Virtual crop models and animation make great significances to agricultural researches. But to recreate the structure and dynamic is often a hard and laborious task. Most existing plant-modeling systems require the user to have specific biological knowledge about plants, but its often the 3D artists who do the work. This paper discusses a method of plant modeling and rigging in Maya, which has already been familiar to 3D artists and has advantages in industrial production pipelines. The method takes pepper plant for example, dividing the problem into organs and the growth patterns, and using Maya modeling and animating system to simulate the topological structure and growth dynamic. It set up the geometry with controls which are easy to use. The result can be conveniently exported to projects. This approach helps prepare the research of variety plant modeling and animation plug-in for Maya.