I’m trying to model a vintage metal lunchbox and I need advice on creating the rounded corners. I could use mirroring to build it but I wondered if there’s a simpler way to tackle all four corners at once. Can Silo import an eps line drawing of a rounded square?
https://www.lunchbox.com/collections/standard-size-metal-lunch-boxes
You could do it a few different ways. A possibility to start with would be to just model half of it so you only have two corners to manage, if this is feasible.
The first thing to come to mind is to use edge loops to limit curvature. Place the edges and then use slide to get the curvature you want.
You could also Inset the box face, bevel the edge to the desired curve size and and then use edge loops to control the curvature.
Also, instead of Inset you could also Extrude, snap the face in position and then scale it to the desired size.
Here are some images to show both of those methods. Hopefully somebody has other ideas. You can never have to many ways of modeling.
This shows the box using edge loops at each corner. You can control the curvature by how close you put the new edge. Too close, though, and you can have problems.
The edge loop box subdivided
This box can be done with the inset tool and the Bevel the edges. However, you need to clean up the resulting Ngon by connection vertices or you won’t be able to use easily connection edges for your control of the corners.
The result after subdividing.
Thanks for the tip. I tried beveling the edges as much as possible but I couldn’t get a big enough curvature on the four edges. So I used this idea from online
But instead of working with one cylinder I duplicated it to occupy all four corners and did some deleting and bridging. This will be exported to Lightwave so I wasn’t sure if subdivisions would translate well. :curious: Beveling for the other edges will work well enough now.
Next I’ll use mirror geometry so both ends can get the outer lids. The lips will be the most fun. I’m not sure if I should just draw another path around the cube and extrude a thing cylinder along it.
I had forgotten about that method. It certainly created nice corners.
I didn’t really like that method because of the many triangles it created at the corners. Any flow methods for connecting or working with faces and edges is halted when you encounter triangles. As long as you are aware of that they will pose no issues.
If beveling didn’t give you the full curvature you could always cut in, create or bevel in more geometry to get it. I try to do everything I can to avoid triangles until I know adding or having them will pose no problem for any work I do to the object later.
This was the simplest solution I could come up with inside of Silo 3D. I’ve been sick with food poisoning lately so i was tempted to just throw it into Lightwave and let the plugins fix the triangles.
Does Silo have a bend feature? If not I’d rather bend the handle to a curve in Lightwave than move edges in Silo.
I think it’s moving along well.
There is no easy way to bend your existing handle in Silo.
If the edge loops were more evenly spaced, you may be able to bend via soft selection but the section with the slots would problematic.
Ideally to do it in Silo you would need to model the bend first then add in the detail; or Silo should have some fancier deformers… I think I when I was using Imagine 3D circa 1990 I would have been able to bend that model quite easily.
I need a clarification. Can I copy mesh from one Silo file into another? I’ve been working on the locking mechanism on a separate file and I can’t paste it into my lunch box scene.
Thanks!
It looks so small, I wonder I overworked the detail. It’s not like I’ll be taking close-ups of that area in the final render.
This is as far as I’ll go using Silo. It’s been great re-learning this software and the first time I’ve made a hard-surface model with it.
In the later stages I began to suffer constant freezes and crashes. But I think that has more to do with my recent updates for Windows and graphics card. I just hope it doesn’t repeat the old problem with the topology tool.
Thank you everyone for the help!
Unfortunately I’ve hit a snag making the UV map for this thing. There are two seams that already appear on the casing but I can’t seem to get rid of them. In the UV windows there are extra points that I’ve tried merging with the proper ones. But the changes aren’t permanent. They also don’t appear on the normal viewports when I try to modify them.
What’s happeing here?
