Making of a Cowboy Hat with 3ds Max

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a cool brown cowboy hat.

1. Create a simple sphere: Radius-40, Segments - 40. It will represent a head for our Cowboy Hat. Make it White.

2. Then create a circle to match the upper third of the sphere.








3. In modifier menu change the parameters of the circle to: Rendering sides - 20, Interpolation Steps – 20 to make the hat smooth and its Radius - 30. Make it Brown.













4. While Circle still chosen go to Modifier list – Edit Spline. Choose Spline sub-object. Scroll down to Geometry menu and choose Outline to create another, bigger outer circle. To do so, choose outline, go to the Top View and hover over a circle. When the cross appears drag it inside the smaller circle. You should get this result.


5. Now – the most important part: Go to front view. Choose the bigger circle and via Modify panel pick its left and right vertexes and pull them up a little bit.




6. Go to modifier list – choose Extrude and increase its Amount to 1.5.






Well, the difficult part is over.







7. Create a ChamferCyl: Radius 30, height – 50, fillet 4, Height segs 5, Fillet sides 14, Sides – 36, Cap segs 2 and make it Brown.
















8. Convert to Edit Poly and Delete the bottom vertexes (8). Place it above the bottom place of the hat.

Now we'll start deforming the top of this hat.


9. Choose all but last row of vertexes on the front view. Hold the CLTR key and choose Top View.






Keep scaling the vertexes lines until you like what you see. Use cowboy hat pictures to get close to the desired model. Mine looks like this.










10. Now in the Top View choose the upper vertexes and on the front view push it down.














11. Repeat with the Top Central vertex.

12. For the last touch – squeeze everything a little beat and put everything on its place.







13. Don’t forget to color one stripe different color than the hat. To do so choose bottom polygons of the top part of the hat. Extrude :0.5.


14. Now press M on your keyboard, choose an empty slot and change the parameters as shown on the image.
15. Now choose the top of the hat and apply materials to it.


16. If the colors are not applied as you wished, go to polygon properties and change the Material set IDs. (19)





17. Press F8 if you want to change the Background color. For final render press F9.



Well, that’s it. The hat is ready. If you have any additional question regarding this tutorial, don't hesitate to ask.

Making of Halloween pumpkin with 3ds Max – Part 1: The basics

Halloween is coming so it is time to model some pumpkins!



1. To make one you should first create a simple Sphere. In a Modifier panel change its radius to 50 and Segments to 32. Make it a nice orange color (252, 160, 0). You can Scale it a bit, so it doesn’t look like a ball.



2. Go to a Modifier list and choose Edit Poly: Vetex Sub-Object.
3. In a Front View choose the upper and the bottom vertexes and scale them inside – as shown on the image. Repeat it twice.


4. Now on the Top View choose every forth Edge and Loop them (ALT+L). Then go to scaling and pull these Edges inside.




5. Now chose Edges as shown on image and Scale them outside.







6. Make a copy of this model and scale it to be a bit smaller. Move it aside for a while.


7. Choose upper Polygons of the Bigger form and extrude them up to make a pumpkin steam. If it's too straight, connect Edges and move some Vertexes.


8. Press M on your keyboard and choose an empty slot. In a Material/Map browser choose Multi/Sub-object.
9. Change Set Numbers to 3 since you will use 3 colors – orange (255, 132, 0), green (0, 98, 12) and black (0, 0, 0). You will notice that each color has it's ID - we will use it soon.
10. Apply materials to your pumpkin - orange body and green steam. If there is some mixture in colors go back to Modifier panel and scroll down to Polygon Properties. Choose separately body polygons and set the Material ID's accordingly to the Material settings ID.


11. In a Modifier panel choose TurboSmooth to make our pumpkin smoother.
12. Change the background to white (8 on Keyboard) and Hit Render (F9).


The Basic pumpkin is ready.

Hope you found this tutorial useful.
If you have any question regarding it - feel free to ask.