Bibendum chair tutorial, part 1

Introduction
Hello everybody. My name is Matus and I made this tutorial for you to see that even in Rhino you can make professional 3D models and photo-realistic visualizations. This tutorial was made using Rhino 5 WIP 64bit on Windows 7 Pro 64bit. Rhino 5 is in “Work in progress” mode, but I can really recommend it. In fact, I did not have any problem during making this tutorial, program didn’t crash at all and creating difficult NURBS surfaces was absolutely fast. This tutorial was made in Rhino5, however only common commands were used, so if you still use Rhino4, feel comfortable to follow this tutorial anyway. Let’s start!
You can see final render here, so have a look at what we are going to make. Don’t be scared, There are not any difficult operations, all of commands used here are easily accessible and very easy to handle. Like everything in Rhino :)

First steps
First of all you need to find blueprints for your model. Yes, you can just try to make it without them, but how do you know what are the dimensions of all those parts? So I found this blueprint googling on the internet. (click the image to see larger version)

I used Photoshop to split it into two pieces, so I can use it in Rhino as reference pictures. Okay, now open Rhino, make two planar surfaces (use dimensions of splitted pictures) and use those pictures as texture. Use _SetObjectDisplayMode command to set these planes to show their texture even in Wireframe or shaded mode. Place these pictures in 90 degrees, so you get 2 walls like this:

Rhino5′s gumball is new awesome tool that will make your life much easier. Now scale these pictures using 3D scale to exact size, you can make it easily by snapping scale tool in the reference point and then writing number seen in dimension area. When you are done, you can start with first elements in the scene. Let’s make the circles, the border elements of upper part of the armchair. Make them in left view as I did, then rotate them to match position like in the picture (front view)

Section curves. Make new circles and copy and paste and rotate them like you can see in the picture. Position is adjusted by moving them in Front and Left view.

Use Rebuild command to rebuild your circles. Default value in Point count is 8 and Degree is set to 2. Adjust these values to Point coint 20 and Degree 3. Now click OK and what you get is highly editable curve with 20 control points. Select one of these curves and press F10, so you reveal all control points. Adjust position of each of them, so you get deformed circle, like you can see in the next pic.

Turn all of your curves into these deformed shapes, like this:

Use line tool to connect two curves. Endpoints MUST lay on these curves.

Rebuild again, Point count from value of 2 to value of 20 and degree rom 1 to 3.

Select new curve and press F10 again, so you can see now all the control points shaping the curve.

Manually adjust position of all of them, like you can see in next picture, Top view.

Make next three curves in the same way as you made the last one:

Select 2 closed curves made out of circles in the beginning of this tutorial and use Sweep2 command (sweep 2 rails) and select last 4 created curves, made out of lines. Pop up window will show your options now immediately after pressing Enter button. Don’t forget to check “Closed sweep” box, which is unchecked by default and click OK. You just made first upholstery surface of the armchair, congratulations :)

Looks nicely detailed, don’t you think? Making 6 curves was absolutely worth of it.

Select this surface and use Hide command to hide it. Let’s make the middle part of the armchair, use the very same method as in previous part. But do not copy and paste this first surface, because getting uniform, but stretched forms is not what we want to get.

Now make connection between side part and back part: not exactly the same method as with previous part, because now we need this surface shaped like you can see here:

Adjust new curves to make them look like the already have foldings.

Again, use Sweep2 command to create a surface, so you get another part of upholstery.

And repeat the whole process over and over again… :)

… and again! but in this part make sure your curves are perpendicular to axis, so after mirroring the whole part you will get seamless transition between them! (check both the top and the left view).

Now we need to patch the front opened part of the upholstery. Patch command is not ideal in this case, it will make almost planar surface without any interesting detail. So I have chosen more complicated way. But the result is worth of it. First of all, make regular circle without rebuilding it. Adjust position as you can see in the picture.

Move it a little bit out of the model

Use PlanarSrf command to make a surface out of this circle.

Create line with it’s endpoints laying on new surface and on the very first surface created and rebuild it with 6 control points. Six is enough in this case.

Adjust position of every control point (show them by pressing F10 button) so you get smooth transition between both of the surfaces.

Use Sweep2 command, select both of the Circle’s border and Surface’s border as rails and then select new curve as a section curve. Press OK.

Use the same method to create cap for lower upholstery.

Select all surfaces created until now, use Mirror command and as mirror plane use Axis made in the middle of the reference image.

Now we are done with the upper part. Select surfaces, categorize them into layers and lock these layers.

Okay, people… We are done with this modelling part. What do you think? Did you like this tutorial? If yes, share it on Facebook, Twitter, StumpleUpon, Buzz, Digg or anything else :) And don’t forget to leave a comment under the article. Thanks for reading it to this point! Have a nice day.

Continue to PART 2.

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