how to model an odd shaped cushion

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I'm using 3ds Max 2015 on Windows 7 Pro.

I'm struggling with how to model an odd shaped cushion. The blue objects in the attached drawing were imported from AutoCAD.  The red object (it looks grey when in SHADED view - I don't know why) is a cushion I drew in 3ds Max.  I drew it by drawing a cylinder and using relax and turbo smooth to give it a bit of "cushiness" so it looks more cushion-like that just cylinder or a cylinder with filleted edges.  This is satisfactory for what I'm doing.

Now I can't figure out how to model up the moon shaped cushion.  If I just convert it to an editable poly I don't get enough contour lines (or whatever they're called) for the modifiers to work with.  And I don't know how to add or get more modifier lines.  As shown in the drawing I tried drawing a cylinder and subtracting another cylinder from it but it doesn't really yield satisfactory results after adding the relax and turbosmooth modifiers; it turns out bumpy.

Suggestions?

Thank you

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

The geometry needs to be clean quads in order to create smooth curves in the edges. Booleans are OK but you need to clean them as they are going to add triangles and extra vertices.

I have added a video with the possible way to do it. Notice I used a script from Rapidtools to find the extra vertices created by the boolean. But I could have used the Max tool to find vertices with two edges in the selection Graphite tools ribbon.

For the caps as alternative I could have used another script from Rapidtools, qcap, to cap the top and bottom with quads and would have been a quicker process.

[Anonymous]

Super thank you for putting that together!  SUPER helpful.  I learned A LOT!

I'm using 2015 so maybe there are some slight differences from 2018.  I couldn't find MESH CLEANUP so I took out the mid vertexes individually which wasn't a big deal on this model.  Also, I couldn't figure out how you selected the inner faces of the top in one click at about 3:09 .  Again, I did it manually which, again, was no big deal on this model.

I did add an FFD 4x4x4 box after everything to puff out all the cushion walls and top and bottom just a bit so it isn't so straight sided.

Thanks again.  Very nice of you to put that together for me.

Richard

[Anonymous]

Happy to help.

MESH CLEANUP is a external script that is free from a group of scripts called Rapidtools. But the same function can be done selecting the vertices with this, in the vertices selection section of Graphite tools.

Basically it selects any vertex that has equal to only two edges.  If you do booleans or import cad geometry this is a time saver.

I was guessing the inner selection would not be clear but I didn't had a program installed to capture keystrokes. It is done converting the selection of the faces in vertices using ctrl+shift when clicking over the vertex icon. 

• Translate selection from faces to edges or vertices:
  • Shift – external edges or vertices
  • Ctrl – all edges or vertices
  • Shift+ctrl – internal edges or vertices