Somehow I recently felt the need to model a mundane and uninteresting (but reusable) object:
Despite their simple appearance, they’ve been not technically that trivial to model.
I’ve rigged them so that it is easier to make their lids open/close depending on the needs.
Any suggestions to make them more interesting or realistic, from a modeling point of view (excluding texturing) ?
Man, for some reason those actually look really realistic - I think it’s the pose of loose flaps.
You should try the solidify modifier
True, that would help.
Give it a full texture nvidia bump map xD
It’s actually there, maybe I should boost it up a little. Here’s a second test with added thickness and a simple added trick (probably invisible at this zoom level) to boost its appearance:
I see that the added thickness is causing some weird pinching where the cardboard folds (this is a bit of an annoyance since after modifying the model it is necessary to also fix the rig), but it shouldn’t be really visible as long as you don’t really look at it upclose.
Since I increased its thickness, I should also check if some parts don’t intersect.
A way you can fix the pinching is to give it a vertex group to follow and turn down the weight at the folds. As for the render, it looks better, I think you should add another material for the rim (in the solidify modifier you can set the material for the rim to be something different) and make it darker.
I guess the unapplied solidify modifier overcomplicates rigging.
I’m doing some other cardboard modeling/rigging tests based on a different approach.
However, I’ve hit a wall here:
Any idea why the lower weight painted areas bend exactly as much as the red big one, exactly following 1:1 the bone rotation? It’s as if weight painting has no effect other than 0/1 - disabled/enabled. 0.001 weight has the same effect as 1.000. Basically I want the blended area to bend gradually.
Maybe I am doing something wrong? (no doubt about that)
EDIT: blend file added: foldablebox2.zip (67 KB)
EDIT 2: problem solved, please disregard
it just reminds me of metal gear solid. really nice job 
hahaha that’s it maybe we create a whole new game in that style?
lol ambitious project but would be interesting to see lol
Ow really? some simple walk animation + box. And only create some levels mapsa. And Cameras witch can’t see as. And that’s it later we can add some enemy…
lol sorry i thought you meant an entire metal gear solid game lol
I’m wondering, am I doing well or are there more efficient, modern and less time consuming ways to rig completely a cardboard box as I intend to do? Here’s the current .blend file I’m working on (it’s a different model than what I showed in the opening post):
Blend file: cardboardbox2.blend (79.9 KB)
Please consider this thread mostly as a non-organic rigging exercise for me, by the way.
