1. We want to model a beach ball, but in such a way where we can easily select the polygons within the model. If we create a sphere in 3dsm, the polygons are subdivided in such a way that selecting the polygons will not give us clear cut transitions. Therefore, we need to take an alternate route to modeling the ball.
Instead of creating a sphere, create a CONE. Make sure you have the point of the cone infinately small and pointy, not somewhat flat.
Go to modify tab - and under segments - we will actually REDUCE the number of segments for texturing sake. Reduce the number of "sides" to 10 - for this ball will have 10 colors on it. You can now see you model looks less round - and is actually a 10 sided polygon base.
2. We will now make the cone into 1/2 of a beach ball. Under modify tab, click on "edit mesh" and in the sub selection, click VERTEX
3. Now, we will adjust the cone to look more round and ball like. Do this by resizing the vertices and moving them.
i.e. choose the top most vertex in the left or front viewport ( by dragging a box around it ), and choose the move icon, and move that vertex closer to the line of vertices under it. This will reduce the "pointy" look of the ball.
Select the entire row second vertices and using resize tool, uniformly enlarge the selection. Then move the row of vertices down. Keep adjusting and moving each row of vertices till you get a shape that looks like this:
That was the trickiest part of the tutorial.
4. Now, we only have 1/2 of the ball - we need to duplicate the ball symmetrically. One method would be to use the mirror selection and attaching the objects, but there is a more efficient way of doing this.
Exit the sub-vertex selection by clicking on it again. Then go to modify tab and add symmetry modifier.
Now, depending on which viewport you created your cone in, some of these next parameters might be different. If you created the cone in the top viewport, you should be able to follow along exactly, but if not - play around with the mirror
axis selection ( x, y or z ) till it works for you.
Choose the z axis. Make sure weld seams is selected. Then on the modifier list - click the plus sign next to symmetry to open up the mirror gizmo. Select mirror, then using the move tool in either the front or left viewport, move the symmetric part of the ball till it touches the first half making one solid ball.
5. As you can see, the ball looks kinda silly and short on one axis.. That is because the 1/2 of the ball we made wasn't tall enough. This is easily fixed by clicking on edit mesh on the modifier list once again and reshaping it. Don't forget to turn on the sub vertex selection when shaping, but to turn it off before you leave the edit mesh mode. It is better to make a taller 1/2 than a shorter half, because with the symettry gizmo, you can shrink down and remove unwanted parts, but you cannot add. Don't forget to adjust the symmettry mirror axis as well after adjusting the mesh of the ball.
When you're ball is perfectly shaped, it should look like this
The modeling is now done. Now to add the textures.
6. Open up material editor, and choose one of the gray spheres. Click on the gray color next to diffuse and give it a color you want ( red in this case ) While we are here, adjust the specular and glossiness levels to desired effect - in this case 55 and 20 respectfully.
Now to make the next color, we do the same on another empty sphere. However, if we want to keep the specular lewvel and glossiness the same for each color, you can simply DRAG the red sphere ONTO an empty gray sphere, and it copies all settings. Then simply click on the diffuse color to change it to white in this case. Repeat for yellow, green, and blue.
7. Now that we have our textures, it is time to apply them - and you we see why we modeled the ball the way we did.
Select the model, and in the modifier tab, create another edit mesh ontop of the existing modifier. Yes, you can do that.In the sub selection, select polygon, not vertex.
Now ( easiest in the perspective window ) start selecting a row of polygons that you will add a single color to. Simply click on the ball in one spot, and then hold the control button and keep clicking on polygons above and below till you selected an entire row of polygon faces. You will have to move the perspective veiw around to get the polygons at the top an bottom as well, just dont forget to hold control before clicking.The should be highlighted in red ( red is default highlight color - not color of texture - the highlight color can be adjusted in the customize menu at the top if you confuse the reds )
8. Apply youre first color to this selction by clicking on the apply material button in material editor
Repeat this process all around the ball.
Note: because you used the DRAG option to copy the material - max will say "a material with the same name already exists - do you want to: chose rename material and give it an appropriate name - like white or blue, or whatever, as long as each material has a different name. If we didnt use the drag method of copying the material, we wouldnt have to do this, but then each material would have to be adjusted for specularity and glossiness and any other additions you made to the first color
You should have a result that looks like this:
before we finish - our ball is still blocky. Now that the textures are applied - we can smooth out the ball to make it round.
Make sure you exit the subselection polygon fromm edit mesh, and then add the modifier mesh smooth ontop of all the other modifier. Adjust iterations to 1 or 2.
And you're model is now complete. That concludes 3 methods of texturing a beach ball.
Note - most likely after you've used meshsmooth, you will see odd results where the symmetry modifier joined the two halfs of the ball. That is because you model ( and mine ) weren't perfectly shaped. As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial - this is NOT an efficient way of creating the beach ball with texture. Rather, it was to introduce you to the idea of symettry modifer, edit mesh, selecting and texturing specific polygons, and other modeling creativity. So don;t feel bad if it didnt come out perfect - just be glad you learned a few new techniques.
More 3D Graphics: 
