GP2 Modeling, Rendering and Compositing Tutorial

Modeling the wheels

I draw the outline of the wheel mug in Illustrator, it is also important that the drawing is symetrical as you will see in the progress of the model. After I have created the vector drawing I saved it as EPS and imported the EPS in Lightwave with closed polygon & polylines and auto axis drill checked. The image below is the imported object.

After getting the flat polygon, I extruded (ctrl+e) the object. I always like my model clean and seemless so I removed the top polygon and I begun the grueling part of reconstruction, "patience is a virtue" as they say!

To reconstruct the top surface I select four points and press "p" to make polys, four points polygon is always nice and clean to see on models. This is where the correct symmetry I did ealier in illustrator applies. The corresponding points on the outer rim and the inner are in exact same amount, this will give me clean four point polygons.

After reconstructing the top surface I generate new segments so as to get the right amount of curvature, I have culled the segments near the edge so i can get a nice beveled curvature on the wheels.With bandsaw pro tool I can control the amount of segments to use and percentage of distances between eachsegments, see below image. Red line on the middle mean I will get a median segment over my object, where ever the red line lies its how the object will be segmented.

Here below is the non subdivided polygon mug wheel. I have extended the outside of the rim and also the inner side of the rim. I beveled (b) the top rim to get a nice detailed portrusion.

Below is the result after hitting "Tab" to turn the polys into subdivided polygons.