Modeling a heart shape in 3D max7?

[Snubs]

Does anyone know the best way to do this or a good tutorial on it. I want to model a heart shape. I want it balloon like with soft rounded sides

[agentxi]

hey snubs, i thought it would be faster and easier to just show rather than explain in writing.

basically i took a cube,subdivided, rotated 45 degrees, moved some vertices, and then scaled it to get a rough shape, then smoothed.

you can do all these in max, although the video shows in maya.

here's the link for the video. it's full screen but if you just watch the top half you won't miss anything.

if you spend more time shaping before you smooth it... you'll get a more bubbly look to it

good luck!

[Snubs]

Hey Thanks!! I cant seem to get the video link to load but ill try again after a bit. I think maybe my Internet is slow at the moment.

[agentxi]

hmm, yeah sometimes it does that, i usually hit refresh and it loads right away

you should see a loading screen telling you it's loading, if it's just a blank white screen you see, then hit refresh :s sry

[HarmonyAlexandr]

I would go with splines or NURBS, they give you a very organic shape, but watch your poly count

[agentxi]

to create a solid heart shape with splines? can you show us how you'd do that?

[Snubs]

I liked how you did that in the video. I would of never thought to do it but im new at this. Now I just need to figure out how to subdivide in max.......lol

[wombie]

to create a solid heart shape with splines you would first create a closed path in the shape of a heart. The shift + scale it down to create a couple of smaller hearts. Then move the smaller hearts forward in 3d space. next you need to
select one and choose cross section and select the others, this will join them together with lines. Once you have done that you can change the points to be bezier curves and tweak them into a nice smooth shape.

To end you add a surface modifier. you can then either convert to edit poly or add an edit poly modifier.

A few pointers would be that for the surface modifier to work all the sections in the spline cage have to be 4 sided. Also i find it easiest to create the whole cage with vertex corners and then convert to bezier. And to keep it simple as its a simple shape just model one half and mirror it afterwards.

Hope this helps some.

[wombie]

also to sub divide simply add a turbo smooth from the modifier list

[agentxi]

although using the splines will work in a way, when using nurbs, you will never have a seamless model, unless you use patch modeling (even then you have more seams and takes more effort)

and as you mentioned wombie you ended up converting the object into an editable mesh, so in the end, you are converting the object into a poly mesh, and then smoothing it.

the point that HarmonyAlexandr made, is "i'd use nurbs or splines" without explaining anything of how he'd do it. I was curious as to how he'd do this and make the heart seamless or without a polar end. I was just wondering if he came up with a method that will keep the heart "nurbs" and "seamless" cuz if he did, i'd love to hear it.

I used to be addicted to nurbs when i first started learning 3d... but now i basically do everything with polygons, and if i need it super smooth/organic, i can convert to subD's... I like having the control you can have with polygons, and with the direction that normal mapping and bump mapping/displacements, you can really add a lot of details to a simple polygonal object without having to compromise the polycount.

[Snubs]

Haven't tried it yet but i do like the idea of using the cube.. I still got a lot to learn . Right now I'm exploring different methods of modeling so i can see what works best for me scents I'm starting out.

[agentxi]

I was just recently asked if this can be modelled in Bryce 3D, and I must say, I do not have any experience with Bryce, if someone else here does, do you know if it's possible to model a heart like this in Bryce?