Creating a Fancy Watch in Blender

The tutorial begins

Add a cylinder.

Shrink the cylinder down on the Z-axis to an appropriate size.

Go into Edit Mode and delete the middle top vertex of the cylinder.

Extrude the top outer edge inwards about as much as shown, then raise
the new edge slightly on the Z-axis.

Also open up a reference picture so that your model is more accurate.

Next, extrude your edge upwards on the Z-axis a little.

Extrude that edge inwards about as much shown and raise it upwards a
little on the Z-axis.

Then extrude downwards to create the inside of the watch face.

Lastly extrude inwards to create half the watch face, then extrude
inwards again. Press Alt-M to merge the vertexes together.

Adjust the watch as needed to match up the reference image as much

Add a subsurf modifier to the watch and set the view amount to 2.

Add loop cuts to sharpen the edges of the watch. (The loop cuts added
are marked as red.) Also shade the mesh Smooth.

Now we need to model the watch band. Add a cube around the area the
picture shows.

Scale the cube down on the Z-axis to make it much thinner.

Add a loop cut in the exact middle of your cube (Press Ctrl+R, then left
click).

Delete the vertices selected.

Add a mirror modifier and make sure that its mirroring on the X-axis.
(Check Clipping if you dont want the mirror to seperate from the
mesh.)

Adjust the length of the band on the Y-axis until you reach a size similar
to the pictures.

Take the right face of your cube and extrude a little.

Then extrude the bottom right face on the Y-axis.

Then keep extruding on the Y-axis, and with each extrusion, bring the
face down on the Z-axis, gradually.

Add a subsurf modifier and change the view amount to 2.

Add loop cuts to sharpen the edges of the subsurfed mesh. Shade the
mesh Smooth.

Now we need to model the center piece of our watch band. Add a cube
in the center of the the watch band area youve just created.

Scale it down on the Z-axis to about the same thickness as the other
piece of the watch band.

Add loop cuts in in the center of the cube on the X and Y axis.

Delete the vertices selected.

Add a mirror modifier and make sure both X and Y are checked.
Check Clipping if you dont want the mirror and the mesh to seperate.

Extrude the cube face that is facing away from the mirror modifier
similarily to the other cube watch piece youve just modeled before.

Add a subsurf modifier and change the view amount to 2.

Once you shade the mesh smooth, however, you may experience the
problem circled a black line in the middle of your mesh which will show
up in your render.

To fix the problem, delete the faces that are selected.

The mesh should now be clean. Add loop cuts to strengthen edges and
shade the mesh smooth.

Duplicate the top part of the watch band by pressing Shift + D, then
move it down on the Y-axis.

With this duplicated watch band piece, go to the mirror modifier (there
should already be one) and check Y and Clipping.

Delete the vertices selected.

Create faces (you will need to extrude single vertices) in the selected
area.

To remove the black area, delete the faces selected.

Your mesh should now be clean.

Add an array to the new watch band piece, change the array count to 7
(or however much youd like), change the default X value of the
relative offset to 0 and the Y value to -1. Do the same for the middle
part of the watch band.

Theres one more piece of the watch band to create. Add a cube right in
the center of the watch band.

In Edit Mode (not Object Mode) move and scale the cube to the area
and size you see in the picture.

Add a mirror modifier and make sure its mirroring on the X-axis. The
mesh should be mirrored on the other side of the watch band.

Add a loop cut in the center of the cube and deleted the vertices
selected.

Add another mirror after the other mirror modifier. Uncheck X and
check Y. Again, check Clipping if you dont wish the mesh and mirror
to seperate.

Add a subsurf modifier and set the view and render amount to 3.

Take the selected face and bring it down on the Z-axis slightly.

Add loop cuts to sharpen the edges of the mesh.

Add an array modifier and change the count to 7. Change the relative
offset X value to 0 but change the Y to -1.03 so that there is a space
between each array count.

Now we need to mirror the entire watch band to the other side of the
watch. For each part of the watch band, add a mirror modifier, uncheck
X. and check Y. Then make sure you mirror each part of the watch
band to the watch itself (The default name should be just Cylinder).

Now add the floor. Simply add a plane and make sure that the bottom of
the watch just touches the plane. Make the plane pretty large as well.

Also move the camera to a more appropriate view. I found that a focal
length of 25 and a camera placement similar to what you see works
well.

Now for the letters you see on the watch. There are two options you
could do here. Use an image for the watch face, or create the text in
Blender. Well create it in Blender. Select the watch, press Shift + S and
press Cursor to Selected, then add a Text.

Obviously the words Text are no good. Press Tab to go into edit mode
and start typing some actual words for the clock. You can type Roman
numerals or plain old letters. I chose (for some variety) to use Roman
numerals. After each number, press Spacebar three times to get some
space between each number.

In the Font options, change the Regular font type to Times New
Roman. (You can find your fonts at C:/Windows/Fonts it may be
different for different computers) Also set the Extrude amount to 0.004.

Now we need to curve the text on a Curve Circle. Add a Bezier Circle
and add a Curve modifier to your text. Once you set the CurveCircle to
be the target for the curve, the text is warped around the curve. Scale
the text down until it looks the way it should. By grabbing and scaling,
fit the bezier circle and the text to fit appropriately in the watch face.

Now we need to create the watch hands. Start off by adding a cylinder
for the watch hands to sit on. Scale it down appropriately.

Shade the cylinder smooth and add an Edge Split modifier.

By adding planes, using subsurf and solidify modifiers, duplicating, and

Thats it for modeling! Now well get into materials.

Materials and Rendering

Set the specularity intensity of your material to 0, and check Mirror. Set
the Reflectivity to 0.5 and the Gloss amount to 0.93. Lastly you need to
change the diffuse color. If you arent sure what to use, use these color
settings: R: 1.000, G: 0.306, B: 0.136. It will give you a peachy color.

Add a new material to a part of the watch that will be really shiny the
outer part of the watch band, perhaps. Set the specular intensity to 0,
turn on Mirror, change the Reflectivity amount to 0.9, and the gloss
amount to 0.97. Remember, the colors are referenced off the reference
picture.

Now select all other objects that are supposed to be metal, and then
select the object that already has the metal material. Press Ctrl + L and
hit Materials.

Now set the watch itself to be Metal. If you check out the reference
picture you can see that part of the watch is the peach material as well.
So we need to assign the peach material to the watch. Add the peach
material to the watch materials (Press the + button, then add the
peach material as a material), then go into edit mode, select all the
edges that are supposed to be peach (theyre selected in the picture),
then hit Assign.

Press the + button for the watch material again, then delete the
material, then press New to create a new material.

Go to the textures and add a new texture.

Keep the default cloud texture, but change the cloud type to Hard,
change the cloud size to 0.5, and the depth to 6.

Go up to Colors and check Ramp. Leave all settings as default.

Go over to the materials panel and change Specularity Instesity to 0,

Go into Edit Mode and select the entire watch face edges and hit
Assign in the materials panel with your new material selected.

Select the watch hands, the watch numbers, and the cylinder in the
center of the watch face, then select a object that has the Peach
material, then hit Ctrl + L Materials.

Now for the easy lighting. Change the default lamp to an area lamp.
Change the energy to 0.05 and the distance to 15 (this will create dim
lighting, for a brighter scene probably change the energy to 0.1!).
Change the shadow samples to 4 for smoother shadows, and change the
size of the area lamp to 10. Then duplicate the lamp.

You can give the floor a material as well, if youd like.

Go over to the World panel and check Ambient Occlusion. Change the
Factor amount to 0.9 and change the factor type to Multiply. Lower down
to the Gather area, change the samples to 7.

However now we are confronted with a problem which will make our
watch look dull. Because there isnt much more for the watch to reflect
off of besides the floor, and because the world is a solid gray color, it will
mostly reflect the dull gray and therefore look pretty dull. There is an
easy way to make the watch look reflective, however. Head over to the
node editor.

Hit the Texture nodes button (the button is checked red and white).

Hit the world button (it looks like a planet).

Hit the New button and also check Use Nodes. Well now be editing
the world texture from the texture nodes area.

The default checked texture nodes will do fine. Just change the Color 1
color to black.

Now go to the world textures (To assure you get to the world textures,
go to the World panel first and then go to the Texture panel). Go down
to Influence and check Horizon to assure the checked texture shows
up in the world.

Go over to the World panel and check Paper Sky so the texture doesnt
come out distorted.

You are done with the tutorial! I hope you enjoyed it. If you give it a
render, with some tweaking with lighting, camera placement, modeling,

and other aspects of the picture, you should get a similar result to the
final result.
I hope you enjoyed the tutorial! Heres some inspirational pictures of
fancy watches