Modelling question.

[jfmonod]

Hi,

 

I'm new to modelling in Max and am using classical architectural objects (columns, friezes, stuff with scrollwork) as my teaching tools. Could anyone tell me how to extrude this (see attached pdfs) and make it curved ? Imagine a semi circle lofted along an "S" shape but create that form by extrusion instead. Thank you muchly for any help you can provide.

 

JF

[SandmanNinja]

Hi Jean-Frederic,

 

Hmm.. It looks pretty curvy to me.

 

I'd extrude it and then bevel the edges to give the extrusion a rounded look.

 

Not sure if you'd need to detach that piece of geometry, convert it to an editable poly to bevel/chamfer the edges or not.

 

I'm sure someone far more knowledgable than myself will reply shortly.

 

Let us know how it turns out.

[jfmonod]

Hi,

 

Thanks for getting back so fast. I've actually been trying that and unfortunately it's been going slowly. The problem is the rounded inside "corners" at the ends where the S balls up (does that make sense ? The vertices go crazy when I try to bevel and I spend most of my time chasing down the non-coplanar quads than anything else.

 

I was thinking of something more like subdividing the surface and using a soft selection move or FFD modifier or something like that. The problem is getting it uniform along the whole length. Hasn't anyone created an "inflate" modifier ? How does one make something bubble on a surface ? I'm pretty sure I've seen CG of someone burning themselves on something metallic and then getting a blister in that shape.

 

That would actually be a pretty cool sequence to animate. Me banging my head on my screen repeatedly until a raised 3D-Max-logo shaped welt appears on my forehead...

 

Thnx.

 

JF

[SandmanNinja]

When I bevel and chamfer, I pay particular attention to the tight corners. If the verts or edges start to cross, I stop and do target welding.

 

Yes, a very slow process. I don't usually have a long section to do - you do tho.

 

Why not make a spline, make it renderable in the viewport, round, until it's a fat, round line in the shape that you want. Then bury it halfway into the surface of the other. Then you can UNION it or LINK it, etc.

 

Just an idea. It should give you the roundedness that you want.

[jfmonod]

That would work for a lot of things actually. I hadn't thought of that. I am working off of CAD polylines so it would be easy to do.

The problem lies with variable thickness. The thickness of these elements is not uniform along the entire path. I'm guessing that this wouldn't take that into account would it.

[SandmanNinja]

Well...

 

You could detach segments as their own splines, then do a loft with circles of various radius.

 

0% of path = Radius: 3

25% of path = Radius: 5

75% of path = Radius: 5

100% of of path = Radius: 3

 

That would give you a tapered look.

 

 

Just guessing here, but I think that's do-able.

It's a bit of work, but keep in mind it's very detailed work.

The Devil's in the details...

[Claudio Branch]

 

The Devil's in the details...

 

 

Indeed.

 

 

Surface Modeling will make the terminating ends of the form easier to handle. For simplicity, I broke up the form into 3 separate modeling tasks.

 

The Surface tools are a set of modifiers that can be used simultaneously. You start by creating a single Editable Spline and adding the following modifiers: Edit Spline, Cross Section, Surface. You build up the "spline cage" by attaching new spline segments within the Edit Spline modifier. You can easily move up and down the modifier stack to make the needed adjustments as you go.

 

I recommend a thorough perusal of Max's User Interface. Just search for "Surface Tools" or "CrossSection Modifier". It will be more concise than I can be here.

 

Good Luck.

[Antisthenes]

try interpolate curves to trace the design as a background bitmap and sweep two rail to create the shapes with nice rounded smooth cup look(the rail that you will rotate3d into place.. then trim that stuff from a flat surface.

 

looks easy good luck

[AJLynn]

WTF? This would have been a really good time for you to say "you should do this in Rhino"

[Antisthenes]

really? ok

[Nic H]

the quickest / best way to do this would be to poly model it.

 

splines are shit - a hangover from CAD-Land imo

 

get a single faced plane convert to edit poly and shift drag the edge / rotate / scale / move and repeat until you have a roughed out shape. put a shell mod on then an edit poly on top of that (to add some horizontal edges using ring>connect to stop it smoothing over copmpletely) turbosmooth on top of it, and readjust verts etc.

 

smooth natural and simple to edit. once you get the hang of modelling like this you wont go back to dirty splines again.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I'm very far from any definition of an expert modeler in Max, but my attempt at this yielded pretty good results for the "S" shaped objects with relatively acceptable results for the three-fingered "swooshes".

 

For the s-shapes, I understand you requested a process with an extrusion, but I got great results with a loft for the path and an arc for the profile. Scaling the profile non-uniformly separately in the X and Y direction gives good control over where it tapers to nothing.

 

For the swooshes, I extruded the spline with a few height segments, added a tessellate modifier (subdivide didn't work as well), then added a relax modifier. That gave it the height in the middle with a rounded edge. The resulting mesh isn't pretty and I wouldn't be surprised if there were three better ways to do it, but that's what I came up with. It'll probably be passable if viewed from a moderate distance.

 

Edit: On second thought, the tessellated extrusion with a relax modifier is pretty crappy. But the lofted profile for the "S" shape will get you pretty close. So there's half an answer for you.

Edited June 16, 2008 by nauticus27
Change of heart.

[odouble]

the quickest / best way to do this would be to poly model it.

 

splines are shit - a hangover from CAD-Land imo

 

get a single faced plane convert to edit poly and shift drag the edge / rotate / scale / move and repeat until you have a roughed out shape. put a shell mod on then an edit poly on top of that (to add some horizontal edges using ring>connect to stop it smoothing over copmpletely) turbosmooth on top of it, and readjust verts etc.

 

smooth natural and simple to edit. once you get the hang of modelling like this you wont go back to dirty splines again.

 

Good clean method but too many steps. You can't completely do away with splines just because.

The modeling situation should determine the modeling technique. For the s-shape, splines and surface modeling or lofting are a quicker way.

[mattclasvegas]

I've found that poly-modelling is much faster than extruding or lofting scroll objects. I get to do quite a bit of that around here.

 

It takes more time initially to get the form right -- but it's much faster to smooth the scroll without generating all the artifacts and overlaps with a good poly model. I tried three different ways to create the scrolls for the attached model.

 

If you look at the image I attached you can see the following:

1. The scroll across the top (orange -- far right) was a bevel. I couldn't get it as smooth as I wanted without major work (I didn't have the time).

2. The scroll to the right of the 25¢ (purple) was a modified bevel (with some poly editing) -- created problems with the varying thickness of the scroll.

3. The scrolls on the left and left top are all box modelled (poly). They took longer to create initially -- but the smoothing was worlds better and faster with fewer polygons in the finished object.

4. I designed and poly modelled the rest of the signs for this project while my dedicated 3D guy fought with bevelling and manually adjusting the designs he had to model. In the end -- my scrolls where visially much nicer as well as easier to edit.

 

M. Carter

Edited June 16, 2008 by mattclasvegas

[Antisthenes]

problem is that is not manufacturable

 

you could always run it thru T-Splines

[mattclasvegas]

problem is that is not manufacturable

 

you could always run it thru T-Splines

 

That's never been an issue for us. We are a custom shop and most of this kind of work is routed and hand finished. Our production facility isn't 3D cad knowledgeable anymore -- hopefully soon though. Then we'll have to think about solid modelling or conversions.

 

m carter