This tutorial goes through the creation of a simple HDPE kitchen bowl, with emphasis on the texture, which is an interesting one. We will use several interpolations in the texture.
The bowl
This bowl starts as a lathed profile.
The profile:
The lathe
Then it is converted into a polygon mesh to apply thickness to it. This will give us the thickness of the material in an easier way than drawing the profile by hand.
Convert into a Polygon mesh:
We apply the thickness using the thickness tool (the last in the Modeling Commands palette).
A small thickness is best, for the bowl has narrow walls.
The same procedure can be used for the lid of the bowl.
Now, we move on to the texture.
The Texture
HDPE is an interesting material. It has blurred transparency but crisp reflections, it is transparent but not too much, and it is a fun texture to make.
The texture is as follows:
This texture deserves some discussion:
The HDPE used for kitchenware is often visibly more transparent when viewed face-on than when viewed edge-on. This is a perfect case for using the texture interpolation present from Strata 3D CX 6 on.
- Diffuse Amount and Ambient amount: Cosine interpolation from 12% (face-on) to 20% (edge)
- Opacity: Cosine interpolation from 6% (face-on) to 15% (edge). We will use Blurred Transparency.
- Specular Amount: Fresnel interpolation from 0% (face-on) to 85% (edge)
- Reflectivity: Fresnel interpolation from 5% (face-on) to 15% (edge). We will not use Blurred Reflections.
- Smoothness: 74%
The lid texture is similar, only colored.
A textured render would look like this:
With more objects in the kitchen, proper lighting et cetera, the bowls improve.
You may want to add an Embedded Reflection if the reflected environment is not being reflected enough.
This may be the beginning of a virtual Tupperware.
