How to Make a 3D Snowman

If you are going to be doing your own holiday graphics, whether for a website, Christmas cards or a business brochure, you would look good if you could create a cool 3D snowman for the images. And you can. All you need is a 3D modeler like Hexagon, and with a little effort, you can make that 3D snowman. Just follow the steps below.

Things You'll Need

• Hexagon or other 3D modeler

Instructions

1. 

   Open Hexagon. Then go to the "3D Primitives" tab and select the sphere. Now draw out a sphere in the scene.

2. 

   Go to "Edit" and click "Copy," and then "Paste," to create a copy of the sphere. Make sure the second sphere is selected in the scene tree, and then use the "Move" function of the Universal Manipulator to move the sphere up above the other sphere. Then resize using the Universal Manipulator. Then lower the sphere until it seems to be resting on the other one. This gives you the legs and the torso

3. 

   Use the same technique as in Step 3 to make a head for the snowman.

4. 

   Go to the "3D Primitives" tab and select the "Cylinder" tool. Use it to draw a cylinder in the scene. Place it where the top hat would go. Then use the "Face" selection tool to select the bottom polygon of the cylinder. Then go to the "Vertex Modeling" tab and select the "Extrude Surface" tool. Do two extrusions to produce the brim shown.

5. 

   Change the view to "Front." Then go to "Lines," and use the "Polyline" tool to draw in the lines for the arms.

6. 

   Go back to the "Perspective" view. Then go to the "Surface Modeling" tab and select "Thickness." Adjust the size of the thickness in the "Properties" panel. Then use the "Universal Manipulator" tool to reposition the arms and finger sections. Then, selecting each section of the arms, go to "Vertex Modeling" and click "Close."

7. 

   Change back to "Front" view. Go to "Vertex Modeling" and select "Symmetry." In the "Properties" panel, pick "Center of Symmetry" mode, and then click in the scene near the center of the Snowman. You now have two arms.

8. 

   Now use the "Sphere and Cone Primitives" to create the eyes, nose and mouth.

9. 

   Select the hat object in the "Scene Tree." Now "Select All." This will highlight all the polygons of the hat. Now click on the closed panel on the left of the screen. Under "Shading Domains," click "New." Then give the new domain a name, like "hat."

10. Click on the "hat" Shading Domain, go to "Materials," and change the color of the hat to black. Now use the same method to change the color of each object in the scene to what it should be. And there you have it. A snowman ready to be exported and rendered.

Resources

• Hexagon