Many people ask about this so I decided to create a short tutorial.

 

For our tutorial we need to have (or prepare) a leaf to use for our foliage. (you can use these 2 images)

 

    

 

You can create your leaf plane by either creating a plane and then create a material to apply to it OR you can use my free Billboard Generator to do this automatically.

 

 

You will get this: (you can change the size of the leaf with the Height spinner)

 

Create a BOX with a L: 200 units W: 50 & H: 80

Under the Create Panel > Geometry > Particle Systems Create a PARRAY object.

This is what you should see:

Select the PARRAY object.

- Under the Basic Parameters Rollout:

 

1. In  Object Based Emitter  - Press the Pick Object button and click on the BOX object

2. In Particle Formation - Select Over Entire Surface.

3. In Viewport Display - Set the Percentage of Particles to 10% or less - setting a higher value may halt your system.

- Under the Particle Generation Rollout:

 

1. In Particle Quantity - set to Use Rate and set the number to 1000 or more  - this actually sets the number of cloned leaves over the entire object - the more the better but do not use too much if your system is not too powerfull.

2. In Particle Timing - set Emot start to -300 and Emit Stop to 30 and Life to arount 50-100.

3. In Particle Size - set the size to your needs. it may depend on various parameters.

- Under the Particle type Rollout:

 

1. In  Particle Types - Set to Instanced Geometry.

2. In Instancing Parameters - Press the Pick Object button and click on the LEAF object

3. In Material Mapping and Source - set to Instanced Geometry and press the Get Material from: button.

- Under the Rotation and Collision Rollout:

 

1. In  Speed Spin Controls - Set  Phase to 90 degrees.

Basically - That is All !

This is how it looks:

Select the BOX object and make it unrederable (object properties)

Now render.

Here are two examples: one with a lower rate (around 300) and another with 1000 - obviously  denser but more time consuming.

An awesome thing you can use this process for is to create irregular shapes and apply it to any object you create:

I hope this tutorials helped you.

Nir, September 15th ,2008