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Moddelling a gun handle... badly. Brain == mush

neil_claytonneil_clayton Member Posts: 19 ✭✭

My brain just isn't getting it.

I'm wanting to model this:

… a prop from the movie Elysium. I'm trying to do just the handle, but my brain just isn't breaking down the problem properly.

I've tried:

  1. solid modelling, face sulpting, then attempting to fillet the edges. This fails because I can't fillet enough once the face scuplting is completed. My intention was to use the meta sculpt to get the depth of the handle set, and then variable fillet the edge to get the rounding around the edge of the handle.
  2. using control point curves to try to follow the contours in 3d. The resulting face doesn't come out that great (creases), and fails to produce a surface if I extend those curves much further from what I've shown in the pic. Not only that I'm not sure what I would do next to get the other faces, and join them up (and do the rounding between the side and front/back faces).
  3. Trying to model larger faces, and trim these down. Here I fail because I'm not sure what the right tools are to trim various faces. e.g: what to do at the green point to begin scuplting a curve on all three planes. What approach should I use to get a rounded corner here? Then my brain says "and once you solve that… how do you flatten the handle?" (towards the blue arrow direction, which looks like I'm pointing up, but I mean 'towards the centre' of the gun)

So I feel like my brain has turned to mush and Im trying to do too much with single features. I'm having trouble working out the best way to break it down and make it manageable. I keep thinking in terms of extrusions, or being able to push faces around - but I'm pretty sure that's not the right way.

Too much staring at one drawing.

If anyone has some suggestions on the better (more on-shape-y) way to approach this, I'm all ears.

Comments

  • MDesignMDesign Member Posts: 92 ✭✭

    I'm no expert at modeling stuff like this but I think your step 1 is a good start but forget the fillets. and start using curves to set up face splits and surface tools to get the bulk of the rest in anticipation of fillets at the end. Thats where my brain goes with the limited exposure of surface modeling I've had.

  • martin_kopplowmartin_kopplow Member Posts: 472 PRO

    For shapes like this you need to learn surface modelling. Look it up int the learning resources.

  • GWS50GWS50 Member Posts: 411 PRO

    When using surface modelling try only modelling one side or one quarter and then mirroring the results. In other words keep it simple and don't try to model the whole thing as you would using solid modelling.

    The tutorials are really good in Onshape

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