Click on the rounded polygon cube from the primitives list. While your mouse is still in the area R-click on the active icon to bring up the properties.

Your cursor will be in creation mode. Note the little yellow box tagged to the cursor.

Click on the grid close to the center and a primitive will appear. The multi-colored band running through it is your magic ring that you will use to manipulate the parameters of the rounded cube. (In trueSpace, you can use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in).

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Right drag to the left on the tan part (turns yellow on mouse over to show it is active) to reduce the division or sharpen up the corners.

Right drag to the right on the blue diamond to add more divisions. Watch the far right setting on the Primitive Shape tool bar that opened up when you R-clicked on the primitive icon as you do this. Stop when it reads 27. Right click on the Grid to exit creation mode.

You now have a tire blank. Right click on the Object tool to bring up the Object Info panel.

Left and Right button drag on the corner section of the Navigation control and scale up the size of tire blank till the Object Info panel reads 8.5 or something close. You can type it in directly in the Object Info panel as well. If you zoomed in then reset the view with the reset view button first.

Click on the Normalize location tool to center the object on the grid.

Save it to the Object Library for future use. Open up the library and right click in the library window and select insert.

Switch to the front view.

Right click on the tire blank to bring up the edit tools and select the faces mode.

Activate the fence selection tool with a click on it and Right click on it to open up the settings. Make sure that backside is checked.

Drag a box around the faces leaving out the top and bottom ones. You will end up with 6 rows of the middle selected.
 

Right click on the Shell Tool to bring up its settings and set them as shown (Thickness set to .25, Offset set to .28, Shelled volume pressed, Apply offset checked).

Click on the shell tool icon and then click on the Object tool to set the operation.

You now have two objects. Delete the one called “Shell Solid”, which will be the active selected object. Select the remaining object called “Shell volume” and return to the perspective view.

Click on the Surface Subdivision Tool (SDS) to smooth out the tire. While there Right click to bring up the settings.

Right click on the melted object to bring up the SDS edit tools.

Select the faces mode and use the fence selection tool to select all the faces on the object.

Set the sharpness to 0.5

Right click on the grid to exit the edit mode. You know have the base for a high resolution knobby tire. For an extra high resolution tire set the division level to 3 on the SDS settings.

Extract the final mesh from the SDS settings.

Select the cylinder primitive icon. Create a cylinder on the grid with a click. Give it 80 sides (really doesn’t matter just make it a lot) by Right dragging on the blue diamond. Remember to Right click on the cylinder icon to bring up the settings.

Exit out of creation mode with a R-click on the grid or hit the space key. Scale it up to 4.8 in diameter and tall enough to pass completely through the tire. A height of 6 will do.

Normalize the location of the cylinder.

Open up the Material Editor and expand it by clicking on the tab on the upper right side.

Set the color (I used a blue) to anything you want and click on the Paint Object tool.

Now select the tire again with a click and start the Boolean subtract tool. Click on the blue cylinder and it will be subtracted from the middle of the tire.

Now go to the library and click on the tire blank you saved there. It will appear on top of your knobby version.

Paint over it with the blue texture or change it if you want to something else. I left mine blue.

Scale it down to 6.5 units - this can be done either by holding both mouse buttons down and dragging on the corner of the cage, or by entering the numbers directly in the Object Info Panel.
 

Subtract it out in the same manner as you did the cylinder. Hit the space bar or R-click on the grid to exit subtraction mode.

There you go. A high res knobby tire ready to texture and use in the scene of your choice.

Save it to the library and do a test render with the area render tool by clicking on it and dragging a fence around the tire.

Compare your creation with the sample in the “More Objects” library that can be found with a right click (are you getting the idea yet?) in the library window and by selecting load.

I hope you had fun with this neat trick made possible by the Shell tool and SDS with a little help from Booleans!



 

This tutorial was originally posted on the Caligari.com's 'Tricks-n-Tips' section.
Return to spacekdet's trueSpace tutorials page