Escalight - 3dsmax, Photoshop, Flash Tutorials, Free 3D models, etc

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

This tutorial will show you how to model a simple object, a spoon. Although simple, there are a lot of techniques we are going to learn, like Flip, Bridge, Extrude, Make Planar, Connect, Chamfer and Soft Selection. You are going to learn all of that from one simple object. Okay, let's model a spoon using 3dsmax.

1. First, open or reset 3dsmax. In Command Panel, make sure Create tab is selected. Change drop-down list to Extended Primitives. Click Oil Tank button. Click and drag in Top viewport to create oil tank. After oil tank is created, click on Modify tab. In this tutorial, I use Radius=50, Height=50, Cap Height=15. Before you go further, right click on Perspective viewport to activate it and press F4 button in keyboard to see Edged Faces view.

2. In Top viewport, use Select And Non-Uniform Scale tool to scale down oil tank in vertical axis a little bit. You will get an ellips if you look at the top viewport.

3. Right click oil tank and choose Convert to Editable Poly. In Selection rollout, activate Polygon selection. In Front viewport, select all top-section polygons and delete them. When you look at Perspective viewport, you may not see your object. It's okay. Their faces are just point downward.

4. Now, select all polygons (bottom section). Using Select And Move Tool, move polygons up a little bit while holding Shift button. You will get duplicate of your object. When a small window appear, just click OK to make duplicate polygons as element. Make sure polygons of your duplicate object still selected. Then, in Edit Polygons rollout, click Flip. This button used to flip polygon's normal. Now, your polygon's faces will look upward. You can see the result in Perspective viewport.

5. Change selection to Border. Select two borders as shown in image below. You can select two border together by holding Ctrl button while selecting. Next, in Edit Borders press Bridge button. Bridge will create polygon connecting those two borders.

6. Change selection to Polygon. Select two polygons as shown in image below. In Edit Polygons rollout, click Extrude button. Then, click and drag in viewport to create extruded polygons. These polygons will be used as hand-grip. If necessary, use Select And Move Tool to extend length of hand-grip. Use image below for reference.

7. Change selection to Vertex. In Top viewport, select vertices on the right-most side of hand-grip. In Edit Geometry rollout, press X button on right of Make Planar. The selected vertices will be aligned along X axis.

8. Change selection to Edge. Using region selection, in Top viewport select all edges along hand-grip. In Edit Edges rollout, click Settings button right of Connect. A small window will appear. Fill 4 for Segments, then press OK. Hand-grip will be divided into 4 segments.

9. Change selection in Vertex. Using Select And Move and Select And Non-Uniform Scale Tool, change position of vertices in hand-grip like image below.

10. Change selection to Edge again. This time, add more edges using Connect Settings like image below.

11. Change selection to Vertex. In Top viewport, select vertices on right-most side of hand-grip like image below. Open Soft Selection rollout. Activate Use Soft Selection. For example, I use Falloff 150 and Bubble 2. Soft Selection is used when you want to select nearby vertices. The most interesting part of Soft Selection is the selection is weighted. Outer-most part (green color) of selected is less 'selected' than inner part (red-color), represented with different color. Falloff is used to set area selection. Bubble is used to set how wide is the inner part area.

12. In Front viewport, use Select and Non-Uniform Scale Tool in vertical axis to give more thickness to hand-grip. Then, using Select And Move Tool move vertices up to create curvy shape.

13. Basic spoon model is finished. Now, we are going to give more detail to the spoon model. Change selection to Edge. Select edges like image shown below. Remember, hold Ctrl to select more than one vertex. After 6 vertices selected, click Loop button in Selection rollout. Other edges creating loop will be selected. Then, while those edges still selected, select another 4 edges in the tip point of hand-grip. After all edges selected, in Edit Edges rollout click Chamfer button. Click and drag in viewport to give chamfering a little bit.

14. Image below show resulted chamfer.

15. Congratulations! You have modeled a spoon with nice details. Apply TurboSmooth if necessary. Image below shows rendered model with texture and light applied.

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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