What can I say. Really, this needed more cylinders. Smaller ones to be sure.
The edge loops are just as important for helping to maintain crisp edges, however, I found they got in the way a bit when I went to use the chamfer tool. In order to get a deep enough and wide enough chamfer I had to adjust the location of the edge loops so as not to create an odd ridge or overlap.
It took me a little bit of trial and error to figure out how to use the chamfer tool and I briefly considered just manually moving the edge. Really though, what is the point in using a program with the power of 3ds Max and not using the tools available. So I stuck with it and was finally able to adjust enough of the right things to see the changes and know I was on the right track.
I did have to go in after the chamfer and add a few more edge loops. They just help keep things looking like they are supposed to instead of rounded off blobs. I put an edge loop either side of each of the chamfer boundaries to keep the edges just crisp enough.
You can see here the couple of places that I used the chamfer. I do not have turbosmooth applied to anythings so it all looks nice and sharp.
I also got to the tip of the pen. Mostly. I have one last item that will really be the tip but it’s more like a needle. Which is why the end component is created from a tube instead of a cylinder. The needle will fit inside the tube. In the case of the technical pens that I have this needle is the end of a plunger like component that carries the ink from the reservoir to the paper. Since I knew I wanted something to be inside the end/tip piece, the needle, I needed it to be hollow. I could have used a cylinder and taken the cap off but if I render at a certain angle then the faces won’t look right. I needed something that could be double sided and have some thickness.
At first when I created the tube I didn’t have the wall thick enough. I looked at it and contemplated all the really hard and frustrating ways I could try to adjust that. I did even try just a basic scale function which did not do the trick. Ultimately, I determined that it would be so much easier to just delete the tube and create a new one, this time paying attention to the wall thickness. That worked out much better. And now I am to this point with it.
This makes the modeling almost half done. Soon I will need to start addressing the UV situation. Where the real adventure begins.