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Hello everyone welcome to the Styllle Digital Fashion blog!
In today tutorial I want to show you how to create 3D model a luxury Plexiglas bag.
I’ll show you 3D modeling process of the Louis Vuitton Plexiglas Box, applying dynamics and rendering.
For the modeling I’ll be using Autodesk 3ds Max.
Preparing scene for 3D modeling
01 System units setup
Before we start modeling, we need to prepare our 3D scene to work.
The 1st step of each project is setting up system units.
Go to the Customize menu and and select Units Setup.
You can use metric system, imperial system or your own settings. For most of my projects I use centimeters units.
02 Create reference planes
The next step is placing reference images. Go to the Create panel, primitives and select Plane.
On the Modify panel, I can reduce plane segments and make 1 by 1.
03 Applying texture to the reference plane
The next step is very simple I just grab my image and drag and drop it on the plane. 3Ds Max automatically fits image to the plane size.
We need to adjust plane and fit it to the original image size.
04 Matching image and plane width
Select the plane go to the Modify panel and in the list of modifiers select UVW Map.
Scroll down to the bottom and select Bitmap Fit option.
Next select reference image and press open.
The UVW modifier will adjust the texture to the original image size. In our case it’s square. I can copy Width value from the UVW Map modifier, then select our plane and past already copied width value.
Now our reference image is almost ready.
05 Disable texture on the back face
By default, the texture will be visible on both front and back sides of the plane.
We need to disable back face visibility because will use another reference image for the back view.
To make back face not visible select reference plane, go to the Display tab and select Backface Cull checkbox. This option hides the back face and you will see only the front face of the plane.
05 Layers organization for comfortable 3D modeling
The Next is layers organizing. To open layers manager press Manage Layers button at the top of the shelf or “L” button on your keyboard.
Create a new layer then double click on the layer’s name and type a new name – References. Next, I rename the selected plane to “Front”.
06 Disable a Gray color in Frozen mode
Now if I freeze the Reference layer the image will not be visible in viewport instead of texture we will see a gray color.
To make it visible, select the plane, right-click on the plane -> select Object Properties and deselect Show Frozen in Gray option.
Now when I freeze the layer the reference image remains visible.
The freeze option helps to avoid an accidental selection and moving the reference image.
Now when I’m trying to select the plane I’m not able to do that.
07 Creating new reference planes
To create a new reference plane I unfreeze the layer, select the front reference plane, press the Move Tool or “W” key, hold the “Shift” key and move it.
It will make a copy of the plane. Then rotate the plane by 180° degrees. You can do it in a few ways.
Press Select and Rotate button or press “E” key.
1st you can type 180° degree value in the field at the bottom of the screen.
The 2nd way is pressing the Angle Snap Toggle button or pressing “A” key.
If I make right-click on this button popup window appears with the snap settings. And I can set up angle degree value. I use 5° degrees value for the angle snap.
Now when I rotate the plane I have 5° degree snap.
Drag and drop the image with the back view on the plane. And rename the plane.
08 Setting up the right reference planes scale
Now I’m going to position both reference planes in the center of the coordinate system.
At the bottom, of the viewport, you can see the current position of the plane.
If I press on the little arrows right next to the value it’s set up to the 0
The same for the Front plane.
Next, I’ll match the cube to the bag size. Every store has description of the product with it’s dimensions.
I select cube and go to the Modify tab and update parameters according to the real bag dimensions.
Now our reference images are the way too big and I have to adjust them to the cube size.
Go to the front view and press “F3” to see the texture in viewport. Disable the grid by pressing the “G” key.
We don’t need the UVW Map modifier anymore and can delete it.
09 Adjusting Pivot position
Now to place our plane in the right way we need to adjust the pivot.
To do that go to the Hierarchy tab and press Affect Pivot Only. Next just center pivot according to the product and move it to the bottom of the bag. Press again Affect Pivot Only.
Now I can set up 0 for the Z and X axis.
Press “R” key or Scale Tool and scale the plane down to match the cube width.
For a more comfortable modeling process, I use animated material.
I can switch between the frames just pressing “<” “>” keys and the transparency of the material is changing.
It allows us to see the reference image and at the same time work in transparent mode.
10 Adjusting back reference
Do the same to the Back reference. Press “V” key and select Back View or press front at the top left corner of the viewport and select Back.
Activate Adjust Pivot Only mode and place pivot at the center and move to the bottom of the bag.
Set up 0 for Z and X axis. And scale down to match the cube size.
The reference images are set up and we are ready jump to the 3D modeling part.
If you use another way to set up reference images share it in the comment and let me know why you prefer it.
Any feedback on my explanation are very welcome!
See you in the next tutorial on the 3D modeling part, subscribe to our news letter to not miss new tutorials!
