Extruding Objects in Boxshot

Boxshot lets you load a flat 2D curve in SVG format (or make a new one) and extrude it by adding thickness. To start, locate the “Extrude” shape in the shapes panel and drag it into the scene:

Dragging the Extrude object into the scene

You’ll see the default extruded disk and its properties at the right panel:

Extrude object properties

The properties are pretty much the same as for 3D Text object, so please refer to 3D Text Tutorial for the description of thickness, look up and bevel options. The main properties are hidden under the Edit curve button. Clicking it opens the curve editor:

Extrude object editor

It’s pretty much the same curve editor that you use in Lathe editor so please refer there for basic operations like adding, deleting and moving points around. Boxshot comes with some pre-defined curves that you can try:

Using pre-defined curves in extrude editor

Here we loaded a smile curve, now you can click OK to see it extruded:

Editing vertices in extrude editor

You can load your own curves by clicking Presets->Open… in the editor menu, or by simply dragging an SVG file into the editor.

Possible Errors

Some of the curves you make or load may give you incorrect result when extruded. Something like this:

Extruded shape looks inverted because of the wrong curve direction

The shape looks inverted and you can’t really apply anyting to its sides. This is caused by incorrect paths direction and the solution is to reverse the paths. To do so, go back into the curve editor and click any vertex in the path in question:

Fixing the curve direction in extrude editor

Then click the Reverse path button in the toolbar to invert the path and click OK to see if it helps:

Extruded element is now fixed in 3D

Yes, it does. Depending on the shape you may reverse all the paths or just some of them and finally get a properly extruded shape.

Adding Extra Paths

You don’t have to load external SVG file to get a curve, you can make one right in the curve editor. Let’s start with one of the built-in presets:

Starting with a simple shape in extrude editor

Good, now we’ll make a hole inside the circle. Click Add path button in the editor toolbar to add a new segment to the curve:

Adding a new line in extrude editor

Add some extra points to the new segment and shape it somewhat you like (see the lathe editor tutorial for more instructions on doing this):

Making a simple second shape in extrude editor

The shape looks great, so let’s click OK to see the extruded result:

Seeing the edited curve in 3D, not what we expected

It looks like something went wrong, as there is no hole inside the shape. The problem is described above and all you need is to reverse the newly created inner path. Let’s go back to the curve editor, select that new path and reverse it:

Reversing the inner path to fix the figure

Click OK again and see that everything is fine now:

The updated figure after reversing the inner path

Materials and Mapping

Exactly as with 3D text objects, Boxshot lets you specify three materials for front, side and back parts of extruded shape. If you need more styles for different parts, consider splitting the shape into several objects and styling them up separately.

Boxshot applies planar bounding-box aligned mapping to front and back of the shape. Note that back mapping is exactly the same as the front one, so it looks flipped, but lets you easily align the artwork to the back geometry. Side mapping runs along the curves of the shape with its U coordinate, while V coordinate goes from zero at the back side to 1 at the front. You can always change that using UV-mapping override block in the materials editor at the right panel.

Summary

Here is a quick summary of extruding curves in Boxshot:

That is all, now go and extrude something special :)

More Tutorials

Rendering

Materials

Features

Shapes