Hammered Metal Texture

[Arcathorn]

Greetings,

I am VERY NEW to mudbox and I am looking for some help. I am creating a ring that will be 3D printed in silver and I wanted to add a hammered metal texture to the exterior band. The texture would give the impression of a hammered metal finish to the ring. I went through the stamps looking for something similar but to no avail. Most of the stamps will give a texture but not quite the look I am going for. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[3dMastermind]

I don't think a map based solution will help here.

I tested this method below and it gave me good results.

Test this on a sphere first:

1 Get a sphere

2 set it to 4-5 subdivision levels.

3 create a new sculpt layer

4 select the 'flatten' sculpt tool at bottom shelf.

5 set the size and strength 35/100

6 set stamp spacing to 60

7 draw all over the sphere.

you can accentuate the effect if you increase the layer strength to >100

Let me know if this helps.

[Arcathorn]

i'll give it a try thanks.

[Arcathorn]

Is there a way of creating the same surface texture in 3Ds Max and avoid the extra step of importing to mudbox. This is for a 3D printed part so I need to actually create the physical texture on the model itself.

As another side note if I bring a part into 3Ds max how do I clean up the interesecting vertices and polygons to make it better for importing to Mudbox. Someone told me there is a simple modifier to do just that in Max.

Arcathorn

[RobinBall6995]

You could make a displacement map of a hammered texture and apply that in Max. If you need to actually fabricate the object you can collapse a displace modifier to just a standard editable poly object. You'd need to make sure it's quite high res.

The STL check modifier should help show and select geometry that would prevent 3d printing.

[Arcathorn]

Ok.......................................Did I mention I am new to 3ds max *L* I have tried to bring the object into 3Ds max...and then save it as an obj to bring it over to mudbox but I get all sorts of warning when I do that and parts of the model are messed up. I am assuming that I am missing a key step in 3Ds max where I clean it up before bringing it over to mudbox from Max. I would MUCH prefer to do it all in 3Ds max and avoid this extra step but I must admit I don't understand what you mean by displace modifier...I just literally finished my tutorial on 3Ds max for beginners.

[RobinBall6995]

Ok. So you know the command panel in Max on the right hand side. In the modify tab at the top is a drop down list of modifiers you can apply to objects. One of those is the displace modifier. If you apply that to your object, you can displace the surface with a texture map. That will push bits in and out based on the black or white level of this texturemap.

You might need to look into UVmapping to apply a texture like this.

You might also need to make sure the geometry is dense enough for the displacement to look right. Try it on a simple plane to see how it works. There are other modifiers to do things like subdivide the geometry to make it denser. Turbosmooth for example will subdivide in a similar way to Mudbox.

Perhaps if you share a screenshot, I'll be able to see if the model looks ok to start with. What errors do you get when exporting to obj?

[Arcathorn]

I am attaching a couple screen shots of what happens when I import them into mudbox...I personally would prefer a map based modifier because I want it uniform. With Mudbox I am going to have to go into each model and try and to precisely replicate what I did on the others and this could be a considerable pain.

Here are the screen shots and here is the texture I am trying to reproduce.

[RobinBall6995]

Looks like you'll need to do a bit of cleanup in Max. There are definitely open edges there. You can fix those by selecting all vertices and welding with a low tolerance.

I can't tell what other things like be wrong with it without looking at a wireframe view in Max. You might well have overlapping polygons. Those can be a bit tricky to remove. The STL check modifier might help show or select those.

[Arcathorn]

I tired using the displace command that you told me about it................Wow did that not go well *L* The model blew up.....Frankly I am kind of lost at this point...I only got 3ds max four days ago and I can't go to training on it. This is like when I went from autocad to inventor with no help.......Its like trying to learn a language when I don't even know what the alphabet looks like.

[RobinBall6995]

Yes I know what you mean. Starting in a new application can be very difficult. Especially if you don't have time to learn from the ground up. Jumping straight into a project is tough.

The model blowing up isn't necessarily wrong. It might simply be that the scale of the scene is very small and the default value for the displacement is too big. Try setting the strength way lower. Like if it defaults to 1, try 0.1 or 0.01.

Try making a 100x100 segment plane in the scene at a similar size and try it on that first. Then you'll get an idea what's going on.

And make sure that the model has UV (mapping) coordinates. The displace modifier has some options for automatically applying them, but it defaults to a planar map, which won't be suitable for a ring. Try the cylindrical option and align the gizmo to the axis of the ring.

There's an option to use existing UVs (called Use Existing Mapping), which is what will work best. But if you haven't set any up, then this will be a complicated process you'd need to learn. I have no idea if Inventor exports UVs.

Good luck. It's not easy.

[Arcathorn]

I tried applying a displacement modifier to cylinder and it just seems to pull the edges of the cylinder up and not actually affect the rest of the model. I have tried with varying strengths and it just wants to expand the cylinder outward. I applied the UV map and a mapping of cylindrical but still not getting the effect im looking for....Perhaps a different modifier?

[Arcathorn]

I am starting to wonder if its because I don't have enough vertices to affect it. How do I add more lines to the circle? Like subdividing it?

[RobinBall6995]

Yes you're right, the displace modifier will only work on vertices, so you'll need much more density, especially along the length of the ring.

I'm not familiar with imported body objects, but that's a mesh object made out of a mass of triangles. Not easy to subdivide, or edit at all really. It might be easier to make an object directly in max and convert it to an editable polygon object. That will be quad based and much easier to work with.

To start with, make a cylinder, give it a lot of sides and segments to give it enough geometry to edit, then apply the uvmap modifier and displace modifier. If it's still a cylinder primitive, you can go back down the stack and change the segments to see the difference.

If that works, you could try removing the displace modifier, collapse the object to an editable poly object and make it a hollow ring. The easiest way to do that would be to delete the caps of the cylinder and add a shell modifier. That gives open objects thickness.

[Arcathorn]

*sigh* Yeah....The problem is the original model was created in inventor and I don't have the skills yet to recreate the ring itself in 3Ds Max. Sure I can create simple things right now but this model is complex for its parametric abilities...even in inventor which I have HUGE amounts of skill in....Recreating it in 3Ds max is not feasible right now....perhaps I need to focus on getting the model cleaned up so I can get it over to Mudbox where I can add the texture manually...I Know...A modeler who uses inventor for everything...well you'd be surprised what I have been able to pull off using that program. You can check out some of my work at

www.batjeepsterrings.com

My partner found me on a site for a modeler and the rest is history. Now though I need to start doing more stuff with textures and rendering (other than showcase) and just learning this is pretty difficult. Especially because my boss won't send me to training right now. Its hard to say "Send me to training so I can do my side job" ; )

Thanks though..your thoughts and patience are much appreciated.

[RobinBall6995]

Yes it's a pity that the workflow is more complicated by Mudbox being a subdivision surface program. It will want a clean quad based poly object and it seems that's not what inventor exports.

Maybe you could try the retopology tool in Mudbox if it will import the model at all. That should rebuild it as even sized quads. But it might have a hard time with the long triangles and open edges. And it might not be close enough to the original model.

I'm not sure what to suggest from here really. For me it would be a simple poly object model to make from scratch in max. But not easy if you're new to max.

To convert the body object i really don't know. There is a Quadrify tool in the ribbon once you convert it to an editable poly object. That might help clean it up for Mudbox.

Perhaps you might get more advice posting in the max forum. There are likely to be more inventor users there.