Importing the texture

Draw a rectangle measuring 5m x 5m.

In the Materials palette choose 'Create Material...'. In the dialog that opens use the 'Browse button' to navigate to your texture. Using the Paint Buckettool, paint the texture to the square.

If your texture does not fill the face correctly use the Edit tab to set the material size to 5m x 5m.

Dividing up the texture

To create 4 separate leaves from one texture we need to divide the textured face so there is a leaf for each. Use the Pencil to draw some boundary edges around each leaf.

Double click the leaf to select it and group it using Edit > Make Group or using the context menu.

Remove any unwanted geometry and position each leaf using the Move tool.

Divide each leaf further using the Pencil tool. To remove any unwanted vertices you can use Fredo's Remove Lonely Vertices plugin.

You are now ready to manipulate each leaf.

Shaping the leaves with Vertex Tools

This next step is easiest using Vertex Tools. You can do this using the native Move and Rotate tools but the process is much faster and the textures will remain properly positioned if you use Vertex Tools.

Since the process is the same for all 4 leaves you can repeat these steps for each.

Select the grouped leaf and Right Click > Make Component. Set the Component axis as you see in the image below.

Using Vertex Tools Select tool you can select the center row of vertices.

Move these vertices upwards. If you are using the native Move tool to do this you will notice that the textures will scramble. Vertex Tools has a feaure that locks the textures mapping when performing translations such as this.

Using the same technique move the front and rear vertices downwards.

In the remaining leaves I added further divisions to give the leaves a much smoother appearance. You can add as much or as little detail as you wish.

Position Components to form branches

At this stage you should have 4 leaf components. We will now position these to form the overall shape.

Move each leaf into a central position around the World Axis this will allow you to use the axis as a pivot point.

Stack your leaves in an order that suits you. Here I went from smallest to biggest but you can create whatever variant you wish.

Using the Rotate tool array copies around the World Axis. To array a copy press the CTRL key when using rotate. Here I rotate a copy 90 degrees and then typed 3* to make 3 copies.

As you can see 4 is no where near enough and the rigid alignment of the leaves makes the whole thing look unnatural.

Add some variation to the leaf stack by rotating each leaf very subtlely and then group/component the stack.

Now repeat the rotational array but this time rotate a copy 60 degrees and type 5* into the VCB.

Select the 6 stacks.

Move a copy upwards using CTRL and the Movetool.

Rotate this selection 30 degrees about the World Axis

Now rotate random stacks slightly to add even more variation.

Because SketchUp doesn't display shadows from .png images you can go one step further and use the Line tool to roughly cut-out the shape of the leaves.

Once you have completed this you are left with a collection of leaves that cast great shadows in SketchUp.

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