Apples - Soft Selection and DisplaceIn this tutorial we are going to take a look at a method of modeling an apple using basic polygon modeling skills, soft selections, and displace maps.

This is a beginner's tutorial in modeling, so we'll take a good close look at these basic tools we are about to use to create a simple apple.

First, start a new 3DS Max scene, and create a sphere in your top viewport, with about 32 segments which is usually the default when creating a sphere anyhow.

I draw the sphere in my top viewport so that the top and bottom of the sphere where the triangles are created, are facing up and down along my Z-axis. Which viewport you draw objects in is always important depending on which direction you want the object facing, but don't draw them in the perspective view unless you are well advanced in 3D modeling, as this can skew things and make it seem like they are being drawn in one direction but in reality are 700 miles long. Adjust your sphere's settings by going to the Modify Tab.

Now, right click on the sphere. This brings up a menu called the Quad, and knowing what is in the Quad menu and what you can do with it can greatly speed up productivity and time spent modeling.

In this case, we are looking for the Convert To: menu, hovering over the Convert To: men will give you several options.

We want Convert to Editable Poly.On your Modify Tab, you'll notice that our sphere is no longer a sphere at all, but it is now an Editable Poly object, and there are a lot more settings to deal with now.

If you click on the little black + sign next to the words Editable Poly it will open up your sub object menu in your Modifier Stack. You should see the words:

Vertex, Edge, Border, Polygon, and Element. - These are your sub-object levels.

They give you more control over the modification of your Editable Poly object, the words in your modifier stack correspond to each of the red icons in the Selection settings below.

We want to select the Vertex sub object in order to start modeling our apple. You can do this by clicking on the word Vertex in your modifier stack, or the red icon with the 3 dots.

When either is clicked, the other automatically selects letting you know they are the same thing. Also your sphere will now display a series of little blue pixel dots all over the surface of your object which you can now select either individually, or by clicking and dragging a selection marquee around several of them.

We are going to select the bottom third of our vertices. Look at your Front Viewport, and click in the empty grey space next to the sphere, drag a selection marquee across the bottom third of your sphere to select the vertices we want to modify. Like this:

After you drag out a selection box around the bottom three rows of our sphere's vertices.

All the selected vertices will turn from blue, red. Shown Here:

Now that we have the bottom three rows of these vertices selected, go back over to your Modify tab and find the settings menu for Soft Selection: and open the settings rollout by clicking on the +.

Click the checkbox next to Use Soft Selection to enable it, you should see a rainbow colored effect happen across the vertices of your sphere you have selected.

This shows the falloff of the soft selection effect, the cooler the color, the less effect our modification has on the vertex.

Adjust your Falloff a bit, and maybe even add a small amount to the pinch setting. I used the ones in the image to the left here.

Notice the bell curve here and how it changes shape based on your settings, this is what moving our vertices will do to them now.

Make sure your move tool is selected, and grab the Z-axis arrow only and pull down just a little in your viewport, until your sphere has a nice tapered effect like mine here:

This will be the basic shape of our apple, and using soft selection we got a gradual tapered effect making it look a little more like an egg than a sphere.

If we hadn't used Soft Selection we would have just moved the vertices selected straight down and the overall round shape would have been lost.

With these vertices still selected, go to your modifier list drop down menu, and find a Displace Modifier.

The displace modifier will add more shape to the bottom of our apple by use of a grayscale map, the lighter the grey or white color, the more it will pull, the darker the color grey to black, the less to none it will pull.

In order to use a displace modifier you need either a procedural map, or a map that can be easily created in photoshop or another design program. I have created one for you already and you can download it here:

http://animation.diclementi.com/tutorials/appledisplace1.jpgDownload the image and then we'll add it to the Displace modifier. It looks like this -

In the Displace modifier settings, find the None button under Bitmap here:

Click the None button then navigate to wherever you saved the appledisplace1.jpg.

The displace map will be added, now we just have to increase the strength to get a result.

I have used a negative 12.0, and I have added a Decay of 0.2 to soften the strength of the pull.

Here is the result:

We can see it is starting to look like an apple.

The top is still far too round however, so in order to use our displace map on the top half, we are going to add another modifier on top of our first Displace, Find in the dropdown list and add the Edit Poly modifier.

This essentially will turn our object into a brand new editable poly, but only while we remain above the modifier in ourmodifier stack ---->

We can click on the black + to open up the same sub object settings we didinitially.

We can turn on soft selection again, and select the top third of our apple.

Then with the vertices still selected add another Displace Modifier to our Modifier Stack.

Add the same appledisplace1.jpg image to the Bitmap settings:

This time change the Strength to something in the positive, but keep it a little less than the number we gave to the bottom.

Our apple is looking much more organic and apple shaped now.

Now we can add one more Edit Poly modifier to our stack for the final touches.

Once the final Edit Poly is in place, we can adjust the scale of our apple just a bit since it is looking a bit long to me.

Get your uniform scale tool, and scale it down just a little by clicking and dragging just on the Z axis of the scale icon. Like it is shown above, until you are happy with the shape of your apple.

Then open up the + sign in your final Edit Poly modifier and get your vertex sub object selection again and select just the one vertex at the very top and middle of your apple.

Use the soft selection one more time and adjust its settings as shown below.

Then get your move tool, and pull down by grabbing the Z-axis arrow just a little to create the divot where our stem will go.

Looks great! Now remember to turn off your Vertex sub-object selection this time by clicking on the word Vertex in our top Edit Poly Modifier, the blue vertices should disappear on the surface of your apple.

Then in your Modifier list find the Meshsmooth Modifier and add it to the top of our apple's Modifier stack.

This will do a nice job at smoothing any extra jagged edges our apple has, If you want it smoother you can always increase the Iterations: number in the Subdivision Amount settings of the Meshsmooth modifier, but unless you have a very good reason for doing so, never go higher than 2 Iterations.

At this point in modeling my apple with you guys, I decided blue was not the appropriate color for this apple. So just to appease my brain, I went ahead and changed the basic color of our object by clicking the little color swatch in the upper right on your modifier tab.

Know this however, that this is by no means a finished texture, it is just to make my brain happy so I am not looking at a blue apple anymore. Real textures will have to be created later on.

I think our apple is looking quite good, but it needs a stem!

Go back to your create tab where we first made our sphere, and this time create a Cylinder in your top viewport.

Then go back to your modify tab with the cylinder still selected to adjust its basic settings.

Fairly tall and skinny with a radius of 1.0 and a height of 20. I left the default of 5 height segments and 2 Cap segments, 32 segments for the sides is probably a bit much, but what the hell we'll make it nice and round.

Then in your Modifier list, find and add a Taper modifier to the cylinder. --->

Then adjust the taper settings to match my own below:

This should add a bit of character to our stem.

Next, add a bend modifier from the list and adjust its settings to match mine as well.

With an angle of around 60.0 it seems this stem is starting to look alright.

We can add a meshsmooth on top to get rid of those unsightly sharp edges at the top and bottom now, and then all we have to do is move our stem into place atop of the apple.

Using your move tool and a combination of your top and front viewports, move the stem into place in its divot hole on top of our apple.

And Wallah! our apple is complete.

Now you are free to texture it, light it, and throw it into an animation!

Sample animation with our apple can be found at:

http://animation.diclementi.com/teacher.html