Creating a station ID in Maya and After Effects
Modeling the Objects: The Clovers
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Switch to the top view. Using a CV Curve Tool (Create>CV Curve Tool...3 Cubic), draw out the shape of the left side of the clover leaf.
Set your CV Curve tool to 'Snap to Curves" as shown.
Draw the top curve of the clover with the first CV intersecting the the first curve we drew.
Using 'Duplicate', duplicate the left curve, scale it by a factor of negative 1 along the x-axis to flip it, and translate it about 7 in the X axis.
If there is space between these curves when we create the boundary curve, the edge of the NURB will not be very smooth at this point. Being that we manually drew the top curve, I am assuming that it is not perfectly symmetrical and that these curves need to be aligned to eliminate the space between them.
Select the right THEN the top curves (in that order), and align them using Edit Curves>Align Curves. Do NOT attach the curves.
Draw one final curve to define the bottom boundary. It's a simple, small curve at the bottom.
Now, enough of this curve BS. Let's make a surface. Make sure that your History is ON.. this will be important when we tweak our shape later on.
Select all four curves (order will not matter) and create a boundary surface (Surfaces> Boundary). The default options should work fine, but I have them displayed here. Note: "Curve Ordering" being set to automatic is why curve selection order is unimportant.
This creates our surface. But, it's a little flat at this point. This is why construction history is so great. As we tweak our original curves, the surface will follow. I won't tell you what exact CVs to tweak. Just tweak your curves, and the shape will follow. So, imagine your perfect shamrock, and have at it.
Once you are happy with your leaf, delete the Construction History of the object along with the original curves. To play it safe, save a backup copy first, so you'll always have a version of the leaf with Construction History. Notice that the base is sized fairly small, too.
Currently, this is the worlds largest clover leaf at this point, so scale the object down to a size that is reasonable. I used .05. Move the object in the Z axis to get it away from the point of origin.
Hit your Home/Insert (Windows/Mac) key to modify its pivot point. We want this pivot point to be right at the point of origin for our next step. You can easily do this by selecting "Numeric Input: Absolute" from the field entry box in the Status Line as shown below.
Enter "0 0 0" and the pivot point will jump to X=0, Y=0, Z=0. Don't forget to hit Home/Insert again to toggle off Pivot modifcation.
Next, make a couple more leaves using the duplicate command as shown. I am using mostly 3 leaf clovers here. A field of 4 leaf clovers to me says"radiation spill" . So, we'll manually make one or two for the foreground later on.
Group the leaves together and tilt the group up a little bit.
Switch to component mode (F8) and select the CVs in the center.
Then scale them inward and translate them down in the Z Axis alittle until the base of the leaves just about come togther.
The stem is fairly simple. Create a small NURB circle and draw out a CV curve in the shape of your stem.
Select the circle, then the line segment, and go to Surfaces> Extrude.
Notice that the scale is set to 2, so that the extrusion gets larger toward the base.
Lastly, select the the circle that we used for the stem, and create a NURB planar surface, just so we don't see an open tube for our stem.
We could create more detail by stitching these surfaces together, but truthfully, this is about as much detail as we will need.
I would suggest rebuilding the stem NURB to smooth it out a little..
I made another slight variation of my clover with slightly larger leaves. Duplicate them and move them around a little and you get:
