There was a point this past week where I wondered if I had bit off more than I could chew. Not so much with the Holiday card idea in general, just with the one particular bow I worked on.
If you read last week’s post you know that I’m working on models of presents and bows to go under the tree for the Holiday card scene. And even in spite of the amount of time it was taking to make the bows, I was pretty pleased with the progress I was making. That was until I decided to tackle one of the more involved bows.
At the beginning of the week I got to thinking on how to make those bows that have that triangle, cone in a flower shape look to them. First I had to work at how they might be built in the real world using ribbon. I didn’t have any ribbon to play with so I used duck tape. I cut a long piece, folded it in half so it was stuck to itself and I had a ribbon like thing to play with. Hey, it works. So I figured out how the bow might be created with the right type of fold but I didn’t think I could make it do that in the computer. I now may have a couple of ideas of how to do that but I’ll have to get back to that in a moment. So since I didn’t think I could figure out how to get a shape to fold the way I needed to I tried to figure out how I might make the illusion of that.
Since the shape of the petals of the bow were to be a bit cone shaped I decided I would put a bunch of cones together with an extra edge sticking out to attache them to each other. I went with the number of cones that I thought were right and would make for a full looking bow. So I have 8 petals. I’ve learned since, after a bit more experimenting with the shape that that may be too many. Again, I’ll get back to that.
Once I had the bottom group created I decided that was too sparse and I needed to fill it with more in the middle. So I duplicated what I had and then scaled it down to fit, rotated it, and did some angling with it using the soft select tool on the points. That 
allowed me to get most of the second layer of petals to fit inside the first layer of petals without too much penetration of the petals. This still wasn’t full enough so I did it two more times for a total of 4 layers. Looks very elaborate doesn’t it.
At this point the basic part was done and it was time for the refining and clean up. I needed to adjust the various petals so they weren’t penetrating each other and there was clearance. I also wanted to add some randomness to the look of the petals with some
squishing and bending in them. I’m hoping it will show up once a nice material is applied
and the lighting is setup. The only thing about this is that with 4 layers and 8 petals each there were a lot, well 32 to be exact, of petals that needed adjusting and tweaking. This one bow took me most of the week to create. It looks pretty good I think.
So now I have 3 bows and 2 packages. I think they look really good so far, now a couple more packages and one or two more bows.
Ok. So, how could I make that bow more the way it is actually made, and how many petals do I think it really needs? Well, first, I was playing with my duck tape ribbon again and figured out that the way the ribbon has to fold to create the look I was thinking of, really only allows for 3 consecutive petals per layer. I looked at a bow in the local store and found that there are only about 5 or 6 of those type of petals and two loops on the inside. So clearly, I made too many petals.
Along with the realization about the number of petals was the revelation of a couple of ways I could have made the ribbon fold the way I want it in 3ds Max. The first way is that I could have set the pivot point to different loops and then rotated based on that. I don’t usually change my pivot from the view or from the center of the object I’m working on. So this didn’t really occur to me to do until I read about the concept in a book called “Computer Graphics for Artists”. The other way I could have done it, also mentioned in that book, is the idea of basically rigging the ribbon and then using a bone system to twist and turn things to the shapes I needed.
By the end of this particular bow I was pretty much mentally mush and tired of working on bows and needing a break and some play time. So I mostly took the weekend off from working on presents and bows. I finally got a bit of interest back late Sunday evening
and did start work on another present but I don’t have a picture yet. I may take things a little lighter this week so that I can hopefully be ready to work on a lot of projects while I am off from the day job next week.
Yep, another day job vacation coming up all week next week. It is also Thanksgiving week in the U.S. next week and I do not have big plans so I am really looking forward to the time to get things done. Especially the Holiday Card. That will be my priority since I want it done by December 1. Unfortunately, when I hope to get lots done during a day job vacation, I don’t, I usually spend the first 4 days just goofing around and not getting much done. I’m hoping by getting some of that started early, I will be a head of the curve and only have a day or two of that and then lots of productivity afterwards.
There is still this week coming up before that vacation time though and I might surprise myself and get much more work on the card completed, or at least everything modeled so that all I have to do is assemble things. That would be cool. So you might want to check back and find out how I do. Do I spend too much time goofing off or do I find inspiration and motivation and get lots of modeling done.