Soccer Ball

In this tutorial we're going to make a classic soccer ball. This is actually quite simple and will only take a few minutes, despite it's apparent complexity.

1. Create a Polyhedra
We kick off by making a polyhedra object. We can use the standard settings of a truncated Icosahedron. Now make the polyhedra object editable so that we can modify with our ball on the polygon level. Your scene should look like this.

2. Making the color selections
Now we have to colorize the different fields of our ball. Polygons with 5 corners (pentagons) will become black. Polygons with 6 corners (hexagons) will become white.

First create two materials, a black one and a white one. Then select all the pentagons (first image). Now drag and drop the black material onto the polygon selection. All selected polygons are black now (second image).

Repeat the same steps with the hexagons and the white material.

3. Making it a perfect sphere
To make a perfect sphere we first have to increase the tessellation of our angular ball. This can be done by attaching a Subdivision modifier. Note that the modifier object goes "inside" the Polyhedra object in the object view - this differs to how Creator objects work. Now the ball looks much better but it is not quite a perfect sphere. Attaching a Spherify modifier finally makes a real ball.

4. Adding seams
Now it is time to make the seams. This is the most awkward part of the tutorial, but don't worry! If you've defined the extrude and the select tool to a hot key this job can be done in minutes.

First make your ball editable again. Then select each field (segment of material) of the soccer ball and extrude it a little bit. It is enough to simply click in the 3D view because the extrude tool moves the polygon selection automatically a small distance when you click. This small distance is enough for our soccer ball. You might also want to work with the "quantize" property of the extrude tool for a more accurate extrude.


5. Finishing the soccer ball
After extruding every field of the soccer ball you should end up with something like this. It still doesn't look quite like a real soccer ball though.

You might already expect the finishing touch. To finish your ball you just have to attach a subdivision modifier to the polygon object. Now all edges will be smoothed out. And here it is, your first self made soccer ball.

Game over!

You can find the finished soccer ball in the examples folder.

Now it is your turn. Using the same technique, you can produce many types of balls. To create a volleyball for example you would start with a box instead of the truncated icosahedron.