Create a realistic apple in 3ds max 3ds max Ashutosh Mukherjee ashutosh@desdevpro.com http://www.desdevpro.com 10 Aug 2009 3ds max Tutorial Learn how to make a realistic apple complete with textures! Geometry: First of all draw a sphere of regular shape. Now increase its segments a little bit according to the situation. Dont give too much of segments or smoothing will be less. Convert the sphere into editable poly. Now in the modify panel, select soft selection panel and tick on soft selection. Now select the vertices you want to extrude the sphere inwards(manually) to give it the bottom shape of the apple. apple01.jpg The only difference between between normal extrude and soft selection is that under extrude only the selected vertices will only extrude. But in soft selection, partial selection of the vertices near the selected takes place. Thus if the selected vertices are displaced manually, the nearby vertices will also extrude partially to provide smooth shapes. So use soft selection of extrude 4 vertices at the bottom of the sphere inwards to get apple bottom shape. Now simply extrude the vertix on the top of the sphere to get the shape of the top view of apple. Now extrude the top concentric selected vertices of the sphere outwards to get perfect apple shape. The major portion of the body completed. Now we just have to add a twig at the top or head of the apple. DONT worry about colors at first! They will be dealt by Material Editor! apple02.jpg For twig, draw a cylinder with desired segments and just try to ratate or bend it by selecting a group of concentric vertices. Finally apply TurboSmooth to both apple and twig from modifier panel. Material & Texture Editing After finishing with the structure, lets start with materials and texture. We will require two textures one for apple (reddish brown in colour) and another one for twig (pale brown in colour) Press M and material editor panel will open in front of you. Select the first material sphere and we will first assign texture for apple. Choose "Phong" from the Shader Basic Parameters instead of Blinn (slight dull in colour useful for natural objects like wood,leaf) After choosing Phong, Phong basic parameters will appear which will have "ambient" and "diffuse". At the side of Phong small miniature button is there, click the longlist of options opens select "Noise". When you will noise you will go to Noise Parameter. The first thing you will see is two colours color #1, color #2. Now for apple skin color, we need shiny red and light or yellowish brown. However I chose Red (255R 0G 0B) and for brown (251R 201G 114B). According to your choice you may swap colors to see your desired results(textures) using SWAP button. Now there are 3 types of noise Regular, Fractal, Turbulance. I chose Turbulance coz it looked more realistic. Then I increased the size to 15 to see desired noise effect. After that I used tiling which is just above the Noise Parameter Panel, in the Coordinates Panel. Change Tiling of X - 10, Y - 20 & Z - 0. This to get specs on the apple as we have on real apples. apple03.jpg Also I increased the noise threshold level to 10 (Noise Parameter Panel). After all this i increased specular level and and glosiness to 65 and 28 respectively to add shine to Apple skin. These parameters are found in specular highlights. Color #1 : 219R 207G 139B Color #2 : 126R 65G 0B Tiling : 10 each X,Y,Z Threshold level : 3 Size : 25 Conclusion NOTE : Dont forget to apply these textures by first selecting the object. apple04.jpg