Adam delivered the WIP section as promised so I thought I’d start with something small.
A question was posted in another forum asking how this object would be best created in Modo. It kinda stuck in my head because every time I looked at it I thought of a different way to model it. Its not a really complicated shape but interesting. It has a few features (dimples, ribs, decals, etc.) that might make it interesting for someone starting in Modo.
I’m going to try to tackle this as efficiently and clean as possible.
Of course everyone is welcome to comment!
Took a long time but every step of the I tend to over examine the possible workflow and hit each operation every way possible.
eg.
Better to bump map than actually model?
SubD or Solid, eh.. mix?
When is sloppy modelling okay?
Boolean?
How much is too much precision?
Modo’s workflow opens so many paths…
Ok, here the final, a little too shiny but I liked it.
New project Time. Hopefully a little quicker. Andrew may like this!
Ha! You, my friend, are bonkers.
OK, Day 1. Had about 30 minutes to play so here we go..
Step 1: Loaded BackDrop image and calculated pixel size to try to stay accurate.
Step 2: Placed cylinder over it. Kept few as possible verts as can always slice later.
Step 3: Went to wire frame mode FRONT and matched vertices to features. Not even thinking about details yet.
Step 4: Check Sub-d and massaged verts..
Although the model looks simple I’ve spent a few days hitting it with different idea. Sculpting looks the way to go but with a plain mouse my skill level doesn’t give me the accuracy I want. Right now I have frozen it, wrapped the curves needed around it and joined verts. Beveled in and now time to tweak and smooth.
I think a artist with a wacom pen would sculpt it perfectly in 30 mins!
Was playing again today and although the model was frozen I’m hoping I can go tweak crazy and edge deletion crazy back to SubD while keeping the details and enjoying the benefits of SubD. Yup, just a shampoo bottle but a great time to try all techniques.
Going to go in the valleys and clean the polys too. I want it really clean so when I give it thickness transparency won’t kill me.
Holy cow dude, that’s impressive!! And no, sculpting with a Wacom is definitely NOT the way to achieve the kids of crisp geometric details you’re getting here. Great work, bro! Keep it up!
I think I hit the Modo “aha” moment. The technique of freezing and working back to Sub-D is definitely a huge step for me. Stripping away extra edges and retaining sexy curves is really eye opening.
The Pixar Sub-d is allowing for some ugly n-gons but I’ll be sure to clean later.
It’s a great technique! It has limitations, but in this case it’s working beautifully! Keep it up!!
Keep up the great work! I can’t wait to see it finished. Adding the stickers will be fun :)
Summer has slowed down modo but played some more today. I want to use all SUB-D so I’m really wasting a lot of time rerouting edges. Still a few “rumples and crumples” to smooth but cheated and tried adding some ribs and materials to test render. It actually looks good semi-transparent (my final goal).
Still have to finish enclosure and top and fix some edges but pretty close. Will re-do the ribs properly and don’t think I’ll need to bug Adam for the final dot grip and decals.
BTW, There must be few other members here to start other WIPs! I’d love to see a Rhino WIP for sure.
Wow, this is turning into one seriously dank portfolio piece! If you don’t mind my asking, how many hours do you think you’ve sunk into it so far?
Adam
I’m kinda embarrassed to answer Adam as it’s probably been about 20 all together. Probably could of done a OK facsimile in 2 hours but I over-think each section for fun. (A project manager would fire me right away).
Example: The front face’s S curve. Going SUB-D meant the curve would create a ton of n-gons because of the triangles left at the sharp corners.
With a little vert tweaking Pixar SUB-D still produced smooth curves and proper renders but…
1)Tried writing some basic code to re-grid the poly to follow the S. Haven’t played with Modo’s SDK so I stuck to the simple Lightwave ASCII object format. Lots of fun but ultimately between conversions – FAIL.
2) Tried cutting the front face to the S out, delete vertical edges out and had modo slice new vertical edges in to follow the S Shape. I then pasted the piece back in constraining to background and joined verts.
3) Really went off the deep end and tried UV’ing the whole object to use displacement mapping for everything. A lot of time, a lot of so so results.
So while a pro would be able to pop this out before lunch I like to play with the project and at the same time continue to improve. Its silly but I’m almost more impressed with a models wire-frame than the final render.
Thanks for the feedback Adam, it’s really appreciated.
Don’t be so hard on yourself! This kind of thing takes surprisingly long, and this bottle is extremely complex. When I built that 2010 Taurus interior it took me a full 40 hour work-week, and this bottle is every bit as complex as that interior was.
Things always take longer than you’d think. Yesterday I spent 12+ hours editing and reworking parts of the new EvD1.tv podcast :)
The difficulty level depends on what you want to do with the geometry. If you’re wanting to create the exact image shown above and nothing more, you can get a way with a lot of cheating (e.g. overlapping whole spheres rather than trying to join them with the base mesh, etc).
If you’re wanting to be able to show it as a transparent object, or would like to rapid prototype the geometry, this begins to get much more difficult. As always I’d start with the basic overall shape and then chop it up to add details.
Good luck!
Adam
Adam I wanted to ask a question about plastic molding design.
The bottle’s grip has a sand finish to the plastic. It’ll be fairly easy in modo for the render as a fine noise bump map but what does a manufacturer do?
I mean how does a manufacturer incorporate that into a cad design?
Good question! Typically this type of texture is ached using a chemical etching process on the tool steel, but with very large bumps like these it’s likely that they were cut directly into the steel during the EDM process.
When building geometry for manufacture you do not use SubD apps like modo, so the process for creating the geometry us completely different.
Adam
Okay, I put the fishing rods down and ready to finish.
Just cleaning up now and ready to put the top on with decal etc. I think I have some verts floating around the ribs that need deleting. I’ll probably back step once and not bevel the grip ribs out so much anyways.
The small array of dimples is the last challenge, lid should be easy.
Those dimples will be… fun :) Shouldn’t be too bad tho, given how much geometry you’ve already got to work with.
Keep in mind you can always use a displacement map to quickly throw those dimples into place!
3 ideas…
1) I was going to make half spheres on another layer and constrain them to the bottle. Probably a lot of cleanup but it’ll be precise.
2) Move and size the polys and bevel to pop them out like the grip.
3) UV and displacement map. hmm. hmm.
Going to try #2 first since SUB-D is the key for the model.
Running into a few problems trying to clean up surfaces.
Here’s the Dimple operation I’m using.
Basically selecting the vertices and then bevelling twice.
