I am in the process of modelizing a nice cover to a book, and giving it a little bit of a "Grimoire" - "spellbook" kind of vibe, in order to animate it later on.
Here are some pictures of the process of modelizing it :
So i begun with a cylinder, that i deleted the polys from the inside, and used the "border" modificator to extend with shift + scale the exterior edges of the cylinder,to the inside, lifting them a bit, making a manual chamfer to the cylinder that will be used as the exterior backside of the book later .
I then proceeded to extend edges again .
And Bevel / Extrude some extra detail of this part of the grimoire.
I used chamfer to smooth a bit some of the most rough edge of this particular detail.
I then extended edges to make one quarter of the side of the object, usually as it is a book, you can modelize 1/4 of the book and use 2 stacks of symmetry to mirror it, so it becomes a whole object. (efficient and fast modeling this way, but it does not allways work for every kind of objects)
I added more extra details on the edge of the page / cover.
Then i used a symetry on the y axis first to have on side of the book, and then another symetry on x axis to have it completed.
I gave it a primary color that look a little bit more leatherish for a good feel purpose ^^ personnal preference i like to see how shades are working even when the model is still simple.
I also added some steel reinforcement here and there.
Now it already look much more like an old / medieval grimoire !
I then added "Miracles Happen" on the cover, with a symbol that represents the title a little bit ( two hands symbolizing unconditionnal giving and mercy, overall almost shaped like a heart )
It starts to really look nice with good lightning applied to the scene !
I then proceeded to make bones for animations, mostly boxes proportionnalized to fit the two side of the book, the covers, and the hinge / back side, also, the tip of the cover can bed a little bit like this.
Then i proceeded to set up the strength of envelopes, this means, i had to configure how strongly a bones weight on the different part of the book and how it behave when an animation "bone" is moved / rotated / animated.
I started to set up a camera for rendering purposes, and animating the camera too to make an interesting close up to the book slowly opening.
Here is the book opening with the bones applied, notice that i didn't modelize the pages for now, it will be added later .
The camera is panning and focusing it's target on some passage of the book !
A video test / rendering might come soon ^^
Here is the rendering of a Test animation of the book opening :
And the book opening + pages animation :
