Medusa interior animation tutorial – Part 1

Hello!

It’s me again, Matus. This tutorial contains complete guide for modeling, scene lightning, animation setting, rendering, optimization and animation postproduction. Well, there’s a long way before us, so let’s start :)

First of all – we are going to model very simple, but realistic leather armchair and wall Medusa relief in plain Rhinoceros without any plugins. Second part is going to be about scene lightning and materials setting for final render in V-ray for Rhinoceros. In this part we have to optimize the scene and the settings, because not everyone is lucky enough to have his own renderfarm :) And the last, third part contains animation postproduction.

Modeling leather armchair in Rhinoceros 4 or Rhinoceros 5:

First step is to think about how our armchair will look like. I chose this one, which appeared on flyingarchitecture.com some time ago, so I decided to remodel it once again and create this tutorial for you.

There are lot of steps to do, so let’s get to work now! :) FYI: Click any image to see larger resolution.

Make a square – I usually work in milimeters, so make the square 1000×1000 milimetres – This is the boundary for our future armchair.

Remember – modeling of this armchair should take no more than 20 minutes! Make three polylines for the seat, armrests and for back part – approximately like you can see in this image:

Here you can see how these polylines look like, when moved away from inside the square.

Select armrest curve. Use REBUILD command to rebuild the polyline.
Point count – no less than 20
Degree – 3.

Press F10 to see it’s control points. Move them to adjust curve’s shape until it’s nice.

Do the same thing for seat curve. Rebuild, Show control points, adjust their position.

And one more time for the back part. Make it shorter, like you can see it in the next picture, rebuild it and adjust control point’s positions. It’s the same rule all the time.

Great! 2D part is over, let’s move to 3D :) Move all curves 300mm to the left and COPY armrest curve and move it 100mm left. Select seat and back curve and move it 10mm back to the right. create Mirror line, starting in 0,0,0 position and mirror curves using this mirror line, so you get result exactly like you can see in the next picture.

Create perpendicular lines: one for seat, one for armrest, one for backrest

Select these new lines and REBUILD again.
Point count – 6
Degree – 3

Follow instructions written in the image: point 1 and 6 stay at the same positions, still touching original perpendicular curves, points 2-5 must go down and they must be 1d scaled from the Mid point, to create a “belly.”

Do the same with all other perpendicular curves (see the image):

Start NEW LINES in intersection points and make them to touch the opposite part of those curves:

REBUILD them:
Point count – 6
Degree – 3

And again: 1 and 6 stay static, 2-5 goes left and must be 1D scaled from the Mid point, as you can see in the picture.

This is the curve network cage we have now:

Create new lines again and repeat the process: Rebuild, Move and 1D scale:

Select armrest curves, press Select Inverse button and type Hide, so only these armrest curves stay visible:

Great :) Let’s make some surfaces now: Select 2 border curves (in the image marked as 2 rails) and type Sweep2 command. Select cross-section curve and press Enter.

Make sure you HAVE “Do not simplify” box CHECKED, so we get the shape with exact borders.

Great! Use Hide command for the surface you made and create 2 lines like you can see here: (They must start and end on these curves!)

Select the original curve and split it using these  lines into 4 curves.

Select border curves and section curve and use Curve Network command (under Surface Menu).

You can leave default settings and press OK.

ALLWAYS CHECK NORMALS! They must point out of the object.

And this is the whole philosophy of  these organic surfaces used for furniture. Using these steps you can make any organic surface, preserving only simple surface geometry without filleting edges and preserving simplicity of texture mapping in Rhinoceros 4 or 5.

After using this trick for all of the new surfaces, you should have something like this: (not too complicated, was it?)

Now we have to make some “railings” around surface intersections.
Leave only these surfaces visible (check the image). Use DupEdge command  - this command duplicates selected edges. Select border edges and press Enter. This will turn our edges into curves, see the image for details.

And that’s it :) – the “complicated” part is done!

Let’s make legs  now – make 2 simple boxes.

Use Move Edge tool to resize upper base in both directions.

FilletEdge command will fillet edges at this legs. After filleting, mirror them.

I also made this textile thrown over the armchair: Just create some section and border curves, use Curve Network command, check normals and it’s done. You can see the result of modeling part here: There is pure rendered model, model with shown normal maps (the blue one) and black leather applied in live rendered viewport.

I am currently working on the second part of the tutorial :) Stay tuned!

Matus