Author: Necksmasher This one is quite simple and cute. Have you ever wanted to model and render nice looking micro cell, or anything similar to that? Well, this tutorial is for you then. PART 1: Modeling The first thing you need to do is either start or reset 3dsmax. Now, create a geosphere that has a 50.0 radius with 4 segments (and make sure the geodesic base type is icosa). Also check smooth and generate mapping coords: It should look like this so far: Ok now convert it to an editable poly, and select the polygon in the selection on the right menu, and select all of the geosphere's polygons: Make sure the object viewport is exactly like this: Now look at the right menu and and select bevel: And now make the bevel type by polygn and make the height 0.0 and the outline amount -1.0: The geosphere should look like this now: Now bevel the polygons again, this time with the height set to 5.0 and the outline amount set to -1.0 It should look like this: Again, bevel the polygons, this time with the height set to 10.0 and the outline amount set to -1.0: Bevel the polygons one more time, with the height at 10.0 and the outline amount set to -0.5. Then bevel with the same settings again: If you did all the beveling correctly, your geosphere should now look like this: Now add a meshsmooth modifyer to this and make the settings as below (make sure you check iterations under the render values option): Now that was really easy, so make a quick test render of the cell model. Here is my example: Well it looks ok for now, but the spikes look too perfect with each other. So now we are going to quickly add a noise modifyer to the model. Here were my settings for the noise. You can customize your settings however you want, I just wouldnt make the settings too high: Here is what my model looks like so far. Yours should have somewhat similar results if you have followed everything correctly: Well, that's it for all the modeling part of this tutorial. Now we are on to the materials section! PART 2: Materials NOTE: To complete this section of the tutorial, you will need the 3rd party renderer Final Render and the finalrender finalshaders! You can find more information about them at http://www.cebas.com or http://www.finalrender.com. Ok let's start! To start off, you will of course need to load Finalrender Stage 1. Now go into the material editor and select get material and choose fR-Electron: Now for the settings. Check use and affected my bump-mapping under falloff. Then exper...