How to Make and Animate Butterfly Wings easily using 3Ds Max and Photoshop

When I learned about NURBS for the first time all I wanted to make was a butterfly. I googled pictures and videos of butterflies so I can make a really accurate one. And with lots of hard work I made one.The one below.

But then I got a real big problem. How am I going to give her real butterfly wings instead of a gradient ramp? When I showed it to my teacher at class she told me a easier way to make a butterfly wings that look more real.

And this is how you do it.

Find a photo of a real butterfly that shows at least one whole wing. (You can easily google “Monarch Butterfly” and download one because they are so common on the net)

This is the one I found at http://www.butterflyutopia.com/BIG/019a-monarch_butterfly.jpg

Open Adobe Photoshop

File – Open or Ctrl + O

And Open the photo of the butterfly

Get the “Magnetic Lasso tool”

Get a selection of one of the wings as below (This will take some time)

Edit – Copy or Ctrl +C

Then

Edit – Paste or Ctrl +V

Click on the little eye and hide the first layer

Get the “Magic Wand Tool” and click on the grey and white checker region.

Get a new layer

Get “Paint Bucket Tool”

Get Black as foreground colour and White background colour.

Click on the picture

Hide Layer 1 from Layers

Click on layer 2

Swap the back and fore ground colours (Short cut “X” in the keyboard)

Click on the grey and white checker region.

Now it should look like below

File – Save – Give a name (e.g.: img1) and a place to save – Change the format to JPEG – Save

Now hide layer 2 and unhide layer one

File – Save – Give a name (e.g. img2) and a place to save – Change the format to JPEG – Save

Now close Photoshop ,don’t save the rest they are not really needed.

But if you want you can save rest of the work as a Photoshop file.

Open 3Ds max.

I use 2009, but since this is really basic work any version would do fine.

Create a plane

Press “M” on the keyboard and get the Material Editor

Give Img2.jpg as the Diffuse Map and Img1.jpg as the Opacity Map

Assign the Material to the plane

Enable “Show Standard Map in Viewport”

Tick on 2 Sided

It will look like,

Change the offset values in the Opacity Map in the Material Editor and get the wing to your right hand corner.

Give the same offset values to the Diffuse Map

Get the scale tool and scale it (here in the y axis) as you see fit

Click on Hierarchy and click on “Affect Pivot Only”

Get the move tool and move the Pivot point to the edge

Click on “Affect Pivot Only” again

Get the rotate tool and rotate the plane about 180 degrees while you press and hold the “Shift” key (here in the y axis)

Like above tick on “Copy” and OK it

Rotate and Move to adjust the wings properly.

Press F9 and see your work

On Auto key and rotate the wings to animate the wings.

Below pictures are from an animation I’ve made(The body is from the first butterfly I’ve made using NURBS)