Creating a Box With Rounded Corners

Creating a Box With Rounded Corners
Photo by Thomas Despeyroux / Unsplash

Today I've been learning how find pictures of an 80s Tac-2 joystick and adding them as references for modeling it in Blender.

Here are the steps:

  1. Find reference images of the joystick from different angles:
    1. Top view, directly above
    2. Front view, directly from the front
    3. Side view, directly from the side (optional if the front and side are the same)
    4. Bottom view, directly below
  2. Create a new Blender project and set units to Metric in the Scene Properties tab
  3. Add a cube to represent the joystick base:
    1. Set the cube dimensions to roughly 10 cm x 10 cm x estimated height
    2. Move the cube to the origin if necessary
  4. Import the reference images into the scene:
    1. Switch to Top View (Numpad 7) and add the top reference image (Shift + A > Image > Reference)
    2. Switch to Front View (Numpad 1) and add the front reference image
    3. Switch to Side View (Numpad 3) and add the side reference image
    4. Switch to Bottom View (Ctrl + Numpad 7) and add the bottom reference image
  5. Scale and position each reference image so the edges match the size of the cube
    1. Use the top reference to set the 10 cm x 10 cm size
    2. Use the front, side, and bottom references to match the height and rounded corners
  6. Lock the reference images to prevent accidental selection:
    1. Open the Outliner and enable the Selectability toggle (filter icon > enable Selectable)
    2. Disable the selectability for each reference image
  7. Refine the shape of the cube to match the references:
    1. Add bevels or loops to round the top more than the bottom
    2. Constantly check all views to match the overall shape

Here's how the reference with the object looks like:

Here's the rendered result (not much):