best method to model a tent like this...

[thingfishs]

 

Hi,

I am trying to make a version of the above, but having only ever made buildings with straight walls am at a bit of a loss to know how to approach it. I made a stretched sphere (turned editable mesh) which I then tried to manipulate via polygons/faces/vertices etc to try and replicate the pointy bits but there were never enough segments for the resulting modifications to look smooth; and increasing the number of segments (to try and achieve a smoother line) only resulted in an unwieldy number.

 

I have no idea if I've explained myself suitably, I am still relatively new to all the terms (and this is my first post here) Any help in pointing me in the right direction with this would be much appreciated,

 

thanks.

 

(I am using 3ds Max 2010)

[ilyass]

hi

 

ive tried to make an example myself and this is what i came up with.

i made a sphere with lots i segments ( i used 150) converted it to a poly and cut the bottom half away, after that i played around with soft selection

until i "almost" got the same effect that your picture showed.

its not perfect but if you spend more time on it you might produce some nice results, i got this up in 1 min.

 

GL

[thingfishs]

thanks a lot for that ilyass, and your version does have the smoothness I haven't been able to achieve, but it sounds like my approach wasn't completely wrong. I haven't come across "soft selection" as a term yet, it looks like that's what I need to find more out about.

[ilyass]

im glad i was able to help you. good luck with modelling

[Peter M. Gruhn]

It's a start...

 

1 - spindle. 8 sides. 3 cap segs.

2 - edit poly. delete the bottom, pull the skirt down.

3 - select cap verts. extrude. the right distance with the right amount of base width.

3 - I spread it to the point where verts collided so I welded them all.

4 - TurboSmooth...

5 - ... squashes the peaks so go back and grab them. Add some open chamfer. Either just a hair so it works or wide enough to stick a pole through.

6 - tart up

7 - render

[thingfishs]

fantastic! thanks very much peter for that condensed tutorial

 

It's been a good start to my time in these forums (I came across them via a random 3ds forums google search) I will show my version when I've done it and see if there are any more suggestions,

thanks again.

[wannabeartist]

The above methods are probably way more efficient, but alternatively you might want to take look at Cloth and inflating it.

 

It's probably not worth the trouble, but if you find your model looking a little too rigid and symmetrical, then check it out.

[thingfishs]

thanks, I'm having a hard enough time with the simpler method so I'll leave it for now. ;-)

I've had a go at following the above tutorial but have had some problems. This is my first time using 3ds itself, but I have had a little bit of experience using gmax (but only with straight walls as I mentioned, only simple stuff). So there's a lot I'm confused by... (pretty much everything)

So step 1 is no problem, so too with converting to poly. I'm not quite clear on the rest of 2 (is that done with vertices?)

What are "cap verts."?

 

As for the rest I'll leave that for now. Sorry I'm such a newb at all this.

[wannabeartist]

No reason to be sorry, everybody has been a newcomer at some point

 

I'm no expert either, but I think Peter means the vertices at the top of the tent, select the ones you want to "spike out" like in your reference and apply extrude from the edit poly's buttons - you want to click on the button next to the word extrude to get to the options.

 

Now, you need to be in vertex mode to do this correctly, so when you have the edit poly selected press "1" for vertices or select it (the sub-object level inside edit poly) from the stack. Be sure to specify a proper base width - it affects the size of the bottom of the spike.

[thingfishs]

thanks again,

that's what I figured but I was trying to use the extrude command from the modifier menu (which was greyed out anyway - so I was trying to use face extrude). Even though mine still isn't right up to that point:

 

 

I guess my problem is in step 2. I interpreted that as (via vertices), removing the bottom half and then selecting and dragging the perimeter vertices down. But that wasn't it because it looked nothing like the photo....?

[proces2]

i would agree with 'wannabeartist' - that using cloth would get you the most accurate result. you wouldn't need to do any inflation though - so that would make the process one step easier. with a tent - where all surfaces are in tension - you can only get either all concave or all convex surfaces (depending on whether you are looking at it from the inside or the outside). inflation, in this specific case, would give you both concave and convex - which produce a form that just wouldn't look right.

 

with cloth, you simply have to "fix" the edge conditions and the points which define the peaks. then you just run the simulation - and let gravity do its thing. even though in the cloth simulation, you are "hanging" the cloth. for representing the surface that you are trying to make - it is the same as pulling the whole thing into tension like a tent.

 

attached is a rendering of a bridge design that we did where the surface was "form-found" using cloth simulation in MAX. the rendering is a bit hard to read. the whole project was done in 20 minutes for an Autodesk "Design Slam".

[ruskie77]

have you tried patch modelling this instead?

[thingfishs]

Thanks proces2 & ruskie77,

I'll admit I'm a bit overwhelmed by the advice. I'm new to MAX, having only had experience with gmax previously. So trying to get my head around all the new options (and there's a lot; gmax was a tiny sliver of MAX), as well as the suggestions here has been hard. Unfortunately I'm still at the point where most of the advice given just raises new questions. "patch modeling" for eg...., no idea. ;-)

I like the sound of cloth. This model is for a 2.5D game and though I want the form to be pretty accurate, it doesn't have to be perfect. Could you give me a little more detail on patch modeling,

cheers.