Escalight - 3ds Max tutorial, Photoshop, Flash, V-Ray, Blender, Free 3D models, etc

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

After we created snail's mouth in Part 1 tutorial, we will create snail's body this time. Very simple technique is applied here. We will use the help of Path Deformation. You can also use this technique for snake modeling or anything similar.

1. Continue from previous tutorial. Go to Modify tab. Activate Vertex Selection. Select all vertices in the bottom part of body and move them down.

2. Change selection to Edge. Select all vertical edges (look at image below for reference). In Edit Edges rollout, click Settings button right next to Connect. A dialog box will appear. Fill in Segments=7 or more, and click OK.

3. Now, change selection to Vertex.. In Soft Selection rollout, activate Use Soft Selection with Falloff=200 (Use your own Falloff value. It depends on the height of snail's body). Select vertices in bottom part. Use Select and Uniform tool to rezise them.

4. Reduce Falloff values and then move the tail to heighten the snail's body..

5. Select middle part of snail's body. Enlarge with Select and Uniform Scale. You can resize or modify the body as you wish. You want to create thin or fat snail, it's up to you. When finished, de-activate all sub-object selection.

6. Go to Create tab. Click Shapes icon and Line button. You will create a line here. In Creation Method rollout, activate Smooth for Initial Type and Bezier for Drag Type. Draw a line in Left viewport. Your line will be used like a "bone" for snail's body. Right click to end drawing line. Modify the line if necessary, because the look of snail will very much depend on this line.

7. Select snail's body object. Go to Modify Panel. Add PathDeform modifier. In Parameters rollout, click Pick Path button, then press H to open Select Objects window. Highlight your line (usually named Line01) and click Select button. Snail's body will be deformed based on the line, but it needs several fixes. Drag spinner in Percent until you get desired result. For example, I used 42.5. Also, use Path Deform Axis=Z and activate Flip. Now, your snaill should look like image below.

8. This is how your snail should look like now. It's easy to create, just from a simple capsule object. Next, in Part 3 of this tutorial, you will learn to add the eyes.

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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