Help with modeling a pencil?

Support Modeling
1

I am trying to model a pencil. As you can see in the attached .blend file I got as far as creating a cylinder with 6 vertices for the main body of the pencil. What is the best way to set about making the sharpened end? I can add a separate cone but I feel there must be a better way. If you feel that adding a cone is the way to go then please say so… Otherwise please give me some pointers on what to do… thanks

Attachments

pencil.blend (126 KB)

2

Hi Mahela007,

Try the following tutorial I found…

Hope this helps,

Kindest Regards,

Pixeltwister

3

i’v seen some post in this forun on pencil so you could search and see what it gives you

Salutations

4

where’s the link?

5

Whoops sorry…

http://www.truecg.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=30

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  1. Make a six sided circle, extrude to desired length.

  2. Make THREE cuts on each of those six faces.(ctrl-r, then mouse wheel to increase count)

  3. Of those three cuts, select the bottom middle vertice. Do this for all six sides.

  4. Turn on proportional editing, and drag the six vertices downward. If you did it right, you should now have six fairly smooth arcs, that mark the edge of the ‘sharpened’ area. If it doesn’t look right, use the mouse wheel to change the size of the proportional editing.

  5. Select the entire bottom edge loop(alt-RMB) and extrude downward.

  6. Alt-M - to Center. This will merge the vertices too a point.

Now, in order to smooth this, you’ll need to add some edge loops, so you can have some nice creases. Add and edge loop on the top and bottom of the edge that marks the beginning of the ‘sharpened’ area. Then, add one more edge loop that goes right near the tip of the sharpened area, to make it look even sharper.

Good luck!

Here’s a picture to help: http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a342/name_is_joseph/Pencil.png

7

Thanks for the link… very useful.
Thanks Hobo Joe. & pixeltwist

8

I didn’t find any existing pencil tutorials useful, and ended up creating a 6-sided cylinder, subdividing it to intersect with 48-point cone, using Geom Tool script. You only need to work out one half of one side (then mirror and SpinDup). SDS rounds the corners of the “cylinder” nicely.

Had intended to write a tut (I think I separated the cone from the cylinder to keep the edge sharp), but wanted the other end to be geometrically accurate (although real pencils just have a blob of paint on them) and haven’t sussed how to do it yet.

9

Hi

I followed your steps but I still don’t get the tip perfectly rounded. A real pencil has 6 faces but the tip is rounded. I just don’t find a way to achieve that. My structure looks exactly like yours but your tip seems to be smooth and mine looks smooth but isn’t at every angle.

10 
						Hi

I followed your steps but I still don’t get the tip perfectly rounded. A real pencil has 6 faces but the tip is rounded. I just don’t find a way to achieve that. My structure looks exactly like yours but your tip seems to be smooth and mine looks smooth but isn’t at every angle.

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