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HOW TO APPROACH MODELING AN OBJECT
Ladies and Gentlemen, today you will be guided step-by-step on how to approach modeling an object, and after that, how to model the object chosen. For this tutorial's purposes, I've chosen an object which can be placed in many scenes. Advances tS users will probably find it no trouble at all to model this object, but beginner and perhaps even intermediate users will find some difficulty. We will be focussed on an elegant table-clock today. Here's the "real life" picture of one from my house:
When you want to model an object such as this one, you have to think before you leap (not just about HOW you're going to do it, but WHY you're going to do it). The final appearance of the 3D-object will be determined by its purpose in the 3D scene. Think of the scene that you plan to place this object in, and think of appropriate texture maps that you could put on the clock to match the scene you finally put it in. Another thing you may want to think of is how far in the distance it will appear - if it's going to be far away, there is no justification for modeling close detail which will never be seen by the viewer. (However, for this tutorial, we'll be building a detailed version). Just remember, you are modeling the clock to make your already-existing scene look better, not worse. Once you've pin-pointed why you want to model the object, and decided upon texture maps and colours etc, you want to start thinking about HOW you are going to model the object. Lord knows that there are ka-billions of ways to model the same thing in 3D, but what you also want to think about is the following:
- What tools could I use to successfully model the object?
- Which way is the easiest way?
- Which way would look best?
- Which way would both a) Save polys - b) Look realistic?
The above questions will help you narrow your modeling options down to specific tools in trueSpace, and hopefully, make your decision for you. After analyzing the clock, I found that the tools to use were the following:
---> It's time to
model the object now.
1.) Open trueSpace. I'm using tS4.1 here, but this can be done in tS3, and I think even tS2!
2.) Create a BOX object. Scale it as shown in figure 1.
fig.1
3.) Select the top face of the box by right- clicking on POINT EDIT and selecting POINT EDIT: FACES. Click on the box in TOP VIEW. (see figure 2)
fig.2
4.) Switch to FRONT VIEW with a floating SIDE VIEW open as well. Click on SWEEP to sweep the top face of the box and scale it into position shown in figure 3.
fig.3
5.) Repeat steps 3-4 (keep on sweeping and scaling the top face of the box) until your object resembles figure 4.
fig.4
6.) Now create another box object. Scale it and position it as shown in figure 5.
fig.5
7.) COPY the box, select the swept box object (first box) and BOOLEAN SUBTRACT it from the box you just copied. If all goes well, you should still have two boxes on the screen, but there has been a subtraction.
8.) With the top box still selected, scale it down in TOP VIEW and scale it up in FRONT VIEW to resemble figure 6.
fig.6
9.) Create another box object. Scale it and position it as shown in figure 7.
fig.7
10.) Repeat steps 3-4 until your new box object resembles figure 8.
fig.8
11.) Now, this is an easy part. Use the CYLINDER and SPHERE primitives to come up with a shape like figure 9. (I don't think I need to tell you how to do this part.)
fig. 9
12.) BOOLEAN UNION the three objects together. (booleans are very useful to reduce polys.) But, if you want, you can glue them as siblings.
13.) COPY the object and place it on the other side of the top part. (see figure 10)
fig.10
14.) BOOLEAN UNION the two "cylinder-sphere things" together and rotate them in TOP VIEW so it looks like FRONT VIEW.
15.) Select SPLINE POLYGON and draw a path resembling figure 11.
fig.11
16.) Save this path to the PATH LIBRARY by clicking on the tool (located in the OBJECT TOOL pull down). Once the panel shows up, click on ADD PATH TO LIBRARY. (looks like an arrow). That should add a new path to the menu called "Path".
17.) While still in the PATH LIBRARY panel, click on CIRCLE. Scale the circle down in TOP VIEW so it looks liks figure 12.
fig.12
18.) Click on MACRO/SWEEP (located in the sweep menu), and then in the PATH LIBRARY panel, click on "Path". Right-click on MACRO/SWEEP and set the options as shown in figure 13. Then left-click click on MACRO/SWEEP again.
fig.13
19.) Rotate and position the newly swept path into position shown in figure 14. (NOTE: You'll have to rotate your "cylinder sphere things" back so front view is front view again)
fig.14
20.) Create a CYLINDER primitive. Scale/rotate it into position shown in figure 15.
fig.15
21.) Create another cylinder, copy it, scale, and BOOLEAN SUBTRACT it from the previous cylinder as shown in figure 16.
fig.16
22.) Rotate, Scale, and position this new object shown in figure 17. (make multiple copies as shown, too)
fig.17
23.) BOOLEAN SUBTRACT each object from the larger cylinder. Your result should look like figure 18.
fig.18
24.) Although the middle part (the part that actually tells time) isn't completed yet, we will now surface the body of the clock. The reason for this you will find out as you progress through this tutorial. The texture that I'm going to use for this model is this one: (I got it for free from somebody, so I assume you can download it too.)
25.) Select the body of the clock, and apply the texture. I used the following settings: (see figure 19)
fig.19
(UV reps
both set to 2)
26.) Now, create a cylinder. Scale, rotate, and position it as shown in figure 20. (you may want to SMOOTH QUAD DIVIDE this one....I did)
fig.20
27.) Give this cylinder a gold colour...I used these settings:
fig.21
(CALIGARI
PHONG selected)
28.) BOOLEAN SUBTRACT the cylinder from the clock's body. (this creates a gold imprint on the marble body. That's why we textured it early).
29.) LOAD your object you previously saved called "cylinderthing.cob". Scale/rotate/move it into position shown in figure 22. (I had to re-build mine because it wasn't the right proportion...but you may get lucky.)
fig.22
30.) Give this cylinder object the same gold texture as the other one...and while you're at it, you might as well give EVERYTHING in the scene that same gold texture except for the clock body.
31.) COPY the object, and scale/move it into position shown in figure 23. Give this the gold texture too.
fig.23
32.) Repeat step 31 on this object until you have something resembling figure 24.
fig.24
33.) Glue all these cylinder objects together as siblings, and make them invisible. (right click on the OBJECT TOOL, go to RENDER OPTIONS, then click on INVISIBLE). The reason for this is so that this complex object doesn't get in our way while modeling. Before the render, we will make it visible again.
34.) From the PATH LIBRARY, load a CIRCLE object. Scale/rotate/move it into position shown in figure 25.
fig.25
35.) Texture this circle with a clockface texture. I found a good clock face image map at Jarrett Heather's website. It was free, so I downloaded it. Although, I did erase his name from the middle of the image (sorry Jarrett). Here it is:
36.) We will now model the hands on the clock and the thing they're attached to. Start off by creating a cylinder. Rotate/Scale/move it into position shown in figure 26. Give it the gold texture. Also, create a slightly larger cylinder and BOOLEAN SUBTRACT it from the circle.
fig.26
37.) Create three more cylinders scaling/rotating/moving them into position shown in figure 27. Give all three the gold texture too.
fig.27
38.) Create a box. Scale/rotate/move it into position shown in figure 28. Give it the gold texture.
fig.28
39.) Use the POLYGON tool to draw a shape shown in figure 29.
fig.29
40.) SWEEP the polygon. Position it as shown in figure 30. This is the completed hour-hand of the clock.
fig.30
41.) COPY the box object (first part of the hour-hand), scale/rotate/move it into position shown in figure 31. This is the minute-hand.
fig.31
42.) Repeat step 41. This new object will be the second-hand for the clock.
Everything is done except for one simple thing. If you look back at our original picture of the clock, you'll notice the base of it has a pyramidal carving out if it. This is easy to do, but just incase you don't know how to accomplish this, here's what to do...
43.) Create a box object. Scale it into position shown in figure 32.
fig.32
44.) Select the top face of the box, and scale it as shown in figure 33. (By the way, give this box the gold texture).
fig. 33
45.) COPY the object.
46.) BOOLEAN SUBTRACT this object from the base of the clock. The result should look like figure 33.
fig.33
47.) Switch to LEFT VIEW. Rotate your copied pyramidal shape so it is facing you again. Scale it and BOOLEAN SUBTRACT it from the base of the clock. The result should now look like figure 34.
fig.34
48.) Right-click on the OBJECT TOOL.
49.) Click on the button labeled RENDER OPTIONS.
50.) Keep pressing TAB (on the keyboard) until you find your invisible object. Once you found it, click on INVISIBLE to make it visible again.
51.) BOOLEAN UNION the entire clock together except for the hands, and the handle on top.
52.) BOOLEAN UNION the handle and the cylinder part of the handle.
53.) Glue all the hands as siblings.
54.) FINAL STEP!! Glue everything together as siblings.
FINAL WORDS
I hope you've learned something from this tutorial. Just remember, ask yourself questions before you attempt to model something and use your best judgement to model it the best way. Our final clock is detailed, and yet, it ISN'T full of polygons! Nobody wants to sit there for hours rendering a scene that can be rendered in 5 minutes. If you would like to contact me, you may do so by writing to:
Thanks a lot for reading over this tutorial!
