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Tutorial Details
- Program: Alias
- Version: Surface 2010
- Difficulty: Medium
- Estimated Completion Time: 2-4 Days
About the writer
Martin Tyminski has been an Alias Designer at Drive for two years where he has worked on a wide variety of automotive design projects including production and concept cars. He has a BA in Transport Design from Huddersfield University and an MA in Automotive Design from Coventry University.
Drive design studio has established an enviable reputation for providing quality design development services to manufacturers and consultancies in the automotive, superyacht, motorcycle and product industries. We develop exciting and innovative concepts from our studio or provide external resource to other design teams requiring specialist expertise throughout their design process.
With an experienced team of 15 full time employees, built up of designers, alias modellers and CGI visualisers, Drive is in a strong position to provide flexible packages tailored to our clients needs,where quality, experience, and value are of utmost importance.
Step 1
This tutorial assumes that you have used Alias before. The beginning will explain where every button is and how to find it but as it goes on the pace will pick up and you should be able to find things yourself.
Before you start modeling its important to have as much detail as possible about the object being modelled. Gather reference images of the object you wish to model or if its a new design make as many sketches of if explaining any detailed and complex areas. Make sure you have some good blueprints of the object and that all images are filed in a neat and logical file structure.
Step 2
Create a new layer by going to Layer>New and rename it cnstr_crvs. Its good practice to start at coordinate 0,0,0. In this example the centre point of the base of the grip will be at 0,0,0.
Create another layer and name is blueprint. Window>Editor>Cameras make select "Top" in the Camera drop down list then scroll down to "Image Planes" and click on "Add," then navigate to the blueprint of the tennis racket.
Once the image is visible, scale it so that its extents match those of the lines you drew earlier.
Palette:Pick>img then manipulating the blue squares.
Step 3
It's good practice to build the larger or main surfaces first.
Create a circle then non-proportionally scale it and manipulate the cv's so it follows the centre of the main shape of the head of the racket.
This will be a guide for the center of the structure.
Next create a cross section for the structure of the head.
Step 4
Palette: Surfaces>Rail Surface select the cross-section curve (1) first followed by the shape curve (2) as shown.
(Notice the grid is not visible. To toggle it on/off go to WindowDisplay>Toggles>Grid)
Step 5
As your model evolves your modeling space will become cluttered with curves, patches and templated components.
To make life easier I often isolate only the parts that I am currently working on. So throughout this tutorial things might disappear then reappear again. I often use temporary layers to store these components in.
Create a new curve aligned to the shape curve and make it follow the centre of the tennis racket to the top of the handle.
At the base create a circle then non-proportionally scale it as shown, this will be the cross section of the right side of the racket.
Step 6
Unhide the rail surface from the previous step.
Split the the rail surface into two seperate entities. (Palette: Object Edit>Detach) and select the U Isoparm (1) then drag and let go when you reach the first cv point of the new curve.
Step 7
Select surface (1) and hide it, leaving surface (2) visible.
Step 8
(Palette: Surfaces>Rail Surface) Make sure Generation Curves is set to 2 and Rail Curves is set to 1 then select the objects in the order shown.
Step 9
The new surface will not be continuous to the existing one but it does not matter, the existing surface will be rebuilt and continuity will be achieved then.
Step 10
Detach the rail surface again but this time holding down Ctrl and snap to the two centre U Isoparms as shown, then delete the left hand side geometry.
Step 11
Turn symmetry on. If the symmetry is in the wrong direction go to Layer>Symmetry>Set Plane...
Step 12
... an axis triad will appear. Click on the square to change the symmetry plane then click on 'Set Plane'.
Step 13
Turn symmetry off. Hide what is left of the original rail surface and detach the lower part of the rail surface as shown.
Step 14
Mirror the section across axis XZ by going to Edit>Duplicate>Mirror and make sure Mirror Across XZ is selected.
Step 15
Build a blend curve as shown and Make sure you get a nice curve comb like the one shown. Make the two ends of the blend curve tangent.
Step 16
An interactive duplicate curve does not snap to a curve, it only snaps to a surface.
So, build a temporary draft surface from the blend curve then create the duplicate curve.
Next, project normal the duplicate curve onto the surface and trim away the inner section.
Step 17
Delete the surface which hasn't been trimmed.
Select the trimmed surface and position its pivot point to be on the first cv of the 'centre guideline'. (this is just a precautionary step to make sure the mirrored object is mirrored to the correct position)
Select nothing then mirror the surface in axis YZ.
Do the same for the blend curve.
Step 18
Create a five degree curve from the edges of the surfaces and tangent align it.
Then position the new curve so its characteristics are similar to the two blend curves. Make sure the cv's are positioned.
Step 19
Make sure that the curve is perfectly symmetrical. To confirm this, check the XYZ position of the mirror equivalent cv's. The coordinates should be identical apart from one which will be the minus version of the positive.
Step 20
Create a rail surface. Use the new curve as the Generation Curve and the trimmed edges of the two surfaces as the Rails as shown.
Step 21
Detach the new surface as shown and delete the top bit.
Step 22
Untrim the tubular surface as shown.
Step 23
Using the the Duplicate Edge tool with interactive turned on duplicate the bottom edge and slide it up and snap it to the upper surface as shown.
Project the new curve using Project Normal.
Step 24
Trim and keep the sections as shown below.
Step 25
Mirror the trimmed surface to the other side and delete the untrimmed one.
Step 26
Unhide the original duplicate curve which was used to the trim the long tubular surface, then trim it back as shown
.
Step 27
Create a new curve and align it as shown. (Make sure it is symmetrical)
Project the larger curve onto the top surface in the top viewport.
Step 28
The top surface was built to be tangent continuous to the side surfaces, this means that the the cv's highlighted in black and the ones highlighted in white must remain where they are to maintain this continuity.
Note: If the surface was curvature then the the yellow ones would also have to remain where they are. The blue ones do not affect the continuity of the surface.
Nudge the blue cv's down in z.
Nudge the ones to the right of the image further down than the ones on the left to give slight acceleration of the surface in that directions.
Step 29
Trim back the top surface and create a square using the trimmed edge, the smaller 'u' shaped curve from step 26 and the edges of the tubular rail surfaces.
Step 30
The patch will have an undesired lip where it meets the upper surface.
Step 31
Experiment with the Square Controls and in particular the boundary blend options. In this case the 2-4 Boundary Blend control should iron out the problem.
Step 32
Although the surface may look better its still very heavy and contains lots of isoparms in both U and V directions. This is because the patch is having to do a lot of work.
To alleviate the work, make this area up in three sections.
Step 33
Check the curvature comb to make sure the curve is flowing nicely.
Step 34
Build a new patch using the new curve. It is only one part of the area but it is a lot lighter than the previous patch.
Step 35
Mirror the patch over and check the continuity. Mirroring it over as opose to building it will ensure that the area is perfectly symmetrical.
Step 36
Then finally build the middle patch.
Note: It may take some time to perfect the curves in order for the patches to fit and flow nicely.
Step 37
Unhide the surfaces as shown and mirror them in axis XY to get a feel for the model so far.
Step 38
Isolate the surfaces as shown. The smaller rail surface is curvature continuous to a rail which is hidden, make sure not to move the first two rows of cv's on the bottom to maintain that.
Step 39
Detach the rail surface as shown and hide the wireframe surfaces.
Step 40
Next step is to merge the two patches.
Step 41
Step 42
Create a curve from the edge of the green surface to the edge of the blue surface and align it at both ends.
Step 43
Create a curve from the edge of the green surface to the edge of the blue surface and align it at both ends.
Step 44
The next curves will be used to create some blend surfaces between the outer surfaces and the inner surfaces.
Step 45
Trim the surfaces and isolate the surfaces and curve as shown.
Step 46
Create a curve from edges of the blue and yellow surfaces and position it in the top view so that it is in line with the joining edges of the surfaces.
In the top viewport project the curve onto the grey surface as shown and template the curve.
Step 47
Create a curve from the surface edges as before to the end of the projected surface and align it at both ends.
Step 48
Build a square using the boundaries defined.
Experiment with the square settings to get a light surface which flows nicely.
Step 49
Build another surface which will complete the blend. The surface shown was a first hit and is very heavy.
Step 50
With some experimenting it became apparent that it was too much work for a single patch to fill this gap so two were built. Furthermore, the whole object was sliced upwards so that the surfaces could be kept light...
Step 51
...the surfaces were mirrored and patches were built between them to bridge the gaps.
Step 52
Isolate the main surfaces as shown and put all other surfaces on a temporary layer.
Put all curves on another layer and turn them off.
Step 53
The strings are a network of interwoven tubular surfaces. Start by positioning a curve in the center of where the longest string will be.
Step 54
Prepare by measuring the width the strings.
Step 55
The circles indicate the cross sections of the strings. As they pass each other one goes underneath the other. So the position at the point of where they meet will be the radius distance away. In this case, .6mm.
Step 56
Make some temporary surfaces using the the cross sections and path curves to get a feel of how the network of rail surfaces will eventually look.
Step 57
Delete the temporary surfaces and copy and paste the path curves as shown.
The cross section paths are no longer needed either, so delete or hide those too. Notice the endings are slightly different.
Step 58
Create a tube surfaces along the path curves by going to:
Palette>Surfaces>Tube Surface
Enter the radius size and make sure Chain Select is selected for the tube to run the length of all the curves.
Step 59
Every other string will be woven in the same direction so measure the distances and duplicate the tube surface.
Step 60
Select the first tube surface again and copy it then move it half the distance of the duplicated surface.
Step 61
Rotate this surface 180 degrees in Y axis.
Step 62
Duplicate this surface as before.
Step 63
Do the same thing in the other direction.
Add some detailing to the ends of the strings.
Step 64
The racket handle is very simple. Build some surfaces for the main volume.
Step 65
Fillet the edges by going to:
Surfaces>surface Fillet
Fillet the circumference edges first followed by the other edges.
Step 66
From hereon its all down to detail, its the little touches that make all the difference. Make sure all edges are radiused so that they catch the light.
Conclusion
Apply some materials to the racket and turn off model.
If you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me at martin.tyminski@drivedesign.co.uk
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