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Not the run-of-the-mill Tutorial

Although one of the most known basic 3d graphic Tutorial is how to model a soccerball,today I’ll introduce a new tecnique you have never seen in a tutorial.
It’s fast and easy and it can be used not only in Max but also in other software.It allows to model several kind of balls,some of which are shown in the image.
The only thing you need to use this tutorial with another software is a modifier to spherify the mesh as the Spherify modifier in 3ds Max.If you have Polyboost you can model whatever kind of ball in less than 10 seconds,without Polyboost it will take a minute or two.

The other tutorials you can find on the net are slow(the basic shapes are placed one by one spherically),inflexible(you can only model some kind of ball)and often show mistakes(in the placement and the alignment of the shapes)and low quality in the finished result.

Today we’ll talk about the modeling of the classic model (the one in the middle of the third row).
With six step it’s easy to model almost every kind of soccerbal,some with box modeliling,some other starting from primitive,as in this case.

Soccerball 3ds Max tutorial Step 1.

In the section Extended primitives of the button Geometries,in the sideward bar,select the Hedra primitive as shown in figure1 and creat an Hedra of 50 units.You can use whatever kind of unit,and scale it later to a realistic size.

Set the properties of the just created primitive as in figure2.Varying these properties will end in different kind of Soccerballs.

Soccerball 3ds Max tutorial Step 2.

Apply an Edit Poly modifyer that,compared to the edit poly conversion,ensure the later edit of some
parameters. Choose edge as subobject,select all and apply a Chamfer with these Settings figure3. apply a unit of chamfering as shown in figure4.
Measures are optional, if you change them you’ll slightly change the final shape, so if you don’t collapse the stack you can later modify the parameters to get the result you like the most.

Soccerball 3ds Max Tutorial Step 3.

Apply a modifyer Turbosmoot at 1 and then a Spherize one at 100% and an Edit Poly
If you have at least a trial version of Polyboost this step will be really fast,otherwise it will take a bit more,but don’t panic,you’ll just need to pay more attention.

Step standard o no PolyBoost:

Select all the vertex in the middle of the three edges groups of the left pictures offigure5 and then convert the selection in edge selection from the left-click menu.Be sure to select them all without missing any.The final result should be like the images on the right of figura5.

Step Polyboost:

If you have polyboost just select one vertex,convert it in edge and apply a Similar Selection on the other edge based on the edgelenght(this will automatically select the other edge groups)

Common Step :

After you have selected the edges like shown,apply a loop to get the results on the right.

Soccerball 3ds Max Tutorial Step4

Apply an extrusion on the just selected edges as in figure6.Because the extrusion wouldn’t be visible I applied a TurboSmooth on the top of the stack(2 is enough to get rid of the hard edges)
Select the button to evaluate the entire stack while extruding.

The End

Here you are!If you want you can edit some parameters in the stack to see the result or collapse part of the stack.The key point is the Sperify modifyer that allows to spherify every shape after the first turbosmooth,moreover when we’ll create soccerballs in box modelling.

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