How do i model this plastic handle?

Question

Another question from a sad rookie: I managed to properly model this 5 liter bottle (Thanks for the amazing guidance from a user in my previous question) and now i need a cap and a handle for the bottle. The cap is pretty easy to model but this plastic handle is a different story. I don't even know where to start — it is such a complicated object. I was thinking about modeling it with proportional editing — no luck so far... Any tips and tricks for this kind of work?

Answer 1

You probably should use curves to do this, as @R Palo has shown, because it makes it easier to go back and alter moves you made earlier; ( it's less destructive ). But this is the sort of way I would hack a one-off together for myself, if I knew there were going to be no changes.

X across, Y up. All the modeling is done flipping in and out of 2 levels of subdivision (Ctrl0 and 2 on the keyboard)

1. Starting with a 16-sided nGon circle, I Inset, verts J joined as shown
2. V rip the longitude, delete the inner face and right half, assign a Mirror modifier in X with 'Merge' and 'Clip' checked.
3. (From now on working on the left half,) select the horizontal radial edge, CtrlShiftR spread a couple of loops on either side to the right width to extrude a handle. EX Extrude the handle,AltM merge the inner-rim vertices, and X > Dissolve the edge to make the kite-shape shown.. CtrlR cut a loop across the handle, ready to extrude downwards.
4. Extrude downwards, and put the 3D cursor roughly at the center of the arc you intend to make at the bottom. AltR Spin the bottom edge through a negative angle to roughly form the arc. Go into the tool's settings to adjust the angle, center and number of segments. (Center Z should be 0)
5. Same as 4, spin from the downward facing edge. SX0 Scale the vertices near the center line, so they weld together
6. CtrlR put in a couple of edge loops as shown.

1. E Extrude the whole shape in Z to form the base thickness of the handle... then select the shown region of faces to EZ the finger-grip.
2. On the other side, select all the faces of the original ring and I inset, so you can select a region of faces to extrude down Z to make the neck.

Now you could just put a Bevel Modifier by 'Angle' to bevel all the sharp edges, but it would probably be more accurate to go round CtrlR putting in holding loops, GG sliding them close to soft edges to make them sharper.

Once you have some habits, and get to know how to avoid various 'gotchas', this stuff is a lot quicker to do than to describe.)

One option, when finished, is to bend the whole thing using a Lattice Deform modifier.

Answer 2

This is how I would do it:

1. Create a bezier curve for the in the shape of the handle's profile. Life is easier if you put the object's origin at one end.

2. Create another curve in the shape of the handle. To simplify things, I left the origin at the World Center and used a mirror modifier.

3. With the handle shape selected, go into the Curve properties, Geometry section and create a bevel, using the profile curve as the bevel object.

That should give you the basic geometry. You could convert to mesh, add a solidify modifier and make any tweaks you wanted from there.