This tutorial explains how to make something complex with a smooth flowing surface,i.e. a cellphone; the techniques I will discuss here are more advanced than the helmet tutorial that I had made many months ago,therefore I advice the NURBS beginner to first complete the said tutorial before working with this one as it will help a lot in making the NURBS beginner to feel more at ease with MAX's NURBS operations and concepts,PLUS! I have explained many of the concepts and techniques that i will not repeat again in the following tutorials that I will write. The sample(Roughly based on a Nokia 3210) is by far not accurate and is only made for demonstration purposes(This is an old pre-fabrication model project).Let's start!!!

Attention! Don't limit yourself to just the scope of this article,I advice/encourage you to explore other types of models after finishing this tutorial;You will be amazed at how many things you can do with just simple NURBS techniques.

STEP 1:     Make the profile curve of our cellphone using the top view,then copy it(shift drag)to make another curve tat we will use for another operation.

NOTE: To make it look more interesting,scale the upper curve at a very small increment,to make a nice non parallel surface later on, I skipped this modification for simplifying the tutorial.

Create and duplicate the TOP profile curve

STEP 2:     On the Nurbs toolbar,select the create ruled surface button and click on the first curve,after that,click on the other curve to finish the operation. You should now have an object roughly the same as what I have in our viewport. If your resulting ruled surface looks inverted,click on the flip normals radio button just prior to exiting the create ruled surface dialog. The curves are symetrical so you should not have problems on flipped tangeants and other trivial NURBS problems.

Create a Ruled Surface from the 2 profile curves

STEP 3:     On the LEFT viewport,create a profile curve withe roughly the shape of the cellphone's profile. After doing so,extrude the side profile trimming curve.Take note that the extruded surface should extend well beyond the first surface that we made on the previous step.Again,if the surface looks inverted,check the flip normals radio button,this also applies to all surface created with MAX's NURBS.

Note: To make the cellphone look less "boxy",make the extruded surface independent by clicking on the make independent button while the surface is selected. Add more isoparametric lines by inserting more rows or columes,then turn on CV sub-object then push the middle vertices upwards a bit,making an even and shallow "bump";This way,our phone will look much rounder and nicer to look at. Be reminded that before turning anything to an independent entity,make sure that you will NOT make any major changes to it as it is no longer related/dependent to the curves and/or surface it was made from. You will be faced with a decision to make thing independent once in awhile,but only do so when needed,as with this case.

Create a side(1st) profile curve

Extrude the profile curve

STEP 4:      After creating the 2 surfaces,click on the Surf x Surf button on our NURBS toolbar. This creates a NURBS *dependent curve on the surfaces' intersection. When the curve appears,click on Trim1 and Trim2 radio button respectiveley,click on the flip trim radio button when neccessary.

we have now created the top face of our phone using the Surface Intersection Curve

STEP 5:     Look for the Fillet Surface button on the NURBS toolbar and click on it,after the your cursor changes appearance,click on the 2 surface like you just did on the previous step to create a new filleted surface on the operands.You should now have a smoothly beveled and rounded edge on the phone.

 The Filleted surface makes our phone's edges rounded               Nice!

STEP 6:     Select the lower curve that we used for making the 1st ruled surface then copy it twice(fig.1),repeat the operations that we did to make the upper half of our phone and repeat them to the lower half. The space space in between the 2 parts is easy to recreate by simply translating(moving) the 2 curves used to make the lower half down a bit. Make a ruled surface,make another profile curve(lower) then extrude it,make a Surface to Surface intersectiion curve and finish it of with a filleted surface just as we did for the upper half.

fig.1: clone the lower curve curves

The new lower profile curve      The lower portion

STEP 7:     We will now create the middle portion of the phone, start by creating a new profile curve just like in fig.1,while still on the LEFT/RIGHT viewport,apply a trim on the upper half using *Vector Project Curve. You should have something like the picture in fig.2 when your done trimming.

* If you dont know how this is done,then I suggest that you must first finish the Helmet Tutorial.

fig.1: New profile curve      fig.2: The trimmed surface

STEP 8:     Repeat the steps above for the lower half. Then COPY the top profile curves twice and arrange them the way I did in fig.1,make a ruled surface from these 2 curves,this will serve as the middle portion.After you are done,CLONE the 2 trimming curves used to trim the upper and lower half holes(be sure not to move them accidentally!) then connect the 2 profile curves used for trimming away the middle portion to form just one curve. You can do this manully or apply a Filleted Curve(NURBS Toolbar> Curves> Fillet Curve) on the 2 curves to have a smooth transition between the 2. Make them independent,then stitch them. This step is not neccessary when you did the 2 trims by using just one curve,which is easier, I did this w 2 curves just to show a new way of joining to curves together,rather than recreating it and to make a small "hole" or gap in between the parts like in the original phone; there will also be cases when you will still need the 2 curves.

After trimming the lower half     

fig.1: The 2 new curves used for making the middle "sandwiched" portion

Creating a fillet curve      The curves after Filleting

STEP 9:     Trim the middle part(purple ruled surface) with the new curve.(hiding the unused parts will help in navigation),render it to see the finished overall shape better.

What you should have by now

 

 

 

 

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