Can anyone tell me what is the best software to model jewelery like this and if you know of any turorials to do this?    I have Max,Hexagon,Carrara6 but might invest if another software is better for this kind of work. cheerio lululee

Personally, I've found Modo to be the easiest, most intuitive modeler out there, but I've never used Max or Hexagon. What works best depends a lot on the user. Max should be capable of any task. The jewelry you've posted would be really easy to create in Modo but if you’ve already invested a small fortune in 3dsMax, it might be worthwhile to figure out how to do it in that program.

I know it would be easy in Hexagon...  Draw the curly things with the
splined-polyline tool.  Apply a Thickness to each, with 8 sides.  Draw
circles for the main rings, apply Thickness to them.   Use the Deformer
to curve the curly pieces slightly so they fit against the arm.  Then arrange
and scale the pieces around an actual arm (exported from Poser) and weld.

(Note: I'm actually thinking in Amapi here, but since Hexagon is derived
from Amapi, the directions should still work.)

easier yet would be to model a cylinder and using a texture draw the curves in white with a smoothed brush against a black background and use that as a displacement map. A transparency map to clear out the "hollow" parts.
Could be done in minutes in Photoshop, or in the Gimp.

Excellent idea.

Thanks so much to everyone for your help. Lots of great ideas. i appreciate all of them.
Now, I am off to try them.
cheerio  lululee

That looks like it would be pretty easy with snapping and silo2.

I would go with what ockham said for hex, with what you already have for modelers. That looks to be the easest way.

I would have done it that way too, but now I would use the snaping and one of the many pen tools in Modo. The tube pen would work well. LOL.

Another method in 3ds Max is to draw the curly segments with 2D splines, then create a simple cube. Got to polygon sub-object mode, select the necessary facet and choose "extrude along spline". Just click the spline you created and you'll have the general shape you want. Add a turbosmooth modifier to finish things off.
That's just me, there's a lot of ways to skin a cat :)

Wow! I am overwhelmed. I have learned so much from all of you today.Thank you. What a gift.
cheerio  lululee

Quote - That looks like it would be pretty easy with snapping and silo2.

I find it quicker to do things like that with the topology brush.

• Draw the bracelet
• Enter to produce geometry
• Subdivide and smooth
• Offset verts to raise the shape

Heh, I love Silo :biggrin:

I use Max and would just lay in some splines and then make them renderable in the parameters tab, you can adjust thickness and side counts. Also lofting would work too, giving you the ability to easily alter the size and thickness of the spline where ever you wanted to...good luck!

If that is wire jewelry, I would say Modo. It's super easy to draw a tube and click it all over the place. It's fast too. ^^

> Quote - easier yet would be to model a cylinder and using a texture draw the curves in white with a smoothed brush against a black background and use that as a displacement map. A transparency map to clear out the "hollow" parts. > Could be done in minutes in Photoshop, or in the Gimp.

Cool, Posette has a new torque using this method and the poser primative cylinder!