Organic modeling 101

3D Creature Workshop ~ issue #1

3D Studio MAX Required Plug-ins:

Surface TTools
ools and Edit Spline 2
~ Chris Hubert Recommended Knowledge:
additional help fr om Chad Chaney
from Experience with splines and patch grids

Part 1: Techniques for

modeling highly detailed
creatures
Over the next 2 months we are going
to tackle a very complicated process,
modeling organic creatures with mas-
sive amounts of detail. You may be ask-
ing yourself why you would need a
model that detailed, and the answer is
because it can be used for many things.
Take a look at the alien head in Figure
1, which is going to be used in a film.

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Well it doesn’t need much changing, right? But now let’s The other things you will have to ask yourself before you
suppose that this alien is headed for a real-time gaming begin to model are just as important. For instance, will
engine. I don’t know of any computer that could process this character be animated? If the answer is no, then
that much detail in real-time so the face count obviously modeling it will be easy. If the answer is yes, other con-
has to be reduced. Since we modeled it in high resolution cerns have to be taken into consideration. The structure
from the outset, we can just reduce the mesh complexity of the model may have to be completely different than a
to fit the desired polygon count. Or for even greater con- “still” model. Luckily the model we will show you will not
trol, use the high-resolution version as a 3D template in
order to build a low-resolution model. And that’s not all!
We can render well thought out shots of the head to use
as the texture maps for our low-polygon count model, so
it looks like the detail is still there!

But wait! What am I going to model? Well, we have made

that decision easy for you because we are going to show
how the alien head was modeled in 3D Studio Max, but Figure 1: The alien head.
the lessons to be learned will, and should always apply to
any highly detailed organic model you encounter in the
future. You can apply these techniques to any high detail
project you desire.

Before you begin such an endeavor, you need to have a

good working knowledge of what your model will look
like and what its purpose will be. This is perhaps the
most important part of the modeling process. Excellent
source material will be needed before you even touch the
computer. Good examples of this kind of material are
photographs, or sketches like the ones in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The source sketches.

© 1999 Komodo Studio

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be animated, so it will be easier to work with. Once you projects specific plug-ins or other techniques may be
have mastered this level of modeling, you will be able to needed! And also remember, there is rarely ever only
figure out what will make for a good “animatable” model. one way to make something, so use your knowledge of
Another issue is the model’s purpose. Will it be created the tools and your imagination to find the best way for
for film, TV, print, or gaming? This decision will play a you to model. OK, enough with the prep talk, let’s open
major role in how the model should look and how de- up 3dsmax!
tailed it needs to be.
First thing to do when you get into 3dsmax is to setup
For example, a game model requires very little detail since your snap settings. With 3dsmax2 there is an option un-
it will be animated in real-time. On the other hand, a der the 3d snap button that allows you to snap to existing
model for film needs much higher detail since it will be vertices, which will come in handy. This options menu,
required to appear photorealistic. Simple models and shown in Figure 3, can be reached by right clicking on
those with polygonal edges don’t appear very realistic. the 3d snap button at the bottom of the Max interface.
Finally, a print model needs the highest level of detail
since it will be in a large still image, which gives the viewer Now turn on the Vertex option under the Snaps tab and
plenty of time to find flaws. To be believable the model you are ready to go. Next we will construct a modeling
needs an enormous amount of detail. While these mod- template with a handy little method that in many ways is
els are more work, they are very cool since they have far superior to the “Display Background Image” option
plenty of detail.

One last consideration is the

tools that will be needed to cre-
ate the model. Again, we have
made it easy on you by choos-
ing splines and patch grids,
which are native to the 3D Stu-
dio Max environment. Keep in
mind though that for some
Figure 3: The Snap options panel. Figure 4: The modeling templates.

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in 3dsmax. What you want to do is create 2 flat boxes OK, now we have to find a place to start modeling. This
that are perpendicular to each other. You will apply the alien is made with many different sections placed within
side and front view drawings that you created and scanned each other to create the appearance of 1 solid mesh. By
into image files (you didn’t forget to do that did you?) on the using the method of dividing the modeling tasks into sepa-
boxes to use as a guide to model with, as seen in Figure 4. rate parts, it allows for much greater editing possibilities.
Also, since the model is symmetrical, you only need to
When you load the bitmaps into the Material Editor be model the left or right side, copy and mirror it, then weld
sure to turn on the Display In Viewport option. Once the 2 halves together. Where we are going to start in this
you can see them in your viewports you may notice that tutorial is with the first shell piece at the front of it’s head,
they don’t line up properly with each other. To fix it, all shown in Figure 5.
you have to do is play around with the scaling of the
boxes. Use the Non-Uniform Scale tool to achieve quick The segment is highlighted in red. This shell piece is not
and easy results. Why is this method better than the Dis- as complicated as some of the other pieces on the model,
play Background Image option? Several reasons: but it is also not as easy. By starting you off this way you
will get a strong knowledge of the methods at work and
1. It allows zooming and panning at much higher speeds. also get a sense of how detailed you can make this crea-
2. It can be rotated in a 3d viewport. ture. But before you start it is recommended you have a
3. It can display more than 1 image at a time. fairly strong knowledge of patch grids and splines. They
are the only tool we will be using. Knowing how to use

Figure 5: The modeling templates. Figure 6: The profile spline.

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them is important. While we are using a plug-in for this The reasoning for this will be revealed shortly after you
tutorial, version 3 of 3D Studio Max will incorporate surface the model. After drawing the line, add an Edit
splines so you won’t need plug-ins. Spline 2 Modifier to it and go into the Vertex Sub-Object
Mode. Then select all vertices and right click, selecting
To begin creating the first
shell piece, you want to
create a profile spline
from a side view. Zoom
in close to the image on
the box and draw a line
that looks something like
the one seen in Figure 6.

Keep in mind as you

make this line the
number of vertices that
you include. The front Figure 7: The vertices. Figure 8: Editing the Bezier corners.
part of the line needs to
be detailed since it will be showing, thus re-
quiring several vertices, but the back (un-
derneath) of the shell does not. The tricky
part comes when you surface the model.
The best thing to do is to make the same
number of vertices – 3 vertices on the front
and back is a good place to start) on the
front and back of the line, as seen in Figure
7.
Figure 9: Making copies of the original line.

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Bezier Corner as the editing mode. Bezier Corners are Now that you have them placed, select the original pro-
better than Bezier Curves at achieving both smooth sur- file spline and attach the copies via the Edit Spline 2
faces, strong angles and sharp edges, which are neces- Modifier (out of Sub-Object Mode). Now you are ready
sary to create almost all of the surfaces of this model. Go for the Cross Section Modifier, one part of the Surface
ahead and edit the curve handles to make the line smooth, Tools package. Select the group of splines and add the
achieving something like what is shown in Figure 8.

Now that you have the original line made you want to
make copies of it that stretches the length of the shell.
Do this in the front viewport, and the more evenly spaced
you can get them the better, as shown in Figure 9.

Even spacing is very important at first to achieve an at-

tractive and functional surface, and will be illustrated later
in this tutorial. Once you have them copied the length of
the shell, scale them accordingly, as in Figure 10.

After scaling the lines, you will want to position and ro-
tate them so that they are conforming to the scanned
picture in all viewports.
This can get rather frus- Figure 11: The properly placed and rotated splines.
trating if your scanned
images aren’t perfectly
lined up, but as long as you
get it close they will work
just fine. The properly
placed and rotated splines
can be seen in Figure 11.
Figure 10: Scaling the lines. Figure 12: Connecting the horizontal splines.

© 1999 Komodo Studio

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modifier. Voila! Now you have the horizontal splines con- The most important part, as mentioned earlier, is to make
necting the profile splines, as seen in Figure 12. sure that you include the correct number of vertices in
this line. In order for the Surface Modifier to work prop-
This Modifier saves you from having to create all the cross- erly the splines must enclose on a 3 or 4 sided area, the
sections by hand. After that you will want to run a quick same way that patch grids work. Make sure that the ver-
test to make sure the Surface Modifier, the second part tices will match up, as shown in Figure 15.
of the Surface Tools package, will work. So go ahead
and add the Surface Modifer and see what the spline
framework looks like with a surface on it. This Modifier
saves you from having to make every patch grid by hand.

Notice the end opposite the middle of the head is not

capped, as seen in Figure 13.

The way to fix that with the greatest degree of control is Figure 14: Creating the end spline. Figure 15: Matching the vertices up.

to create the splinework on the end by hand. Now zoom

in on the end of the shell. Select the splines and click the
Create Line Button (out of Sub-Object Mode) in the Sur-
face Modifier. Draw a spline that conforms to how you
want the end of the shell to look, shown in Figure 14.

Figure 13: The lack of capping. Figure 16: Shaping the line.

© 1999 Komodo Studio

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Then shape the line in all viewports as seen in Figure 16. haven’t lined them up very closely in all views, then it is
best to bump up that number a bit. A setting of 1.1 or
To bring the existing framework over to the new spline, 2.1 usually achieves great results. If you managed to get
select a segment (Segment Sub-Object Mode) that runs used to the vertex snap feature, then this setting could
horizontally (just one segment). Then move it while hold-
ing shift to copy it, as shown in Figure 17.

Now enter the Vertex Sub-Object Mode and position the

vertices to match up with one vertex of the existing frame-
work and one vertex of the new line. Be sure to keep a
continuous horizontal line spanning the entire framework,
as seen in Figure 18.
Figure 17: Copying the line.
A bit of caution: when you get a vertex close to another
one in a particular viewport, a dialogue box may appear
that asks if you would like to weld coinciding vertices.
Unless you have already lined the vertex up in all the
other viewports, it is not recommended that you click
“yes”. The reason for this is that it may weld to another
vertex that you didn’t realize was even close to your tar-
get, yielding undesirable results. It’s best to weld all verti- Figure 18: Positioning the vertices.
ces by hand, by selecting those that you wish to weld and
click the Weld Button under the Vertex Sub-Object Mode
in Edit Spline 2.

Another thing to consider is your Weld Threshold set-

tings. The smaller the number, the closer your vertices
have to be in order to weld them together. So if you
Figure 19: Connecting the new edge line.

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stay at the default 0.1, since they will be resting on top of road that you need to fix something before you collapsed it,
each other automatically. Once you finish connecting the you are out of luck, so please be forewarned! Another op-
new edge line, you should have something that looks a tion is to save your files in a sequential naming convention
little like Figure 19. (alien0000.max, alien0001.max, alien0002.max) so that if
you did misjudge a particular object further into the project,
Now re-apply the Surface Modifier, and if you attached you can always go back to a previous file and merge it back
the edge correctly, then you should now have a com- into your newest one.
pleted edge for your shell. But what happens if there is a
“seam” in the surface, as seen in Figure 20? Enough of that, let’s get back on track. You should now
have the Edit Patch Modifier applied. It is usually smart
Not to worry; that is easy to fix. However, before you to bump the number of Steps under the Topology op-
begin to make alterations to this surface, delete the Sur- tions down to around 2 or 3 so that there isn’t a whole
face Modifier again, make a copy of the spline frame- gob of faces to get in your way. Also, if your surface
work for later use, and once again add the Surface Modi- seems to be a bit “bubbly” and doesn’t conform to the
fier. The copy you made of the splines can be hidden for way that you made your splinework, try this little trick:
now so as to not get in the way, and used later for the Go into the Vertex Sub-Object Mode and select all the
other shell pieces. vertices on the surface, then Right Click, and select Cor-
ner as the editing mode. This is the patch grid equivalent
In order to be able to modify the surface by hand, an Edit to Bezier Corner in splines. You will probably want to do
Patch Modifier must be applied. Before you do that though, this even if your surface did work correctly.
collapse the Modifier Stack, which will leave the surface as
just a plain old patch object. By collapsing the stack, it frees
up a large portion of memory that 3dsmax was holding. If
you have been saving this file every 15 minutes or so (which
we hope you have!), then you will notice that collapsing the
stack will also decrease the file size! This works all the time
in 3dsmax, no matter what you are doing. But be careful!
Some times if you collapse it and realize an hour down the
Figure 20: The seam.

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Now to edit patches by hand, go into the Patch Sub- the old one’s so that the two patches don’t “jump” to
Object Mode and select the patch that is causing the prob- each other, possibly causing a bad surface topology or
lems with the seam. You only usually need to delete 1 of
them, as seen in Figure 21.

If you have selected a patch but you don’t see it high-

lighted in a viewport, then you need to turn the Lattice
option on under the Display options. This Lattice
checkbox is available in all Sub-Object Modes of the Edit
Patch Modifier, and rightfully so, because will be turning
it on and off quite frequently. After deleting the patch, Figure 21: Deleting the patch.
enter the Edge Sub-Object mode. Then select the edge
where the new patch will “shoot out” from and click Add
Tri or Add Quad depending on how many vertices you
will be attaching this new patch to. Results of adding the
patch should look similar to Figure 22.

To edit this patch grid, go to the Vertex Sub-Object Mode,

and move the vertices around to match up with the bor- Figure 22 (left): Adding the patch. Figure 23 (right): An incor-
rectly aligned mesh.
dering vertices of the other patches that neighbor this
new one. Be sure to line them up in all viewports, and
once again, the 3d vertex snap option comes in very handy.

After you have the vertices (patch) lined up, pay close
attention to whether your new patch grid lined up with
the mesh of the bordering patches. This is very impor-
tant to achieve a predictable result when you weld them
together. It’s best to line the new patch’s mesh up with Figure 24 (left): A properly aligned mesh. Figure 25 (right): A
smooth continuous surface.

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worse, and only in extreme cases, a crease. An example the middle of the patch surface, as opposed to just the
of incorrectly lined up mesh is Figure 23. edges and vertices. So whichever way you decide to go,
there is going to have to be a lot of vertex and handle
And a properly lined up mesh is as in Figure 24. tweaking and a lot of time involved. And after you have
the shell pieces tweaked to your desire, you can copy
Once you are satisfied with your placement, select the and mirror the surface, welding the 2 halves together to
overlapping vertices and weld them together. Now they make a whole piece shown in Figure 27.
should be one continuous surface, seam-free, as seen in
Figure 25! This is done by attaching the 2 halves together with the
Edit Patch Modifier, then selecting the vertices that over-
Now for some bad news, you are only done with part of lap each other down the middle and welding them to-
this shell. In order to complete it, you have to tweak it to gether.
make it look right, as seen in Figure 26.

This can be done in 2 ways. You can play with the patch
grids, moving the vertices and their handles around to
get the desired result, or you can tweak the original spline
work. That means of course that you would have to do
the Surface and Edit Patch parts all over again, but it also
offers a lot more control. If
you decide to modify at the
Patch level, keep in mind that
if you right click a patch un-
der the Patch Sub-Object
Mode, you can select an op-
tion called Manual Interior.
This allows for control over
Figure 26: The tweaked shell. Figure 27: Example after tweaking.

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Wrap Up other as seen in Figure 28. Also be sure they properly

define the shape of the head in all viewports! Here are
Now that you know the basics of this method of modeling, some pictures for reference that will help you visualize
you will notice that it just gets easier and quicker as you desired results (Figure 29).
go. The other complicated parts of the alien’s head will
be covered in a reasonable amount of depth next month, So, until next month… good luck, have fun, and happy
so that you will be able to complete this model and not modeling!
get stuck on the really tough parts.
Biography
Until the next issue, practice these techniques, and use
them to finish modeling the entire shell on the alien’s Chris Hubert is a 3d artist currently doing freelance work.
head. The easiest way to do this is to make copies of the He has a degree in 3d animation and multimedia, and is
original, but also be sure to make changes to each one planning on returning to school for a film degree. 3d is
(for diversity) and make sure they fit snug up against each his passion in life, and seems to be all he thinks about.

Figure 28: A snug fit. Figure 29: A little inspiration.

© 1999 Komodo Studio