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Making
Asteroids |
There are many good
tutorials on the net on how to make good asteroids. Many techniques are
very similar to others. This is a technique I use - and it's to be honest
similar to most of the others that there are out there.
Start off by making a box in Modeller
- a simple box of any dimensions with settings at default - i.e. no
further segments - Then subdivide this box using the metaform
option with the values at default - One point here a smoothing
angle of 90 or less won't do much if anything at all to the resultant
subdivide - with an angle of greater than 90 degrees you'll get something
like this:
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Now - repeat this
process once more but this time specify a value of upto 2.0 in
the fractal box - Fractal basically applies a random jitter to the new
points created. Now the jitter radius is a fraction of the edge length.
A value of 1.0 will jitter the new points by about 50% of
the length of the edge that they'll subdivide. A value of 0.1 will
cause a 5% jitter and a value of 2.0 will cause 100%
jitter or the full length of edge being divided.
One thing worth mentioning is that subdivide
will generally divide 4-side poly's into smaller 4-sided poly's.
Now you should have something like this:
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You can do it again for
more detail or stop right here and then hit the TAB key to metaform
the object. Now use the control points to deform your rock to your taste:
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Right now at this point
you can freeze the object - Remember that before you freeze the object
you can hit the "o" key for options - which will show
you this options screen
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You can set the mesh to
be made from purely Quads or Triangles or Automatic
- where Modeller will make the mesh using Quads and Triangles in optimum
places. The other main box we're concerned with here for now is the patch
division one -- A value of 1 will create relatively
few poly's in the final mesh - a value of 2 will be better:
See below
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Patch division Value = 1.0
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Patch Division Value = 2.0
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At this point apply suitable surface with
a good smoothing angle - say about 60 degrees and if you're happy
it's ready for texturing.
To apply a little more detail undo to
before you froze the object and then set the options to create an automatic
mesh with patch division value of 2.0 and freeze it again. Then
apply a jitter to the object with the options set to scaling
and a factor value 0f 12% - you will get a horrible mess like
this:
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to tidy everything up apply a metaform
again with a patch division of just one and freeze - now
onto surface smoothing
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Smoothing angle 45 degrees
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Smoothing angle 80 degrees
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No Smoothing at all
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Texturing your asteroid
is really a matter of taste: And as such the texturing can be pretty powerful
- so much so that realistic effects can be achieved with simple meshes
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