Modelling a Volleyball

by Marcus Lee

In this tutorial, I will show you an easy way to model a volley ball, and in doing so, will demonstrate some of SILO's fantastic poly modelling tools.

Let's get started by making a cube

Subdivide the mesh 4 times and then refine the mesh.

If you look at your object closely, you can see that there are some intersections that have only three edges flowing into them. They look like a Y (I marked four of them in blue). On the z-axis, (the side of the ball that lines up with the blue line), select the faces within the four Y intersections.

Now, with your faces selected, hit the break command. This separates the faces out as a separate object. Delete the rest of the ball.

Select these faces again and do extrude, then move normal. Move the faces out a bit.

Now select two of the outer ring of faces that you just made, then select loop. This will select all the faces on the outer ring.

Do an extrude and move normal the faces out. Then, do a little inset scale. You have made these polys and scaled them to help your object keep its shape when it is subdivided, but keep a little roundness.

Now switch to edge mode. Select the two edges indicated (not counting the border that you selected , which you can't see in the pic, there are five edges between each selected edge) and then select loop.

Bevel the edges you have selected. These are going to be the seams. Now, switch to face mode and using the same process as you used earlier, selected two polys on each of the rows of polys you beveled and select loop.

Now, hit extrude, then move normal and then inset scale a bit. These are the vollyball's seams.

Now we have to make all the sides of the volleyball. Switch to object mode and select your object. Then, mirror it on the z-axis.

Now, copy and paste your object. Then, using the numerical editor, rotate your selection 90 degrees in the y axis, and then in the x-axis.

Paste again. Then, rotate 90 degrees around the x-axis and then 90 degrees around the y-axis. Finally, select all the objects and Merge Objects.

You can subdivide to smooth the object. Here's the final model: