Hey so I posted this in the How do you model shapes thread but nobody seems to be replying and I need help asap.

So I'm starting this new project for school.

I need to model a tree for the scene below. The teacher wants me to to use animation deformers to get the curves and such... but I'm wondering how I should go about doing the rest. Like should I make a cylinder and extrude the faces to get the branches?

In the end I want to take it into zbrush but the teacher wants me to do as much as I can in maya.

Moose suggested doing strip modeling but that is going to take too long I think.

You can extrude a cross section of the trunk along a curve(s) for the main trunk. For the smaller branches you can do the same at a smaller scale, or just extrude a face and bend/twist or split as you go. Make a few variations of small branches (be sure to UV these before duplicating to save time later). Then duplicate and move the small branches over to appropriate places on the main trunk and weld them together if you want/need to.

Check out Setting up a manual version of the "Tree-from-Curves Plugin" Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 tutorial for Blender for some possible workflow ideas.

Tree making fast technique? is a good thread to look over as well.

Thanks! What I think I might do is create each branch/root separately then combine and merge them into one mesh. That way I can use the anim deformers.

Your best bet would probably be to "block in" the tree with cylinder shapes. dont worry about making the tree contiguous just get the branches and roots laid in as warped cylinders and build up the form in a way that looks good. Then start strip modeling all of the areas where stuff has to connect. That will save you a lot of time as opposed to strip modelling the whole thing. you can also use curves to extrude branches etc.

but zbrush is a much better way to make trees so tell your teacher to recognize

I think my teacher knows that it is easier.. but he wants us to know how to use the anim deformers.