Sketch and paint a design concept

1. Create the 2D curves that define your design. In this example we have created curves in the top view that are symmetric across the center line of the phone.

   

2. Now use the Alias shapes and brush tools to create an early design concept.

   

3. Continue to add design details on different layers.

   

   

Develop a simple model using the same curves

Create the 3D surface using the same curves used to define the paint shape. The next image shows a Hardware Shade perspective view. From a design perspective, this is adequate, but its 3D view is missing “life” and design content. Traditionally, the designer would now spend lots of time building 3D geometry to add design detail, but often designers don’t want to spend this time and effort during the early stages of design.

Project the sketch onto a model

1. Now pick the surface you want to project paint onto. In this example, we only want to project paint onto the top surface because this is the only area that has design detail.

2. Open the options window for Canvas > Project Sketch and turn on Active Objects, Active Canvas. Click Go to start the Sketch Projection process.

   

   Behind the scenes, a shading network is being created, in which a series of shaders is automatically created and layered over the top of the assigned shaders. This means that any area of the sketch that is transparent will use the colour assigned by the original shader.

3. You have the option of seeing layered shaders when in Hardware Shade mode. By default, this option is off and must be turned on before you can see the sketch projection. Layered shaders are turned off by default because they requires more graphics processing by the graphics card. The slower the graphics card, the slower the performance of Hardware Shade with layered shaders turned on.

   

   Image above shows layered shaders turned off.

   

   

   As you can see in the image above, Sketch Projection has been used to add 2D detail to an early design model. The buttons and LED display area are not modeled — they are simply projected paint onto an almost flat surface. You can tumble around this model, evaluating the concept deciding if you want to continue adding 3D detail or refine the 2D detail.

4. In this example, we’ll “pinch” the phone body to add nice curves to the phone. This will be done with Curve Warp Shapes.

Related Tasks

• Apply a sketch to a 3D model
• Project a sketch for fast design label mapping