"Soft" Furniture modeling

[Ken Walton]

Next to finding one somebody else has done, what's the best way, or preferred approach to modeling the "soft/cushiony" components of furniture - ie. down comforters, overstuffed cushions, plush chairs, etc.

 

Thanks,

Ken

[Jeff Mottle]

I prefer to work from splines. If the orginal model came from an IGES file I use the splines and remodel in MAX with surfaces tools, or use meshes in AutoCAD. If there are are no models to work from, I's still use a combo of splines and surface tools.

[Brian Cassil]

I've used a couple different methods but the one I think that works best if you are trying to fit a cusion of some sort to a solid frame-work would be to use patch modeling techniques. Here is a link to a very simple tutorial on how to do that. It's actually about how to model a patch flower but the techniques could very easily be applied to cushions as well.

patch flower

 

Another method that might work depending on how complex the object you are wanting to attach the cusion to would be to create a very rough mesh of the cussion by just pushing a pulling some vertices where you need them and then add the "mesh-smooth" modifier.

[Brian Cassil]

hehe, Jeff and I think alike. He beat me to the punch on this one, because we are baisically saying the same thing if you follow the tutorial.

[STRAT]

i agree on mesh smoothing. when i make pillows, think blankets, couch furnishings etc i usually simply box model the rough shape, add some noise, then mesh smooth. works a treat.

[Ken Walton]

STRAT:

 

The box modeling approach is the one I'd prefer, but maybe I'm just not that good at it. Do you have a tut or an example you could share - say for a comforter?

[STRAT]

hi ken, sorry about the wait only i went home

 

here's a quick example of a pillow type thing.

it's basically a 6 or 7 segmented box, taper modifered at the edges to 'crimp' them, the 'mesh smooth' modifier added (nurms mode) and a small bit of noise added to make it more un-even.

 

you can allways get good effects using the FFD modifiers too.

 

[quizzy]

and rendering with the oren-nayar-blinn shader gives it a real soft look...

[Ken Walton]

Everyone - thanks for the tips. Strat's simple little pillow showed me what I was doing wrong, believe it or not, and the shader tip from quizzy has helped with rendering fabrics and such. Now, a silly question that I've been too embarassed to ask since I've been working with max for so long: Does anyone have any "rules of thumb" for choosing shader types? I've always been able to acheive the effect I'm after, but it's been through trial-and-error or most likely heavily exaggerating the wrong shader type. I haven't seen the "sequel" to Digital Lighting and Rendering yet (the one about texturing), but I'm assuming there would be some info in it - ie. Phong is good for ____ and ____, Anistropic works best for _____ and _____, and so on. This should probably be a new post, so if anyone wants to start it, go ahead.

 

Thanks for everything,

Ken Walton

[nisus]

Hi Ken,

 

I'll start a new topic at *T&T covering shaders

 

rgds

 

nisus

 

T&T: Tips&Techniques