alan2

I simply painted different faces of the default cube with different flat colors but when I try to render this model, the rendered image does not show these colors and it is only grey scale image. How can I make blender to show these colors? Also when I switch back to Object or Edit mode from Vertex paint mode, the colors are gone and do not show in the displayed model in the 3d View. How can I make Blender to retail those colors when I switch to Edit or Object mode?

Thanks but unfortunatly its not clear to me yet as I am new to 3d modeling. So still looking for more details to my questions.

I want to export simple cube in blender 2.5 but I want the model to be triangulated (not quads) and also must have the surface normals exported in OBJ format. How can I do that?

I want to create 3d models of plants and leaves. If I have the liberty of taking high quality photographs of a small plant or a leaf, from what angles I should take the photos and in what format/resolutions to save the photos and also do I need to have alpha channel info in the photos ( after processing in Photoshop)? After above is done how to use these photos to create 3d models that looks like natural plant or a leaf but now in 3d? Is this possible to automate this process as much as possible or do I still need to draw manually lots of polygons and curves? The goal is to create extremely realistic 3d model of small plant and a leaf that looks like the real plant or leaf without doing lots of manual work ( other than taking photos and Photoshop work).