topic Re: Make object follow the silhouette of a surface in 3ds Max Modeling Forum

Make object follow the silhouette of a surface

Anonymous — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 11:44:54 GMT

Hey there 🙂

I am trying to create a snowman that wears a tie. The tie will be attached to the middle sphere of the snowman and should adjust its form to the surface of the sphere, just like it would in real life.

What is the easiest way to achieve this? The first screenshot shows how the tie is placed at the moment. The other one shows how it should adjust to the surface of the snowman.

I would be very glad for any help I could get 🙂

Re: Make object follow the silhouette of a surface

10DSpace — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 15:11:26 GMT

@Anonymous

Check out the conform brush. I was just doing this to get a plastic eye conform to the curvature of a little toy model. I used it in combination with the standard n move transform of vertices to position, sometimes with soft selection. A little patience and you will get there. With conform you can set the offset off the surface and move selected vertices only. A good tool to have in your arsenal. Hope it helps.

Re: Make object follow the silhouette of a surface

10DSpace — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 17:21:29 GMT

@Anonymous

Even easier starting point is to use the Conform Compound object on the tie and select the snowman as the wrap to object as shown below. Note that you should be looking straight at the front of the tie, placed in front of the snowman when you you select the snowman as the "wrap to" object (by default it uses the active viewport view to project the shape on to the wrap to surface. They will be combined into one object but you can then place an edit poly on top of the combined object and detach as element the Tie and go from there with any tweaks you want using tools I mentioned in my first reply.

Re: Make object follow the silhouette of a surface

domo.spaji — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 19:30:42 GMT

You mean "Detach as (new) Object"?

Also, default for Wrap To Object Is Instance, so you already have 2 objects.

Just check "Hide wrap to object"

Re: Make object follow the silhouette of a surface

10DSpace — Sun, 05 Apr 2020 19:51:57 GMT

@domo.spaji

Thanks, @ domo.spaji for the pick up. Yes, I did mean detach as new object and as you say, using the default of "Instance" and checking "Hide Wrap to Object" keeps the objects separate so no need to detach anyway.

@Anonymous

To correct my response above, in using the Conform Compound object with the tie, make sure the default of "Instance" under the "Wrap_To_Object " is selected and check "Hide Wrap to Object". That way the tie and snowman will remain as separate objects and therefore no need to detach the tie. Hope it works for you.