Eggplant 1

Eggplant Tutorial

Modeling an Eggplant: First Lesson in Anim8or

This eggplant tutorial is split into 4 stages:

make the base and stalk
make the leaves
bend the plant
make the egg, make materials to apply to the egg and base, and apply the materials

Part 1: Make the base and stalk

A 3 minute animation of part 1 is available via the following table:

From school server (fast but only works at school)		From internet server (slower but works anywhere that has ADSL)
SWF file	web page	Web page

The animation was created with anim8or running in a small window - you should run anim8or in full-screen mode on your computer.

This tutorial describes how to make an Eggplant. It uses the technique of block modeling but starts with a pentagon instead of a cube so that it will have 5-fold symmetry.

The basic idea is to model a very simple block figure that encloses the shape that you want to make. Then using surface subdivision and smoothing you can create smooth surfaces that follow almost any basic shape that you can imagine. You can control the sharpness of corners so that everything doesn't end up looking like PlaySkool toys.

Start in the Object Editor. Use the View>Top command to switch to the top view so that it fills the screen. Select Build>Primitives>N-Gon from the menu and set the value to 5. Select Add Polygon

from the toolbar, click in the center of the screen and drag about 2 squares to add a pentagon. Now select Build>Extrude from the menu. In the dialog, select the Y-axis, 20 units, 1 segment, cap both ends, and don't tessellate caps.

You should have a nice thick base for your plant. If you switch to wire frame mode, you will notice that the top and bottom faces are not divided into triangles, but are left as single, 5-sided polygons. This allows the extrusion of the base into the stem to work.

Note: If you have problems with the extrusion not working, you might not have been in the top view when you added the pentagon.

Now you'll switch to point-edit mode

where most of the work will be done. This also switches the screen into wireframe and shows individual points as well for easier editing.

To build the "feet" of the base, you will need to select thel 5 outer faces on the base and extrude them. Switch to face mode

and drag-select

. When you click the mouse and drag to select an area, and polygon that is entirely contained within the rectangle will be selected. Remember that the left mouse button will deselect any previously selected areas before adding the new ones, and the right button will add to existing selections. When you are selecting faces, it may help to switch among the ortho, top, front, etc. views to make it easier to select things. Now select all 5 outer faces.

You will notice that some faces are yellow while others are blue. The yellow ones are facing towards the screen while the blue ones are facing the other way. This makes it easier to see what's what in wire frame views.

Now click the face extrude button from the lower part of the toolbar. This is all that's needed to build the base. Smoothing will do the rest. You can make the base a little flatter, though, by setting the level of creasing to apply, as you'll see later.
Next switch to point-select and select the top center face. It should appear yellow, or you got the bottom face instead. Extrude this face up about half as much as the base is thick. Then click the face scale button and click and drag down anywhere within the window. This will scale the face. Make it about half the diameter of the original top face.

Now extrude the top pentagon up 4 or 5 times, each about as high as the base is thick. This will form the stem. Then extrude again, but make this one a little less that half as thick. Scale the face out about 25%. Extrude a bit more, and scale back to the original size. These will form the base of the flower, and the sides of the top section will form the leaves that surround the egg. Your model should look similar to the one at the left.

Click HERE to see part 2 of this four-part tutorial.