To make the details for this panel, we will be making extensive use of the Stencil tool, as it would be very tedious to align all of our details to the slope of the panel.
layer 4 in the background
Select Layer 5 and make Layer 4 the background layer, so that we have an empty layer with our Details Panel polygon showing through.
We will begin by creating two boxes in the face / front view.
new boxes
When the boxes are created, look in the side view and ensure that they do not intersect with the background polygon. If they do, move them away in the Z-axis.
check position
Swap the background and foreground layers by pressing the apostrophe key on your keyboard.
layers swapped
Now select the Drill tool (Tools \ Objects \ Drill) by pressing Shift+r and enter the following settings, then press OK.
our object so far
Due to the nature of the Drill tool, you may find that it doesn't work exactly as you want it to. In my case, only one of the stencilled polygons was assigned the Main Details texture, instead of both. This was easy to fix however, by selecting both of the newly stencilled polygons and manually applying the Main Details surface.
back view: stencilled polygons
Make a habit of carefully checking the results of any Drill, Solid Drill or Boolean operation, as nasty errors that need personal attention often creep in.
I will now add a few more stencilled boxes to the Details Panel polygon using the same techniques descibed above.
back view: new stencilled polygons
For some reason, Modeler 5.6 seems much more reliable when it comes to performing Drill operations, so I exported my polygon in Lightwave 5.0 format from Modeler [6] and performed the drill operations in the older version, then I brought the object back into Modeler [6] and integrated it with my main object.
It is time now to do some bevelling on these stencilled polygons. One great advantage of using the Stencil technique to add detail that is actually attached to the main object is that we can bevel outwards and inwards.
stencilled polygons bevelled in and out
Select each of the stencilled polygons in turn, except for the disc, and bevel them in and out in ways that you think will be good.
A great advantage of the bevel tool is that the bevelled boxes are bevelled in the direction that the main polygon faces, so the details cling nicely to the main polygon.
Now let's do something with that disc. This time we will not create a bevel that follows the direction of the main polygon, but rather, this bevel will point straight out, down the Z-axis.
Select the stencilled disc polygon and press q to assign the polygon the Main Details Smooth surface.
Now bevel this polygon with a 1.0m shift and a 1.0m inset.
disc bevelled once
Right-click to confirm the last bevel, then simply right-click again to create a new bevel with no shift and no inset.
Finally, press Ctrl+v to set an absolute position for the still-selected polygon, and enter a Z value of -76.5m.
polygon set value
This will have the effect of both moving the polygon out along the Z-axis, and also of cancelling the original slope that the polygon had.
We can now start to add a little extra detail to the large polygons that we have previously bevelled.
First, create the following small boxes.
new detail polys created
Next, swap your layers and select the following polygons:
new detail polys created
Press + to hide the unselected polygons on this layer, and then Stencil the smaller polygons in the background layer onto the selected polygons in the foreground.
Finally, I bevelled all of the newly stencilled polygons with a shift of 0.5m and no inset, then pressed the \ key to un-hide all the hidden polygons.
stencilled polys bevelled
That just about wraps it up for detailing the rear panel of our object.
