Embossing/Engraving custom shapes into shapes in 3d Max

4evra

Firstly,hello to all

From what i see,its 1 question 1 thread,no threads for general questions on regular basis from starters.If there is one,please,feel free to point me in its direction.

So,what im trying to create is a emboss/engrave effect(actually,i'll need both of them).

Reason behind it is me starting to learn the 3d max.Basics first,and make my way up.
So,for begining,i decided to try to make some trophy for something random.Its kinda growing project,i'll probbably be doing the whole "trophy room",but its enough to keep me busy and working/getting familiarised with 3d max.

Now,the question:
I've made trophy and i want to place this symbol in middle of it via Emboss effect.


Right now,what i do is apply extrude to the smaller shape thats gonna be embossed to bigger shape,then bend it(or whatever i need to do) for it to roughly fit to the shape.


Then i combine them


This is how it looks at the end:


Now,when i'm rendering(and if i got some "special" materials like gold i saw on net or something similar with lots of those material maps and stuff) it sometimes tends to be transparent in a way that the part of the emboss inside the trophy is visible from outside.Edges are also kinda freaky.
Anyway, because of that,i beleive this is not right way to create an emboss effect.

So,any directions?

I looked up for some boolean shape,looks like its "best" way to merge to object together.However,when i select my trophy,then go boolean and "add" a shape of logo i want embossed,the logo's "shape" isnt projected to a trophy's shape,so it doesnt help me to do it that way.So,a subquestion would be: "is there a way to project another shape into a some shape that isnt all straigh up but curved(like my trophy is)?"

GKWill

The boolean operations have a lot of different options, see if playing around with them gives you a better result.

There's things like Additive B + A, Subtractive B - A, lots of things like that. You might get the result you want trying something there

But it shouldn't be a problem anyway, because gold isn't transparent and if it's showing up as being transparent, then is that really all that good a thing?

4evra

Thanks for fast reply.

Well,aside from that transparent gold problem,1 other reason is that the edges are unrealistic(about 90 deg) when i do this type of shape "merging"


However,i did take ur advice on boolean,played around a bit and got something close to perfect.I can take it from here,do the inset,extrude and stuff and its great.


As u can see,most of the shape is transfered correctly,but not all.I can fix it by doing another pass with same shape,but this time doing the subtraction,so i get the part that missing(the middle) to this current state.That way i get the whole object transfered.
But,i still had to do the fine tuning of shape's position,rotation and bend to get it to "fall" onto the trophy's curve.
Its not big deal for this kind of project,but,in general terms,this could get really tricky if i had to do this over some surface that is highly iregular in shape.

Anyway,here's a sideview sketch of what im reffering to


A method where the shape thats being added detects the curvature of the shape he's being put onto,and then adjusts himself accordingly.

cptSwing

Matthew Lichy's turboTools (specifically the shrink wrap tool) might help!

http://youtu.be/edMLGtFsn6w

Eric Chadwick

If you want a rounded edge where the embossed logo meets the surface, subdivision surface modeling is going to be a better route. It will take you longer to learn, but it is a very valuable skill to have.
http://wiki.polycount.com/SubdivisionSurfaceModeling

Michael Knubben

Actually, since you're rendering you can just use Mental Ray's rounded edges material, which will save you a lot of time and headache.

sprunghunt

I would just use the displace modifier to do this. You'd need a height map for the logo.

onionhead_o

you could try using Modifier Panel> Change to Compound objects>(With MEsh Selected) Shape Merge> Pick Shape. Done You will have your shape projected onto the MEsh u want to cut into.

4evra

So nice to see so much advices on this topic.Thanks to all of you willing to put up with my newbie's questions.

@Eric
I've bookmarked the subdivision modeling part,i'm gonna check it out for sure.However,i'm still grapsing the basics of 3dmax,so i don't wanna rush it in and go for some good/expert stuff yet,i'm gonna take my time and do it gradually.

@Mighty
That i could use if i was tackling this problem specifically.However,i want to understand the concept and the logic behind it,so,in this phase,i'll avoid any methods that save my time learning the aplication,because i could end up being awesome at "masking" the problems i get,instead of trying to work it out slowly

@Sprung
Yeah,the Displace modifier looks decent.It does project it onto the shape with some nice accuracy,however,at the very ends of my shape,the bend effect isn't "high" enought,so its not a perfect match.Thought i see cases where Displace would come in handy,so thanks,i makes a +1 to my asset of "how to do this" in 3d max

Onions advice did the projection perfectly.It's straight forward,i picked a shape,and it was projected without much complication.
Im having some probs with controling the position of that shape thought,it mirrored and on a back side of my trophy,but, i'll get a hand of it once i play around and study it a bit more


So,i guess i got answers to my question.Good to see thats its not a "only 1 method to do it" apliccation.
Something else,unrelated to this topic:
is it a common practise to do 1 thread for 1 question here?Since i sense a whole lot of questions comming this way from me