Furniture Modeling. AV4778 Furniture Modeling in 3ds Max. Victor Erthal Neoscape inc.

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1 Victor Erthal Neoscape inc. AV4778 in 3ds Max Learn to model furniture in 3ds Max in a way that is optimized for architectural images and animations. We will cover simple techniques for modeling upholstered organic surfaces and adding extra detail to surfaces to achieve the level of realism you desire in your renders.the techniques described can be used in many other areas where organic modeling is required. Learning Objectives At the end of this class, you will be able to: Gather proper reference material Creating a measurement cage Create a basic efficient setup Create upholstered surfaces with different tensions Add extra detail Texture and Unwrap Create buttoned upholstered surfaces About the Speaker A senior digital artist in the Neoscape Boston studio, Victor Erthal has over 10 years of architectural visualization experience. Victor was born in Brazil and graduated with a degree in architecture from the Rio De Janeiro Universidade Santa Ursula in 000, before moving to the United States in 006. His decade of rendering and animation experience encompasses a wide array of projects: including largescale master plan films for Marsa Al Seef in Bahrain and Sorouh City in Egypt, carefully detailed and choreographed Skylofts Penthouse renderings, a restaurant concept video for an international hotel chain, and stylized animations for the Nova television series Riddle of the Sphinx. He has collaborated with many of the highest profile clients of Neoscape including internationally acclaimed design firms Studio Daniel Libeskind, Callison, KPF, and Safdie Architects. Victor is also an instructor of 3ds Max rendering and animation at the Boston Architectural College. victorerthal@gmail.com victor.erthal@neoscape.com

2 Gathering Proper reference material It might sound obvious but in order to be able to model furniture and any other kind of organic surface, good reference material is a must. It is very common that in our everyday workflow we might not be able to collect all the data about the subject we would like, but there are some pitfalls we should try to avoid. Photos When looking for photos of the specific piece of furniture you need to model, it never hurts to get a large number of photos, but you should always prefer photos that get as close to the orthographic view as possible and a good ¾ view. This would be the ideal minimum. If you have access to the real object, take the pictures yourself and make sure to take some detail shots as well and pay close attention to the imperfections and details. CAD Drawings and schematics

3 These are not always readily available, but nowadays many manufacturers make available even simple orthographic views of their furniture. Even if it is not ultra detailed, this might help you get the basic proportions of your model correctly. Additional information It is always good to find out a bit more about the manufacturer if possible. in their website, you can usually find at least the rough dimensions for the piece and that will be very helpful in creating the measurement cage to start modeling. Creating the cage One of the first things I tipically do is create a cage system using rectangles. These rectangles represent all the measurementes we know of the model. Most of the time, we are not going to have all the reference we wish to build the furniture, so just work with data you have or data you can estimate (a typical seat height varies from 16 to 18 inches). For a chair, for example, I would build a rectangle with it s width and depth and then copy it to match the seat height and back height. If available you can add a fourth one to match the arm height. In the example armchair, the measurements are 3 width, 19 seat height, 5.5 arm height, 35 depth and 3.5 total height. The Resulting cage looks like this:

4 Creating and efficient work flow This is one of the many old habits i have when working with furniture models. We need to create a basic work flow that will get the guessing out of the table. For example, in most cases, furniture is symmetrical, so we prepare the work flow properly to accommodate that, and automate the process further. These are the steps i usually go trough before even adding propper proportion to the model: 1-create a box snapping to the cage 3-slice trough the logical center for symmetry and delete half the object with an edit poly modifier 4-apply a symmetry modifier 5-apply a turbosmooth modifier If you enable the show end result button on the edit poly modifier and enable the display cage, you can manipulate the polys in real time and see the end result immediately. Creating upholstered surfaces Now, using the cage for measurements and the setup we did with the edit poly, symetry and turbosmooth, we can start building upholstered pieces.

5 The basics It is very common to overlook some important aspects of how uphlstery works. Some people tend to just go with a subdivided chamfer box, but i tent to approach it more carefully. 1. Starting with the original object is a simple box. select one of the edges and ring, then connect. 3. Move the resulting edges closer to the corner - you will se the corner becoming sharper 4. Repeat the process for all corners. In some cases, you will nottice the need to have some areas tighter than others, so all you need to do is get the edges closer i nthe tight areas and farther away in others. Adding tension Now it is time to get a little bit more artistic, and this is where your vision counts. Practice will be a huge advantage when it comes to predicting and estimating how the smoothed surface will react to your changes in the basic cage, so try to experiment as much as you can. If you want, add another edit poly modifier so that you don t lose your progress so far. Here is how to start:

6 1. adjust the cage to the aproximate size of the seat cushion (you can just elect which piece to build first, but in some cases it is more important that you build certain pieces first in order to get it right). add one more connection in all directions in order to have a center line in all sides of the cushion. 3. select all the vertices in the top face and remove the very corner ones from the selection 4. move the selection up (you need to judge how much, depending on the final objective), shrink the selection, move up, shrink the selection... until there are no more vertices left. 5. repeat the process for all faces that will be visible. 6. adjusting the distance between edges will define how sharp or smooth a corner should be

7 Variable radius Corners Introducing variable radius corners adds an extra level of detail that makes the furniture really closer to real. The point is that in the real world, very rarely the corner radius of something like upholstery will be continuous due to different tensions, lenghts of fabric, stitches, filling material, springs, etc. to introduce some of this more natural shape, simply vary the distance between vertices in the corners. I usually set the very corners as a tighter radius, leaving the centers more rounded. Adding extra detail Talk about wrinkles, folds, stitches and piping For some pieces, it is important to add imperfections like creases and random variations on the surface. To do so we will step the process of smoothing. Take down the iterations on the original turbo smooth and add an edit poly modifier and another turbosmooth on top. your stack would look somewhat similar to the one in the figure below: insert figure showing the stack for wrinkles the reason to do that is to have a bit more control over the position of the bumps, and to be able to affect the surface asymmetrically. Wrinkles and deformations Some kinds of upholstered surface require some deformation in it s surface, be it by use or by design, these can prove tricky to model. It is crucial that you try to retain control over what you have done so far with the model and preserve all your work. 1. go to your model s turbosmooth modifier and make sure you have only one iteration

8 . add a new edit poly on top 3. and a new turbosmooth on top of it all (this creates a secondary level of editing and smoothing so that if you don t like of what you did, or want to create a slightly different version of your model, it is easier) 4. start by adding the simple deformations that would only move geometry around (you can do this either in vertex or edge mode) - in my example I am adding some slack to the fabric in some areas as seen in the figures 5. now, choose edges where you want the wrinkles to be and chamfer 6. select one of the new connecting edges, ring and connect once 7. move the resulting edge inwards 8. adjust the tip vertex to smooth out the result 9. repeat the process as much as needed Piping Creating piping is the simpler of the details, all you need to do is use the original object s topology to create renderable shape like this: 1. add an edit poly modifier on top of the stack. with the edge sub-object mode, select the edges where you want to add the stitches (use loop if possible) 3. click in create shape under the edges sub-object mode 4. close the sub-object mode 5. select the recently created shape and make it renderable Stitches A lot of people tend to add the stitches before adding the turbosmooth modifier. in general, this could be good for the added interactivity and being able to control directly the amount of detail in any given moment. I usually add these details as a final pass on top of the stack. The reason for this is the fact that nowadays most render engines work with proxies and there cannot be a lot of interactive detail control over it after the surface is proxied. Also, following this method, creating stitches and piping is so easy and fast that you do not need to worry about preserving this pass. you can simply delete the last modifier and add it again if something else is needed. So here is how to proceed: 1. add an edit poly modifier on top of the stack. with the edge sub-object mode, select the edges where you want to add the stitches (use loop if possible) 3. Assuming you are using inches as your system unit, chamfer the selection by right click the selection and convert to vertices, then convert to faces and shrink the selection 5. bevel using local normals by the same amount you chamfered (.03) for both extrude and bevel values 6. Delete the inner faces after the bevel Mapping For many situations, a simple uvw mapping modifier should work just fine for the furniture, but depending on the range the piece will need to be seen, you might want to try out unwrapping uvw s.

9 If you are not familiar with the process, Unwrapping is the process of opening a surface in a plane and applying the mapping. To do so follow these steps: 1. apply a uvw unwrap modifier to the top of the stack. Switch to face sub-object mode and make sure you have the select element button on. That will make it easier to select an entire panel of the model (since we deleted the inner face on the stitching process) 3. Click on the pelt button. That will open the pelt window where you will see the panel you selected and a circle around it. That is the stretcher 4. Click on pelt and you will se the surface being tensioned. Let it run until it settles and commit. Repeat the process for the remaining pieces of the cushion 5. Now all the pieces are stretched out but the mapping is still not correct. Select all the pieces and go to tools - relax use the parameters: relax by edge angles, 100 iterations and 0.1 for both amount and stretch and then click on the relax button. 6. Let it run a little until it settles - this will make the faces assume a size closer to their original size in the model and will make the mapping look more natural and constant. 7. Click on apply 8. Now you should try to resize the different pieces by measuring them against each other. I.E.: the front of the cushion should have roughly the same width as the top, so all you need to do is scale it until it has the proper dimension. 9. After you are done, select all and go to tools-pack UVs - this will place all the panels into the UVW box. Now you can try applying different maps and textures to your model. Keep in mind that depending on the map size, you might need to adjust the tiling in the map or scale the unwrapped panels. Conclusion There is a lot more you can do with these techniques, furniture modeling being just the beginning. It is normal to feel a little clumsy controlling the meshes in the beginning, but with time you will feel comfortable enough with this workflow and it will be easier to predict the behavior of the mesh. I hope you enjoyed the class and feel free to contact me with questions at victorerthal@gmail.com Enjoy AU 011!