365 Hard-Surface Models (Day 8)
I have always had this bizarre love for hubcaps. They remind me of futuristic jet engine exhausts. So here is one of many I am likely to post. 100% quads, all one mesh, no floating geo. There is a satisfying feeling from creating a smooth mesh without floating geo. I raise my arms in triumph.
To better illustrate what is going on here, since some of you have asked, I updated this post with the unsmoothed wire:
The smoothed mesh is a NURBS model (I think 3ds Max calls it NURMS though). Non-Uniform Recursive B-Spline. Think of bezier curves or, better yet if you’ve used them, b-splines. Take 3 points, make a 90 degree angle out of them. A b-spline takes the angle, averages the distance and turns it into a curve. Manipulating those angles will give you a smooth curve, however you desire, with less underlaying geometry.
I know I forgot the bolt sockets. Didn’t have the time to add them.