Hey guys,
I’m rather new to 3DS modeling. I was wondering if anyone knows how to make custom groove inlays (or atleast that’s what I’m describing them as since I don’t know the proper name). Into primitives and other shapes such as extrusions and lathes. I’d assume some type of boolean command (but what do I know).
Attached is an example of what I’m trying to accomplish. Basically glossy inlay into a basic sphere with a black matte finish. The design is to be a circle on each of the axis points of the sphere (3 axis thus 6 circles, I hope that better explains it) perpendicular lines connecting each adjacent circle). Fortunately, using photoshop, I was able to graphically represent what I’m trying to achieve.
Modeling with booleans would work but it usually makes a mess of your geometry and gets complicated.
For something like this I’d try a bump or normal map first. Since your design is symmetrical from all six directions a really simple way to do this is to use a box instead of a sphere. This way the default uv’s should be perfect for a square texture.
Create a box with three equal sides. Add as many segments as you need for smoothing but make sure all are the same then add a spherify modifier to make it round. I just used ten segments and added a turbo smooth at the end. Now all you need is a square black and white texture map with your design centered on it to map to all six directions. You can use the bump map as a texture template also if your not using materials.
