Organic modelling question

remus · 13 May 2008, 06:10

If you were feeling a bit silly (and like trying to do soemthing the hard way) you might be able to get reasonable results with subd and smooth. Gettign a good proxy would take quite a while though.

Maybe you could modify the tree generator script to give you lots of follow me paths in a sort of ogranic shape, you could then get a rectangle to follow anlong each path, interesct the whole thing, clean it up as best as you can and then subd and smooth.

johnsenior1973 · 13 May 2008, 06:58

You could use the Tube Along Path plugin on curves to create the strands. Then you could Zorro the top parts and the scale the end of the tube to create the tapers.

You could also use the soapskin to create the longer strands and then Tube along paths at the ends.

It'd be a lot of work to do though.

My first thought about Subdivide and Smooth was that it'd be difficult to control and gets these effects. But thinking about it you could produce them quite easily in a big model and then use the knife tool to select parts which you could then use on this.

princedragoncok · 13 May 2008, 10:57

Many thanks for the replies. To be honest this will never be built and is just something for both of our portfolios. I haven't a clue how to write scripts either but it might be worth investing some time in remus' idea which sounds best to me
@unknownuser said:

Maybe you could modify the tree generator script to give you lots of follow me paths in a sort of organic shape, you could then get a rectangle to follow along each path, intersect the whole thing, clean it up as best as you can and then subd and smooth.

And another question regarding the tapering -
@unknownuser said:

Then you could Zorro the top parts and the scale the end of the tube to create the tapers.

How is it possible to scale just the top parts? I'm trying to imagine it with a rectangle now.. wouldn't the whole thing just be equally scaled/stretched? Is there some way to just select a portion of a rectangle?

fbartels · 13 May 2008, 11:02

Clearly someone is making shapes like this... or this is a very good render

http://ffffound.com/image/fb8c3ee691900b17e6f73065e127243713eb382b

solo · 13 May 2008, 11:06

A difficult endeavor no doubt.

How about creating a curved face then using curved face tools (Fred's script) to cut out shapes. Then using JPP (fred script again) to pull depth. Once you have a few variations of these then you can use Whaat's Sub-smooth script to soften the edges in order to look organic?

princedragoncok · 13 May 2008, 11:42

@unknownuser said:

How about creating a curved face then using curved face tools (Fred's script) to cut out shapes. Then using JPP (fred script again) to pull depth. Once you have a few variations of these then you can use Whaat's Sub-smooth script to soften the edges in order to look organic?

Cool thanks, I'll look into getting those scripts.

remus · 13 May 2008, 12:04

Fred, those look significantly simpler, i reckon you could do those just by usign a load of push pulled rectangles and subd and smooth. I might do a quick test when i get home...wish me luck

johnsenior1973 · 13 May 2008, 15:08

@princedragoncok said:

How is it possible to scale just the top parts? I'm trying to imagine it with a rectangle now.. wouldn't the whole thing just be equally scaled/stretched? Is there some way to just select a portion of a rectangle?

You just select the top face. And you use the Zorro (or knife if you have Subdivide and Smooth) close to the top so that is the only part that is affected.

A rectangle wouldn't be the best example because it would just create two triangles on each verticle face and would look pretty bad. The best way to demonstrate this would be to use the free hand draw to create a random shape.

princedragoncok · 13 May 2008, 17:04

@unknownuser said:

You just select the top face. And you use the Zorro (or knife if you have Subdivide and Smooth) close to the top so that is the only part that is affected.

Thanks

remus · 13 May 2008, 18:36

Well heres a very quick first go at it:

I reckon it might work with some further refinement. We'll see.

princedragoncok · 13 May 2008, 19:33

Nice one Remus, you're certainly on the right track. how did you do it?

remus · 13 May 2008, 19:50

Here you go, did a quick tut.

Main points to note: this method gets very boring very quickly, although i imagine once youve done maybe 5 strand proxies you could just copy and rotate them. This would speed things up quite a bit.

The finished model is also likely to have a lot of polys, so try and keep the number of subd and smooth iterations as low as possible.

tendon tut.skp

princedragoncok · 13 May 2008, 21:09

Thanks very much for taking the time to do this Remus . Don't have sketchup on this comp but will check it out when I get home

princedragoncok · 14 May 2008, 02:33

great tutorial remus, thanks alot. Can't beleive how easy it is with subdivide and smooth. an amazing tool. Nice one too fred

remus · 14 May 2008, 06:32

Indeed it is a very cool plugin, it opens up a whole world of possibilities.

One word of warning though, its very easy to get carried away and rnd up with millions of polys on a spoon, this tends to slow SU down a lot, especially if you decide you want to model a matching teapot to go with your spoon.

matteo · 14 May 2008, 07:27

You may give a try to Topmod:

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/faculty/ergun/research/topology/

It is free and can reads & save obj files.

/matteo

Jorgensen · 14 May 2008, 09:11

Wow, now that's crazy !

fbartels · 14 May 2008, 10:11

A variation on Remus's approach. It's not your Daddy's SketchUp ... subd and smooth ... oh my gosh ... the possibilities!