Carapace

Began as an excercise in organic polygon SubD modeling using the Graphite Tools in 3dsmax 2013. Awesome modeling tools.

The circular shape in the middle, for instance, started as a simple box (4 equal sides). Inspired from some of the complex geometric and high genus shapes I've seen people do in Topmod, I decided to take on the challenge of a complex, yet organic shape, while still maintaining a linear, topologically sensible modeling structure. I started with several bridge operations on the polygons of 4 simple box primitives that I attached together as subobjects of a single object, removed various edges/faces, and after multiple extrude/bevel/inset commands, I started to arrive at an intersting result. The tesselation method I used was based on edge distance, with Delaunay triangulation topology compliments of Edgedirection in the Graphite Topology tool, and some help from the meshsmooth modifier with Classic Subdivision. From there, it was a simple process of deleting inner faces, adding a few additional modifiers, and crossing my fingers for something cool to manifest itself.

The outer shell "webbing" was achieved through the same basic process, only on a single larger box primitive.

Rendered in Luxrender via the Luxmax translation bridge plugin.