[homegrown]

Okay...here's what I'm trying to do. My brother and I own a small clothing company and one of our T shirt design ideas is called "Cold World." Basically the earth with some knives through it, fuse, beat up, and most importantly frozen with dripping icicles off the bottom. The quick mock ups should give a decent idea. Anyways, I wanted to try to do a 3D model as an initial starting point for the image, and I'm wondering what the best way is to "freeze" my earth. I was thinking some particle system? (I use 3ds max). I'm just a hobbyist 3d guy, so I really have no idea what its capable, all I know is I can' t model it by hand and we can't really draw ice by hand well. Any insights into how to accomplish this? Doesn't have to be perfect as the image will be heavily photoshopped. Thanks.

[Maximus3D]

Interesting problem, how you would approach it i don't know since you say you wouldn't model it. But.. i would model a lowpoly cage in some polymodeler and then pull that one into Zbrush or similar application and sculpt in the final look and feel of the icicles. That's probably the easiest approach i can think of now.

You can ofcourse polymodel it all and skip the sculpting pass completly, it's up to you. The particlesystem idea sounds like more work than necessary, way to much work to be honest.

One more method would be to do the above then use that to render out a zdepth map which you then use as a displacement on the lower part of the lowpoly sphere which is Earth. That 'could' work..

Maybe someone else have any better suggestions than me, i hope so.

[Edit] : I did a quick sketch in Modo to try this.. although this is very rough looking and probably not even close to your wish i think it can be done..



/ Max

[simmsimaging]

It might be easiest to do the globe once as normal, and once fully covered in ice, and then merge the two in photoshop to create the blend. Max's way is probably the best to get the icicles, I just think modelling the transition in would be harder than is necessary - but I'm not too sure either.

b

[homegrown]

Thanks for the replies guys. Max..yeah I guess I was just hesitant to try modeling it by hand since I've never really done organic shapes. I found this about using Super spray to make an icicle shape and I was wondering if it could cleverly be combined with collision or something to cover my sphere with ice. http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/article10_TB.asp Judging by your model it looks like it should be possible to get close to what I'm looking for. I'm gonna play around with some of your suggestions. And I agree, I might be better off doing the transitions between ice and earth in Photoshop, I'm mainly concerned about getting icicles since they're such a weird object to draw.

[KurtS]

I've never really done organic shapes

Your model does not have to be very organic, just add some displacement to the material...