Modelled in 3dsmax 8. Meshcount: 1 mesh. Polygon count so far: 102376 faces.

Stop showing off and gives us a tut.

DITTO bandolin!!! Oh, in Bryce too :)

Did a heck of a job with that! Can't wait to see it finished. Best; Dan

I dunno there's not much to tutorialize...

Step1: Find the repetitive pattern in the design.

Step2: Draw your poligons to draw the pattern of the embossed shapes, but keep your object perfectly flat. Let the embossed shapes of the original object only return in your wire topology at this point. (No really, don't extrude anything yet. One step at a time.)

Step3: Repeat the pattern as many times as needed.

Step4: Bend it 360 degrees.

Step5: Weld the ends together.

Step6: Use an FDDbox to taper it as u get closer to the bottom.

Step7: Extrude the embossed bits one by one.

Step8: Camfer edges where needed. (really narrow camfered edges are actually really good for keeping points sharp later on when applying your smoothing modifier)

Step9: Smooth.

Sidenote:
Don't extrude before the FFDbox because then the FFDbox would deform the height of your extrusions.

Message edited on: 02/21/2006 12:32

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You've done an excellent job, well done Cant wait for the finished object :)

Awesome!!!!!!!

eff me...

SOAB! That's nice.

Bootiful modeling both of you, just need to place it in an image now :)

No prob at all danamo ;-) I started this thread to shed some new light on the topic because the old one was almost forgotten. I thought that was a real shame since there are a total of 4 people here who said they'd try their hands on it and personally I'd really like to see what everyone comes up with! Your version is pretty good and seems to have quite good polygon economy. I'd like to see a wireframe of it if that's possible. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to texture mine yet... I'm not much of a UV texture guru yet. :-P I think I'll use a cylindrical uvmap. Maybe I'll bake an AO texture to go with it.. could be a good basis for a dirt-map as well as a good reference for the uvmap. Might make mine a freebie, dunno yet. Depends how good it looks when it's done I guess.

Drac wants your babies!

I was already wondering what eff was..

I am still working on this myself. Will post when finished.

Ray, convert to editible poly, (don't know if you're there already) extrude a little ways then detach and use a meshsmooth modifier. extrude inner design maybe 1-2 itenerations. See what happens. Would be interested in seeing. Nice work! Danamo, I'm impressed, excellent work also where did you guys get the general design from? Was this posted here before? Lovely work al the way around.

Message edited on: 02/22/2006 03:54

Cyba_Storm, please excite us with a work in progress! :-D @quest; It's a set slot of multiple modifiers in there lol I keep all the modifiers in there, like the bend modifiers and such, but the top ones are a mesh smooth and an mesh edit. With the extrusion suggestion, do I understand correctly that you want me to make the extrusions sharper? General design is from the pic in my 1st post. It was posted by one of the members here who requested one to be made.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=2575186&Reply=2591383#49

In order to make the linier design sharper you must relinquish all prior modifiers in 3DMax. But his is not as bad as it sounds because hopefully you have plenty of room on your hard drive to make a new scene file calling it whatever this scene is called plus + 1. Just in case things dont work out you always have the last saved file. When you chose those polygons in poly mode, detach them, you can then extrude them from the body and because they have been isolated from the rest of the mesh, you are not accruing a larger polygon count but only in that small area (here a fairly large area) but your not extruding them too far. Only that area that you have selected will become smoother and not the entire mesh object when you apply the Meshsmooth modifier (use edges to modify). Would like to see what you get.

ooooh ok, gotcha, not sure that'll look very well though.. plus it'd be a lotta rather tricky and timeconsuming work :P

OooooH you mean you already have lots of pollies? The general idea is to make those center portions as a relief giving them more roundness but if your model is already over weighted then, doing this technique will only slow 3DMax down. But once you have an image you can go ahead with layered render passes to heighten the experience.

oh that's quite nice!

Thank you Ray. this is a very fun project. I worked hard to keep the poly size down on this, but I may be able to reduce the poly count even more by eliminating some edges and verts I used for "scaffolding" while I constructed the curvy parts. If I add any more detail it will probably be with a texture map.
@Marc-Thanks, I'm working on a scene for this currently.
@Quest-Thank you for the kind words. I begin to suspect no two 3DMax modelers might approach this project in exactly the same way! So many tools, so many ways to achieve the same result,lol.

I think quest's suggestion doesn't work with the wire topology I chose. I would get holes in my model if I'd detach the extrusions from the rest. lol

If I hadn't only got Cinema9.5 yesterday and If I was better generally at modeling I'd have tried this in Cinema, as it is if a Cinema user does do this I'd be extremely interested in seeing HOW it would be tackled in Cinema - as I haven't the faintest. Anyone tried it in Bryce?

@ Danamo...You have to be careful how much Scaffolding you take out,becauce I found when I was cleaning up I was creating smoothing problems. The detailing between the bottom glass areas looks simple, but removing geometry from there was creating jaggy edges when smoothing.

hehe in 3dsmax I don't need scaffolding B-) Fran, great to hear u got urself Cinema9.5! It's supposed to be great value for money :-D I'll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with in Cinema ;) To Fran and anyone else here reading this thinking "ooh I wish I cold do that too". Don't hesitate to try! haha If you want to learn modelling, look at other peoples models a LOT preferably when the wireframes are revealed. And tons of tutorials and such. Also if the modelling tutorials are for other software packages. It helps so much! The good thing about model wireframes is that not only they reveal the shape of the model, but they also reveal to some degree how it was constructed ;)

@Cyba-Storm- Very true. If I decide to make major changes to a model I always save the original and then do a "save as" and make a new version so I can go back to my original if undo can't bail me out. I constantly hit tab to go back and forth from the GL preview to monitor the effect of the changes that I'm making. I use edge loops almost exclusively now, no hard edges, because edge loops help keep the geometry and detail areas well defined without looking too sharp or hard.
@Rayraz- Yeah, I should have just subdivided more at the beginning and then using the connect tool would have been a doddle because the mesh density would have been high enough to make a good framework.
I also encourage others to try this project, no matter what modeler they are using.

Well, actually I started out with one spline... lol not much to subdivide or anything. I just draw poly's wherever or however they're needed. With the mesh edit modifier I can create vertices at the click of a mouse button to lay out what's going to be my wireframe, then I just create poly's by connecting the vertexes. Or I select and extrude edges and such. Whichever is most efficient for that specific bit of geometry. It gives ultimate freedom in creating whatever I want.

Sigh... it would be nice to have a draw-poly tool available like that in Wings. I have to start with a primitive and try to sculpt it into the shape I want by adding verts and edges. Wings does do nice extrusions and bevels though. Maybe someday I'll come up with the extra moolah to buy Max, or one of the other biggies that have tools like you describe. Of course you're a pro Ray and you need all those tools but I'm just an enthusiastic amatuer. I still have a lot of fun doing this though. :-)

haha well to be honest :-P I tried wings and crawled back to 3dsmax with my tail between my legs 'cuz I can't model that well with wings' tools. It's pretty darn impressive what u got out of it without being able to draw poly's and such.

cool :) And that's done in wings? or another program?

This is being done in wings. I have access to MAX, blender, and truespace, but find I have more fun doing it in wings. Its limited tool set makes you really think about what you are trying to achieve.

If I could even get as far as creating the flat punched out plate in Cinema, I'd be happy, but I'm having problems bending a simple pipe at the moment. I know I could ATTEMPT it in Wings (not sure if I could complete it, but at least I'd know how to start in Wings - in Cinema... (strained desperate expression) no.

sounds like u should read the manual maybe? lol or find some good modelling tutorials :)

Rayraz, I've read the manual, done some of the tutorial manual, done a 6 week course on it, (that was good, gave you the basics on Cinema) looked, tried and given up in disgust on the tut that came with 9.5 (it's rubbish), found and been doing for some months now some of the tuts in C4DCafe (these are excellent, BTW) done some of the tuts on the Maxon site... etc etc But frankly you just can't do everything at once, these tuts take time, even the good ones that explain everything as you go along (- the bad ones rush through without explaining anything) and worse of all, I'm not Rochr. Actually I'm not even in the same universe as people like Rochr, never mind the same stepladder, Rochr seems to be the sort of modeller who is brilliant in one program, gets a new prog and 2 days later is posting brilliant pics in that too - well that ain't me. And it never will be me - as Ronny Corbett said - "I know my place" Lol! And I'm still looking for good tuts - I never stop looking for good tuts in Cinema or Bryce or Wings or PhotoShop or anything else that could help idiots like me improve...

hehe ok :) Good to hear ur doing tutorials and making progress :) didnt meant to sound like u werent doin anything ;) Also I can imagine that it takes some time to learn C4D if you've only mainly been using bryce before that. I mean it is indeed a much different way of working.

Actually you've made some very nice models in Wings Fran, so at least you're not starting out at zero. Besides, certain concepts and skill sets you learned in Bryce will transfer to your new app. Best of luck with the C4D.

Rayraz, different indeed, you can say that again with bells on! And I do think it will take me a while to do anything decent in Cinema.... or in anything else come to that. Lol! danamo, I have??? (tries hard to bring any such to mind... fails...) g I think modeling in Wings has helped me learn SOME of Cinema more quickly than I would otherwise have done, ditto for some of Bryce, but what surprised me is that SOME of Bryce is better than Cinema, like the textures are much better, but maybe I just haven't got to grips properly with Cinema's textures, so that may not be fair. But certainly Bryce's Metaballs are much better - you can have more than one colour on Bryce's metaballs, not Cinema's though. Strange that.

Fran, take careful note of ray's steps as you could do almost exactly the samething in C4D.

Some of my personal tips for C4D to help,

a) configure the views so that you have a 4 port view (i.e. top, right, front, perspective) as default - theres an option in the view controls that does it - but working in this way really helps visulise what's going on.

b) I've been using C4D as a second level application for almost a year and I honestly think the material editor and UV mapping stinks (my prime apps are Max and bryce, I keep trying C4D as if I ever suss out the materials, it would be a cheaper upgrade then Max)

c) After having said use four views - switch to top down view and try making some splines, connect them and follow Ray's process.

Above all play lots and have fun :) Oohh and don't forget there's a darn stupid little button that you have to press to make an object editable - confused me for quite a while, I actually had to rtfm!

Message edited on: 02/27/2006 08:03

It does occurr to me that all this modelling in other apps, Bam Bam or someone similar will probably appear with a perfect model from Bryce booleans.....

I'm gunna be cocky and say that even though I love to model in 3dsmax I can boolean at least as good as bambam.

:) I have the theory, but not the patience!

I have the patience but not the time :-P unless u can get me a paid assignment for it B-)