If you enjoyed Gems 101, you may want to learn more about creating 3D gemstones.
Here is a brief tutorial on modeling the geometry of a Brilliant Cut diamond, starting from a cylinder, converting into a polygon mesh, and then extruding, scaling, connecting and deleting points.
Start
In a new, empty project, create a cylinder.
Scale it down until the height is small. This will be the neck of the stone.
Reduce the complexity of the cylinder one notch. This way, the number of sides goes down from 32 to 16.
Now convert the object into a polygon mesh. Make sure it is a one-sided object (One Sided is on by default). Also, set an Auto Smooth value of 0º.
The top
We can now begin to model the stone. Double-click on the polygon mesh to enter the poly editor, and then select the top face. Extrude it on its normal.
Scale it and, if necessary, move on its normal until it looks correct.
The next step is deleting the points on the top, to make it octogonal. Change to point selection mode and delete every other point of the hexadecagon (16-sided polygon) of the top.
The result should be an octogon.
The Bottom
The bottom of the gem is slightly different. We’ll select, normal extrude and scale the bottom face of the stone.
- Selection.
- Normal Extrusion
We now perform a ring selection of the sides. With the edge selector select one of the sides and then press N or right click>Ring Selection.
To connect the edges press C or right click>Connect. Next, change to vertex mode and select every other point in the newly created loop.
Delete the selected points and the modeling is done. Congratulations!
Texturing
We’ll reuse the texture from Gems 101, and change its refraction Index to the one that corresponds to Diamond: 2.418 (it is in the presets)
If we retain all the scene and render settings from Gems 101 the result will be something like the image below.
When you complete this tutorial, please share your results and questions!
Happy modeling!
