization option is off. By creating the plane with these dimensions, you've maintained the size ratio of your 256 × 512 texture, so once it's applied, it won't be distorted.

After applying your branch texture to the plane, press the Insert key on the keyboard to edit the plane's pivot point. Move the pivot to the base of the branch where it would attach to the tree.

Select Edit Mesh → Insert Edge Loop Tool and drag a new edge down the middle of the plane. Select the two long edges of the plane and move them either back or forth a bit. This will give the branch a bit of depth rather than it just being a simple plane. This wedge shape can more easily be seen from multiple directions and is more pleasing to the eye as an organic shape.

Position the tertiary branch onto the ends of one of your preexisting branches. Duplicate and position more branches around your tree. Focus on placing one at the tip of each main branch and have a couple more branches spaced around to fill the tree out (Figure 2.29). Don't forget, these are simply your third round of branches. You will make some new leaves to act as "filler" in the next steps.

Hide your tree (be sure to add your new branch planes to the tree's layer) and unhide your branch_source layer. Move your branch geometry to the side.

Grab one branch of leaves, duplicate it, and move it over to a clear spot to work with. Use your CV Curve tool to draw out short lines that would represent small branches and position them in a clumping pattern. You'll probably need to adjust them later, but it's good to get a starting foundation.

Start duplicating and positioning your leaves around the clump of curves (representing branches), scaling and rotating them (to diminish their uniformity), with the intention of creating a scattered leaf/branch combination of details, similar to Figure 2.30.

Extrude a Nurbs circle along the branch curves as you have done before. Don't worry about tapering the ends or anything. Select the entire leaf cluster and delete all of its history. You can then group the leaves all together with Ctrl+G. Duplicate the group to make a new clump of leaves and position them below the first group and rotate and scale it so that it's not positioned exactly the same as the first group.

Depending on how dense your leaf cluster is, you may want to duplicate a third copy. Assign your green leaf and brown branch materials accordingly. With these duplicates, I have this result from the Top View camera (Figure 2.31).

Figure 2.30. The initial clump of leaves and twigs

Now, you'll render an image to use as a texture just as you did with the branch. Use the same settings as before, except this time, make the width and height values equal 512, resulting in a 512×512 texture. Save it as treeleaf.tga.

Assign the cluster geometry to the branch_source layer and hide it. Unhide your tree layer.

Create a square polygon plane and apply your leaf texture to it. Because it is just a flat plane, it doesn't really help us fill the tree with natural-looking leaves. Let's add another dimension to it.

Figure 2.31. The finished leaf cluster with rendered result

Select the leaf plane and select Edit Mesh → Poke Face. This will insert a vertex in the center of the plane. Raise the vertex up so that the plane becomes a pyramid shape.

Begin placing, duplicating, scaling, and rotating the leaf planes around your tree, creating an interesting-looking canopy. Don't be afraid to intersect them and extend beyond the strict boundaries of the 3D branches. My result looks like Figure 2.32.

In Photoshop, create a new file that is 512×1024, making a tall, vertical image file.

Fill the background with a similar brown color as you did with your branches previously.

Make a new layer. Name it Grooves. Take a soft brush and choose a darker hue of your brown color. Draw two relatively (but not completely) straight lines from the bottom of the image to the top using a small diameter brush, dividing your image into thirds. My brush is about 20 pixels wide (Figure 2.33).

Figure 2.33. Starting your cartoony bark texture

Right-click the Grooves layer and open the Blending Options. Check the Outer Glow style check box. Change the color from the default pale yellow to a darker brown hue. Continue by making the following changes:

You should get a "shadowing" effect around your two groove lines, making the grooves look as if they are intruding into the surface.

Create a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer over the Grooves layer and change the Brightness to +21 and the Contrast to +15. Select the mask (the white box on the layer) to make it active and fill it with black, thereby hiding the adjustment layer's effects. Take a black brush and paint over the areas between the groove lines, making that space lighter and giving the illusion of height.

Drag the adjustment layer to the New Layer button to make a copy of it. Select the copy's mask and press Ctrl+I to invert the mask.

Double-click the new adjustment layer to access its settings and change the Brightness to +3 and the Contrast to +25. You should have something like Figure 2.34.

Feel free to continue to adjust the bark's colors and settings until you get something you are happy with.

Figure 2.34. The bark texture so far

Now that you have some basic shapes, you'll want to make sure that it properly tiles, because you'll want this texture to wrap around the tree's trunk and repeat as it extends up the trunk's length. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire canvas and press Ctrl+Shift+C to Copy Merged. Finally, press Ctrl+V to paste the copied image of the bark into its own layer. Name this layer BaseBark.

With this layer selected, select Filter → Other → Offset. The Offset dialog box will open with two main sliders to adjust. Type 256 into the Horizontal slider. This offsets the texture 256 pixels horizontally (or half of your image's total width of 512 pixels).

In my case, it turned out that my texture looked good already tiling in that direction, but if you see any harsh lines running down the center of your image, get rid of them and apply the Offset filter again to put the image back to its original position.

Once again apply the Offset filter and remove the 256 from the horizontal slider (making it 0) and type 512 into the Vertical slider, inputting half of the height of your image. This offset result gave me an obvious seam that I'll need to fix in the next steps (Figure 2.35).

Apply the Offset filter once again to return to the image's original position. Select the Rectangular Marquee tool (or press M) and at the top of the screen, change the Feather option to 5 pixels.

Select a box around the middle of your image. You'll notice that the corners of your selection box are rounded, indicating that the selection is feathered. This is what you want, but you want the feathering to apply only to the top and bottom of the box, not the left and right edges.

With the selection still active, choose Select → Transform Selection. The Transform Selection tool allows you to interactively manipulate the selection boundary you have already drawn without manipulating the image within it. Hold down the Alt key and click and drag on the left or right handle of the Transform tool to widen the selection box to extend beyond the boundary of the image. Now the feathered edge will not feather the tiling border of your selection.

Press Ctrl+J to copy the selected area into its own layer. Name this layer Patch.

Select the BaseBark layer again and apply the offset filter, offsetting it 512 pixels vertically. You'll notice the Patch layer is overlaid on top of the seam you had before, although in my case, it hasn't perfectly fixed it right off the bat. I still need to make some adjustments.

In my particular image's case, I need to move the Patch layer around a little bit to best fit along the grooves I had drawn earlier. Then, I make a few strokes of the eraser to remove some trouble spots, and I am good to go. Here are my before and after results in Figure 2.36.

Figure 2.35. An ugly seam in need of fixing

Figure 2.36. The bark texture fully tileable

To add a little texture to your colors, you'll use an overlay image. From your texture library or from this book's DVD, pick out an image that provides some splotchy details. I chose a metal texture source. Add it to your Photoshop file as a separate layer and name it Details. Change its Blending Mode to Overlay.

Using the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T), move and scale the image to lay on top of your bark texture in an interesting way. You may need to lower the Opacity of the layer, depending on how much contrast it has. I lowered my Details layer's opacity to about 36 percent.

Feel free to adjust the colors and remove any seams that the new Details layer may have added and save your finished bark texture as bark.tga (Figure 2.37).

You'll first get the hard part out of the way and begin with the tree's trunk. Select the faces that make up the straighter part of the trunk, starting from the base and ending right before the trunk begins to bend.

Under the Polygons menu set, select Create UVs → Cylindrical Mapping. A cylinder-shaped manipulator will appear around the tree trunk and the selected faces will appear in the UV Texture Editor window. You should see something like Figure 2.38.

If your results are like mine, you may notice that in the upper left and right of the UV shell that is currently active there is a face hanging by itself along with a gap where it should be on the opposite side. To fix this, you'll need to do some manual UV adjustment.

Figure 2.38. The lower trunk's UVs cylindrically mapped

Right-click in the UV Texture Editor window and choose UVs from the marking menu that appears. This will allow you to manipulate the UVs in the editor. Select the UVs of the trunk that you just mapped and move them to the side so that the rest of the UVs won't interfere with your work.

Right-click in the UV Editor and this time choose Edge component mode. Select the edge that connects the hanging face to the rest of the UV shell and in the editor's menus select Polygons → Cut UV Edges (or click the "cutting scissors" button on the toolbar). This will separate the face from the rest of the UV shell.

Now, select the two edges on the other side of the UV shell that border the gap that you want the hanging face to attach to. You'll notice that this also selects the corresponding edges on the hanging face. That's because the two edges you've selected are the same edges on the geometry. With these two edges selected, select Polygons → Move And Sew UV Edges. The hanging face should move to the other side and merge into the shell where the gap previously was.

Now that you've cleaned up any hanging faces, you'll want to position these UVs in a clean grid. The easiest way to do that is to select each individual column of UVs and use the Align command.

On the UV Editor toolbar, you should see four buttons with arrows pointing in all four directions. These are the align buttons. Depending on which directional button you click, the current UV that you have selected that is the furthest in the selected direction will be the UV that the rest of your selection aligns to.

Look at Figure 2.39 to see what I mean. In the first image, I have a column of UVs selected that are not aligned. The UV at the bottom of the column is the farthest UV to the left out of those I have selected. So when I click the button with the left-pointing arrow, all of the selected UVs line up as in the second image. Do this with each column of UVs to straighten them all out.

Figure 2.39. Aligning columns of UVs

When your UV shell is straightened out, you can start positioning it within the Editor to get the results you want on the tree. Scale, position, and if applicable rotate your UVs as you watch the result on your tree geometry. When you have a layout that you like, you can move on to UV mapping the rest of the trunk in the same way. Mine turned out like Figure 2.40.

Figure 2.40. The trunk's UVs laid out to fit the texture onto the geometry

For the rest of the trunk, continue to select sections of faces and UV map them. Then go in manually to tweak and clean up the results.

Do the same for each of the branches until finally your entire tree—trunk, branches, and leaves—is UV mapped. Position each shell of UVs in the editor to get the kind of look you want. Mine ended up like Figure 2.41.