I thought this set piece could do with a little TLC, so I put on a movie and modelled an orchid and the lotus candleholder.

And I’m going to tell you a story. My dad would sometimes drive some crazy way home (the scenic route, you know), and if I, impatiently, asked him why, he told me he’d read that doing things differently would reduce your dementia in old age. Something like that. My dad said a lot of things.

<3

With that in mind, I exported my mesh from Maya and modelled these last bits in 3dsmax. Clumsily, using the wrong shortcuts and modifier keys, I actually learned that 3dsmax could do things I had no idea it could do. Nothing disastrous, accidentally rendered (F9), put my transform tools in strange modes I did not know existed (Alt+RMB), discovered the freeze transform function, and turned off my shelf. Kept having to remind myself that Delete History was no longer necessary. That anything that comes out of Maya will have normals that Max can’t digest. And, that Shell modifier will get you anywhere.