Following Jon’s tutorial on boolean modelling, I started to experiment with creating new shapes by subtracting other shapes from them.

 

Starting with a simple cube and cone, I followed the steps in the tutorial. By moving my cone inside my cube and adding a boolean modifier I was able to stamp a shape into the cube.

I wanted to make something recognisable with this technique. Sticking with the cube and cone basic shapes a decided on a 6 sided dice.

 

Using the wireframe view I was able to see and measure how deep the cone had gone into the cube on each indentation, this helped keep them uniform. I also made good use of the rotation short cut of pressing ‘R’ followed by the axis I wanted to rotate on followed by the degrees I wanted it turned. This really helped as it meant I had certainty that the cone was lined up perfectly with the cube.

 

 

 

This is a rendered picture of the dice with all the indentations. My next step would be to smooth the edges with edge loops in order to make it look more realistic.

 

Overall I found this process quite easy once I had gotten a hang of applying the modifier. And lining up the two 3D objects wasn’t too challenging with the keyboard shortcuts I have learnt to rotate the view as well as moving my objects on single axis.

I think boolean modeling is very useful, I wouldnt have been able to model this dice without know how to cut shapes out of other shapes, it streamlines the process and really makes the modeling easier. However I could see that if I wasn’t precise with my positioning then I could have run into trouble especially with the tip of the cone, if any of the holes I had made had intersected then it could have confused the shape I was trying to make.