Modelling Golf Ball

Hi All,

I was trying to follow this tutorial on how to make Golf Ball in 3DS Max

In Blender I used Ico Sphere and then I used Sub-Surf. And applied the modifier

But after that selection of vertex and faces became nightmare unlike 3DS Max

Can someone help or suggest how to do easy selection the way the guy did in 3DS Max ?

Link to tut please.

I’ve never tried creating a golf ball before. but i guess, its better to use an icosphere then a Sphere… Add a bevel modifier & Select Only Vertices option. It gives something which looks like a Golf ball. Give it a Try. Add another bevel modifier (Deselect Vertices) with 3 segements. Adjust width to evenly scale.


Blender has a wonderful operator called “Select Similar” (shift+G) which has different selection types depending on your selection mode. Don’t forget to also check its options after you use it.

Link to the 3DS Max tutorial of how to model Golf Ball.

A simple and easy example

Add an Icosphere , press F6 and set it to subdiv level 3
http://i.imgur.com/X3Kow5N.jpg

Add a subsurf modifier level 1
http://i.imgur.com/pjeBm5V.jpg

Apply the subsurf modifier, go to Edit Mode and select 1 vertice of the center of those hexagon-like faces
http://i.imgur.com/dSqa4tu.jpg

Press SHIFT+G -> Amount of Connected Edges
http://i.imgur.com/XmzKVK0.jpg

Select one of the central vertice of the pentagon-like faces
http://i.imgur.com/QLCP9AG.jpg

Again press SHIFT+G -> Amount of connected edge to select them all

Press CTRL+V -> Bevel (or press SHIFT+CTRL+B) and bevel the selected vertices
http://i.imgur.com/U4E90Tj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hv3QkKK.jpg

Press I to inset those ngons faces
http://i.imgur.com/d4VwBou.jpg

Press F6 and -deselect- “Select Outer”
http://i.imgur.com/Aa9QKzK.jpg

Press ALT+E -> Individual face and extrude them inside of the ball
http://i.imgur.com/iQLGUg4.jpg

Add a subdivision modifier
http://i.imgur.com/JTP5NYs.jpg

Modeling steps in Blender are the same. Only exotic thing you need is this from Mesh - Extra Tools addon to chamfer selected vertices.



Ah, well… i was waiting for AO too long i guess… And Bevel tool did not work on verts again since i just can’t remember this 3- finger-thing… Ctrl-SHIFT-B… SHIFT… Thanks, Sanctuary!

where do you get chamfer tool?

@olyrick: User Preferences, Addons - Mesh - ExtraTools, then it’s like on image - Vertex Chamfer. Does the same as Ctrl-Shift-B.

That addon is not in my 2.72 addons.:frowning:

Note : about the example i made, it may work nicer if you go with level 4 subdiv for the Icosphere properties instead of level 3

That addon is only available in daily builds, like the buildbot ones :
https://builder.blender.org/download/

It’s a part of the addon contrib folder that is never included for some reason on the “stable” Blender release.
You can download a buildbot version of Blender, take the folder named “addons contrib” from it
(located in …\blender-whateverversion\2.72\scripts\addons_contrib )

and move that folder in your blender 2.72, there :
…\blender-2.72b\2.72\scripts\addons_contrib

This way the addon will appear (if you enable “Testing” in the Addon panel of the File -> User preference window)

I have Blender from builder.blender.org. It is listed here too: https://developer.blender.org/diffusion/BAC/
Could be that you need to allow Community section in Addons.

Ahem… Regular bevel, F6 for options and enable ‘Vertex Only’ there? :wink:

Eh…mmm. Almost never ever touch F6 - tool shelf bottom abused instead. I’ve heard everybody needs some idiosyncrasies - could rumors be wrong ? :smiley:

Oh, I find it easier to F6, especially when working with a tablet. Less mileage for controller arm. Not sure if one way or the other could really be considered an idiosyncrasy, though :wink: