KitoRaupp's SketchUp Test

bhealy27 · 31 Mar 2009, 16:17

In addition to and somewhat similar to his fantastic Pottery Twist Video on You Tube, KitoRaupp has another interesting Video entitled Sketchup Test at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIguH_fqvcA&feature=channel

I've been fooling around with this for the last few hours with no success and it's driving me crazy. Maybe I can get some help here. I'm running SU Pro 7 on a Mac.

What he appears to be doing is creating a disc, then creating a copy of it rotated maybe 5 degrees or so then somehow connecting them into a wedge. I don't know how you do this in Sketchup since they're in a nonstandard planar allignment. Then he seems to draw a line at the bottom of the wedge, selects the wedge and added line and creates enough rotated copies to fill a larger circle. Then he scales/distorts the wedge copies with the connected lines he added when he created the wedge. This seems similar to the way he used the spiral in Pottery Twist.

I understand and can reproduce what he's done in his Pottery Twist Video but this one's got me stumped. How's he creating this non-planar wedge?

mitcorb · 31 Mar 2009, 17:34

I was able to make a wedge. I don't know if this will help. I hung a circle on the z axis above the origin in the yz plane. I built a standing rectangle off camera so that I could quickly set the protractor, copy rotated 5 degrees, push pulled back through the first circle, scaled the first circle large enough so that I could intersect the whole mess and trimmed off the excess. That got the wedge, but it might not be the same result as what he got. After copy rotating 72 times, I did not get a clean "seamless" torus. Oh well, then I made a circle inscribed on the inner circumference of the torus, along the hidden dashed line path, thinking this would be used as the deformer. This didn't work. Is there some combo of groups or components needed here?

bhealy27 · 31 Mar 2009, 18:54

mitcorb, thanks for the quick reply. I tried something very similar with the same results. We're both missing something here. Since I first posted I found out about the the Freescle 2.0 Scripts that Fredo6 is offering through this forum. They may solve both our problems at least with respecto to developing the wedge. Here's the link in this forum http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=17948&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p144180

I think this might help but I'd like to know if there is a way in pure Sketchup without having to resort to other plugins to accomplish this. That would give me a better understanding of the workings of Sketchup.

If I can figure out how to do this I'll let you know. In the meantime, hopefully someone else will chime in.

solo · 31 Mar 2009, 19:05

Okay let's try this:

Create your round face, rotate copy at 5 degrees, use skin.rb to create the wedge and then rotate copy to make your torus.

mitcorb · 31 Mar 2009, 19:25

I have the Freescale Suite on board, but I did not resort to it, thinking this guy probably is busy seeing what Sketchup can do with native tools, and he may have insight into how other programs out there work. Then again, he could have some extensions that have not been publicized or shared. I got the impression that the video doesn't have all of the frames.

@solo: do you suppose that softening smoothing may affect the outcome? I don't know.

mitcorb · 31 Mar 2009, 19:29

Solo:
Which version of skin do you have? It took me a while to chase down one that works, and I think I had to swap parts from different threads just to get it to work. The skin idea may be what the dude is using, but I didn't get that impression.

watkins · 31 Mar 2009, 22:24

Dear All,

If you watch the video you will note that he draws a line segment, which is then repeated around the torus. I think he then selects only those line segments (effectively a circle), and uses the scale tool to distort the circle and hence the torus.

Regards,
Bob

takesh h · 31 Mar 2009, 23:04

Hi all,
What Kito is doing in the video can be re-created by using native SU tools only.
My understanding of his method is;

Draw a circle above the origin
Rotate copy it by 5degrees by the origin
Pushpull the copied circle
Rotate the pushed-out face so that it is in vertical position
The previous step makes all the side faces of the cylinder triangulated (important)
Move the (now vertical) pushed-out face so that it overlaps with the first circle you drew
Draw a line on the side of cylinder by tracing one of softened edges (actually this can be any edges on the cylinder)
Rotate copy the resulting wedge by the origin, create a torus
Select the lines on the torus, scale it with native SU SCALE tool

Enjoy!

Chris Fullmer · 1 Apr 2009, 01:19

Here's a test file for those who just want to play but don't want to mess with making the dern thing. My process was exactly what Takesh outlined.

Chris

RING TEST.skp

bhealy27 · 2 Apr 2009, 13:38

Wanted to thank everyone for their help. I've been fooling around with the various methods suggested here for the last couple of days and have learned a lot.

I've tried Solo's method with skin.rb and gotten nice wedges but am having trouble getting the wedge torus to distort nicely after adding the line at the bottom. Can't figure out exactly what my problem is yet.

Chris' model is perfect, it works beautifully.

And Takesh h's detailed and clear instructions are an excellent explanation of what to do. The only problem I had was with Step 6. I kept moving the face straight back to the first circle instead of back and aligned with the bottom of the first circle. This resulted in a wedge with a steep slant that wouldn't align properly when rotate copied. Once I figured out what I was doing wrong everything worked fine.

Alsatic · 2 Apr 2009, 13:50

Hi, you can find some skp tutorials concerning Kito's methods on 3D Warehouse. In particular have a look at this one: Horn tutorial
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=fdd2be9e2c033f2dda5d621c43d2258&prevstart=12