Stasia McGehee - Creating a Pumpkin in 3DSMax

Modeling a Carved Pumpkin

The pumpkin's basic shape was created with a simple Chamfer Cylinder having 264 faces. Since the pumpkin was to have a geometric carved look, using low poly modeling techniques were used to create an efficient model.

Using Modify / Edge / Divide in conjuction with Move Vertex, I created simple mouth, eye, and nose shapes. I then created a Pumpkin material having 10 multi/sub-object material assignments. By assigning subobject materials to selections of faces at the outset I am able to easily keep track of various face selections. Facial features were colored dark, for quick visual assessment.

Once all the facial shapes were created, I selected the dark faces and extruded them inward, to give the illusion of thickness. (The eyes in the image above are yet to be extruded.) Using the same technique, I created an irregular selection set of faces on the top of the pumpkin. These were extruded outward, providing a lid. Similarly, the stem was created by extruding face sets, incrementally scaling them down as they were extruded, and then adding a Bend Modifier.

To assess the overall look, I deleted the dark facial features, made the multi/sub-object orange pumpkin color into a 2-sided material (to give the pumpkin an inside), and then put a bright omni light in the middle of the pumpkin, emulating candlelight.

Texturing the Pumpkin

Although a formidable creature, I didn't want the pumpkin to appear too ominous, so I opted for just a slight Bump map set to 10%, allowing the character to retain it's cartoony appearance. (Also animating the facial expressions would no doubt cause some noticeable stretching of the bitmap.) As my source file, I used the Cedar Fence provided in the Max Library, in conjunction with Spherical UV Coordinates, to suggest ribs. A bit of noise added to the green stem gave it some texture as well.

The dark facial features on the first pumpkin are actually sets of faces. Instead of deleting them, I assigned them to a transparent Multi/sub-object, as shown in the second image. Now the pumpkin appears to have an inside shell, but this is only an illusion; the orange pumpkin color comprises a two-sided material, and since there is a bright omni light in the center of the pumpkin, it appears to be a different color.

Animating the Pumpkin -
Morph Targets

These Morph targets were created from copies of the original mesh (lower right), using the Modify panel to move vertices. Morph targets must have the same topology as the Source Object. Vertices may not be added to Morph Targets once the neutral position is established.

Original Storyboard

I generally like to work my ideas out on paper before committing myself to the computer.
This panel illustrates the climactic moment of our hero's ingestion; editing will speed up as the drama intensifies. Such sketches were used for reference when modeling the 3D expressions.