General workflow for detailing

As you do more modeling projects, you'll find that there are certain processes that you use very often. Here's a quick workflow for creating small mechanical details:

• Add the basic shapes.

• Do your "big" beveling to add curves.

• Do your "small" beveling on the sharp edges.

Next, we'll add some pipe-style detailingto our gun. Torus objects are fantastic for creating pipes.

Unlike other types of conduits (hoses, cables, and more), pipes largely consist of straight cylinders. Since they only have curves at certain points, an extruded section of a torus is a great solution. It gives you perfect angles without adding unnecessary polygons.

To do this, let's first add Torus to the scene. We'll use 48 Major Segments (by default) and 16 Minor Segments .

Major Segments is the numberof edges around the larger circle. Minor Segments is the number of edges around the tube that makes up the torus.

Let's start by deleting three quarters of the torus:

This will leave us with the small section that we need:

You can then duplicate this and flip it by pressing Ctrl + M. Then, you can fill in the faces:

The only downside to doing this is that when you Mirror an object (Ctrl + M), you invert the normals. Go ahead and fix them by selecting everything and pressing Ctrl + N:

You can also change the width of your torus by scaling along the face normals (Alt + S):

When you have your torus the way you want it, go ahead and move it into position:

Then, you can select the back half of it and drag it back along the Y axis (or whichever is appropriate):

If you'd like, you can add two or more pipes...this is purely a stylistic choice:

You can also add some detail to the ends of your pipe:

Once you've created one pipe section, don't hesitate to duplicate it, change the diameter by pressing Alt + S, and move it to other the areas of your model:

Next, we'll add some detail to our gun's barrel. We already have a nice circular hole in the front of the gun, so we'll just fill it in with a cylinder. Then, using techniques previously discussed, we'll add a bit of detail to the front of the gun:

Then next thing we'll do is add some detail to the top with the Array modifier. First, we'll add a cube at the top front of the barrel:

Then, we'll add the Array modifier to it. The Array modifier creates multiple copies of an object in a line (or "array") with an offset in position (that you specify):

Adjust the Count and Relative Offset until you're happy with the result. You may need to change these settings as you begin to add detail to the arrayed object:

Of course, you can also delete half of your arrayed object and add a Mirror modifier to it as well:

This is a great tool for detailing long, complex components. Use the same techniques that we've covered throughout the chapter to add a bit more detail here. This is where I ended up:

We're just about done now, and all of the techniques that we're going to use on this project have already been covered. Use them in various combinations to fill in detail wherever you feel it's appropriate. Don't hesitate to go back and change things if they don't look as good as you imagined. You can always make a copy of the model if you'd like and try something a little different.

Here's a quick render of my final gun. We will be creating a render setup in the next chapter, so this is just for demonstration: