by Didik Wijaya
This tutorial needs you to understand basic use of 3dsmax.

I always love Pixar's movie, including Flushed Away, 3D movie with Stop Motion looks. In that film, there's a little creature, a snail, that really grab my attention. The snail has very simple design, but appealing. In this tutorial, you will going to create snail like in Flushed Away The Movie. This tutorial divided into 4 parts: creating mouth, body, eyes, and teeth. You will learn many different techniques used in this tutorial. Techniques that absolutely will be useful in the future.

1. Begin with simple object, create Capsule in Top viewport. We will use capsule as snail's body. In Command Panel, Capsule can be found in Extended Primitives object list. Use values like image below. Activate Edged Faces display in Perspective viewport (simply press F4 in active viewport).

2. Go to Front viewport. Activate Smooth and Highlight display (F3) and Edged Faces display (F4). Now, convert Capsule into Editable Poly (Right click on object and choose Convert to>Convert to Editable Poly). Activate Snap Toggle. In Edit Geometry rollout, click Cut button. Then, in Front viewport click on vertex (1) and next (2). When finished, right click to end cutting.

3. Repeat cutting process until you do three other cuts. You will get something like image below.

4. Before we go to the next step, it's better to check our cutting result first. Sometimes, 3dsmax creating more vertices because of cutting or slicing (I really hate it). In Selection rollout, activate Vertex Selection. Turn on Ignore Backfacing, in order to not letting you select vertices in the back accidentaly. Region select in vertex area you have cut before. If the message shows 2 Vertices Selected, that means you must weld them. In Edit Vertices rollout, click Settings button right next to Weld. A small dialog box will appear. Enter large number in Weld Threshold. For example use 100. Any vertices within this distance will be combined as one vertex. Check other vertices areas. When finished, you can de-activate Ignore Backfacing.

5. Change selection to Polygon. Select several polygons like image below. There are 16 polygons to select (hold Ctrl to select many polygons at a time). In Edit Polygons rollout, click Inset button. Then, in Front viewport, do Inset three times until you get something like image below. Next step, press Del to delete polygons. Finally, select all outermost polygons.

6. Using Select And Non-Uniform tool, scale down those polygons along vertical and horizontal axis. You need to make the hole smaller. After done with Front viewport, go to Top viewport. Scaled down polygons need adjustment. Use Select And Non-Uniform Scale in vertical axis to fix polygons position.

7. Back to Front viewport. Select polygons surrounding hole (look at image below for reference). In Edit Polygons rollout, click Extrude button. Click and drag in viewport to add extrusion. Voila, you have created snail's sexy lips.

8. After that, add Bevel to previous extruded polygons. Snail's mouth is finished.

9. We are going to create a hollow area inside the mouth (mouth cavity). Change selection to Edge. Select all edges creating the hole. All about 12 edges. In Top viewport, move edges inside while pressing Shift button. More extended polygons will be created. Then, in Edit Geometry rollout, click Y button right next to Make Planar. All edges should be made parallel in the same axis.

10. Move edges inside again with Shift pressed. After polygons created, use Select and Uniform Scale tool to reduce hole size. Do these process couple of times.

11. Last step, change selection to Border. Select border around the hole. In Edit Borders rollout, click Cap button. The hole is now closed.

12. Image below shows snail body completed with mouth. Next, in Part 2 of this tutorial, we will modify snail's body.

Modeling A Snail Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Any question or comments regarding this tutorial should be sent to:
Didik Wijaya, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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