Modeling threads on a drill?

[nub]

So I've been making a little model out of boredom but I've run in to a small issue. It's a little drill-like object, but I can't figure out how I'd go about modeling the threads on the cone to make it look like an actual drill. I want the threads to be engraved rather than extrude from the surface.



The green cone is the drill obviously. I need the threads to be relatively similar to the reference picture; like how many times it wraps around the drill.

[Smurftyours]

You could try making the threads out of splines and then work out the cone from there. Also maybe boolean subtraction?

[marks]

I can tell you now, thats going to be an absolute bitch. Maybe try modelling it on a flat plane and using the Twist and Bend modifiers to get the conical shape.

[Dr. Delta]

I guess something like this would be easy, though it's not the cleanest method I can imagine.




You'd have to change some stuff in the topology to get the smoothing to look right though, I guess, since it looks a bit off right now.

Hope it's useful.

[Smurftyours]

Basically delta just showed what I meant by boolean subtraction.

[Ich 666]

You could bake it in the normal map.

[Dr. Delta]

You could bake it in the normal map.

Painting this in Photoshop isn't really easy either, you could bake from a high poly, but you're lacking detail ofc. when you're using normal maps to create this effect.

[nub]

Baking it in the normals isn't a good idea since normal maps are generally shitty looking in Source. On top of that, I'd need to make a high poly version, and that would require modeling the threads first, which I'm trying to do to begin with.

I can already tell that doing boolean subtraction is going to be a fucking mess. Marks, could you briefly describe your method so I can try and figure it out? I don't know where to begin.


EDIT:

I just thought about the loft tool. However, I need to figure out how to make a spline circle with a little inward dip on the edge to signify the drill shape. I tried googling around and I found a picture of a screw model made using a loft:



That's the general idea at least. I don't know how well it would work for the type of model I want.

[vcool]

/flexes muscle
/starts max

http://www.livestream.com/vcool/video?c ... m=ui-thumb

Starts at 5 mins (max crashed when I started) up to about 10 mins. Then I do a different method which didn't work out too good, so just skip to 40 min mark where I continue the original method.

At the very end I have some messy geometry where edge loops come into a triangle, I never figured out how to properly fix those so input form someone more experienced would be nice.

[nub]

Awesome video. Thanks again man.