Expert Tips | Modeling a Pillow in 3ds Max

[melissa.lax]

Dear Max Community,

For this month's "Expert Tips" thread, we invite Ramy Hanna, Partner at TiltPixel. Ramy, is a Max veteran from the arch-viz industry who's experienced in creating architectural renderings and animations. He's presented at AU several times and is best known for his AU Class "Render Like a Photographer."

In this thread, Ramy will be sharing his tips from the trade on one of our most requested topics: modeling pillows. Whether you are trying to achieve realistic-looking creases, indents, or a plush-like texture, pillows can be quite tricky to model. He'll be deconstructing his typical workflows and answering on-demand questions to help make you a pro in no-time. Have a question? want to bounce an idea? Just ask Ramy!

Max on , 

Melissa

[ramy]

Melissa,

thanks for the intro!  At TILTPIXEL, we do alot of custom furniture which sometimes requires modeling pillows, cloth etc.  While I'm not a cloth expert, we have a few techniques that are quick and effective for creating the items we need....mostly with the cloth modifier in 3ds Max.  Here is a quick video that shows a few methods I use to model pillows:

[-niels-]

Cool, those look a whole lot better than this pillow i modeled in Inventor.

(did that after reading the post and wondered if i could do something like that in inventor...)

Cloth modifier is pretty cool, i've used it on several occasions as well but don't have that much experience with it.

I guess having a solid model as a base for something soft isn't a workflow that you use in your industry, right?

I've attached the inventor file for fun, it's really tiny as i didn't pay attention to scale and modeled it without size dimensions.

Maybe if i'd used freeform i could've made it more organic.

@ramy, that link to the "Render like a Photographer" AU session looks real interesting.

I'll have to watch that properly sometime!

[ramy]

Niels,

thanks for sharing.  You mentioned that you didn't worry about scale.  For cloth simulations, scale is a very important factor as during the simulations it takes weight, gravity, and friction all into consideration.  The more to scale your model is, the more accurate the simulation results will be....In general modeling to real world scale is always important.

Thanks!

[-niels-]

I normally dimension everything properly, just didn't for this particular model.
I made this in a couple of minutes just because i got the pillow idea in my head from reading this topic.
I can always go back into my model and dimension it, that's the fun of a parametric modeler like Inventor.

There is no cloth simulation in Inventor though, so it's really just a static shape.
It's still usable in 3DS Max, as you can scale it up pretty easy.
Not sure if you can convert it to a dynamic cloth, never tried that kind of thing.

[Judith.Hageman]

Thanks @melissa.lax for the created opportunity, especially for mentioning the video "Render like a Photographer"!!!

I almost skipped this because of the title. With mechanical designs there is not much pillow or cloth usage.

Hi @ramy, great University class video, thank you!

I took a basic photography workshop to learn more about camera's and lenses since I didn't know anything about that, and Max uses them. But I had difficulty translating what I had learned to set into Max, for instance the third rule grid, is very nice to have! Also the straight vertical in the physical camera options is very useful.

Like I said, no much pillow/cloth in my designs, but I will definitely have a look at it.

Judith

[melissa.lax]

Hey @Judith.Hageman!

Thanks for visiting this thread, and glad you liked his AU class. It's not the only one he's created, in 2014 @ramy did a cleverly titled AU class on "Is That Really a Rendering?." @ramy hope I'm not making you blush too much  Perhaps we should invite @ramy to teach us how to get drool worthy renderings in the next "Expert Tips" thread? What do you think @Judith.Hageman?

Best,

Melissa 

[Judith.Hageman]

@melissa.lax "Drool worthy renderings" sounds very good to me!

After seeing the video from Ramy of how to make a pillow, I should be able to bring a napkin to clean things up! 

Thanks @ramy, you make it look very easy. I'll see what I can make with it.

Cheers,

Judith

[ramy]

@Judith.Hageman it really is easy, just need to know the steps involved...if you have any problems creating any geometry, share it here and I can give you more feedback.  Modeling furniture is like a puzzle.  Just looking at it in basic forms helps starting somewhere in 3D much easier.

[Judith.Hageman]

Hi @ramy,

I just wanted to give you an update of my progress with your Expert Tips.

I normally work with imported mechanical designs from Inventor, so there is not much use for cloth or furniture, but I found a nice opportunity to get to use some of it. Every Friday on the Inventor Forum, we share some of the work that we have been doing. Last Friday there was a theme, Friday Pictures Easter edition!

I personally think and take, a theme as a challenge to stretch myself and learn and apply new things.

Since I wanted to create a Volcano effect for the Easter Egg to come out, the map on the table needed to tear, and I thought of your cloth modifier.

So I started with a normal plane for the map to land on the table, switched the visibility of the plane map off and switched the visibility of a cloth version that was there as well, on. The effect actually looked pretty nice. Unfortunately the effect isn't quite visible in the animation. I put way too much new stuff in this without taking the proper time to test things, so I have to do that later. But I had great fun learning and for now I am pleased with the result.

Here are some screen shots without the egg, so the effect is more visible. It took me some puzzling with how to get the preserved vertices, and how to make the tear, but I think that worked ok. Since the tear is a bit too close to the edge of the cloth, it tears a bit too much, but in the animation the egg fills that, so only with a 360° turntable that would be visible. I like the push/stretch effect of the cloth very much!!! It almost looks like a mountain.

During the making of the animation I couldn't find a nice way to give the Chocolate Egg the right structure, so I made a work around for the animation. But after the animation was posted I did get it done properly, thanks to a brilliant suggestion of @-niels-, to use your extrude tip for the seam of the pillow on the Egg topology!

I am not used to work with topology you call it? But after some practise you can get funny and nice effects with them.

For this last rendering I also used your tip of the extra safe frames: Action Safe and Title Safe, and keep verticals vertical (in this case the plane horizontal) from your video "Render Like a Photographer" and the effect in my opinion, makes a huge difference!

Thanks a lot for all your tips!!!

J.

P.S.: As TITLPIXEL does a lot of different styles/camera work, next time some camera tips?