Et voila! (I guess)

And thus was the 3ds Max model of Mademoiselle Pogany completed, much to the late Constantin Brancusi's chagrin:

So it's not bad (I feel that I captured the elegant twist of her neck quite well), but of course, it cannot possibly compare on any level to the sinuous beauty of the actual sculpture. Brancusi must be turning in his grave right now. Please forgive me for butchering your masterpiece.

Touch up

A remolded "hand". The original one had a sort of crease in it's middle that showed up horribly in renders. I suppose that's a problem with edit poly - manipulating a surface like cloth can lead to some unattractive puckers and creases.

 

The finished sculpture in her bounding box.

A change of colour to approximate the actual sculpture's lustrous golden skin.

Details...

Giving Mlle Pogany her new nose (a really distorted prism)...

And new eyes (ellipsoids), 2 contoured eyebrows and her 1 visible ear (tori cut in halves and manipulated)...

About done?

Ugh.

Remodelling the neck/torso/spinal deformity. The original one, in the middle, is a manipulated cylinder that unfortunately has a large pucker in the back, which looks simply hideous when rendered. The 2nd version on the right is a cut and twisted torus, while the 3rd version on the left is a twisted conical frustrum.

Settled with the 3rd version on the left. Oh yes, the bun in her hair is a slightly distorted torus-knot extended primitive.

Pourquoi?

As it turns out, it's not really that difficult. It just involves giving everything the "edit poly" modifier and a ridiculous amount of molding, massaging and squishing to push everything into their approximate position and turbosmoothing everything. That forearm (and eventual hand) is actually a cone, and that neck/torso was once a cylinder. The head is an ellipsoid a.k.a. egg shape, made according to this tutorial: http://www.mobilefish.com/tutorials/3dsmax/3dsmax_quickguide_egg.html

Test render. The hands are cray, but close enough.

Bonjour, Mademoiselle Pogany

Project 1: Model a sculpture of your choice in 3dsmax. My sculpture: Mademoiselle Pogany by Constantin Brancusi.

 Isn't she fabulous?

And this is her current form. God help me.

Well, snap.

 Translating autocad drawings to 3ds max models. Basis of project 2.

Extruding editable splines.

Extruding walls. Walls should be changed from regular lines to polyline in autocad so that walls will be solid and clean when extruded. Different elements (walls, windows, doors, etc) should be placed under separate layers to aid selection in 3ds max.

Thingamajiggy

What is this, I don't even... A genetically mutated beetle, I guess?

Baby steps...

1st step: A chair, with no materials specified.