Awesome, that's great, I love it

When I first saw it, I thought it was the image in Hart's site,
your rendering is really really similar to the original image,
Really nice work. The colors in particular are just perfect.

the only thing that may be improved is the model of the pencils I made
(the edges are too sharp).

Well,
Kevin quoting himself in the signature ... I think that's actually funny.

@stu said:

I dont know....he's been getting quieter here each day recently. Maybe he's got another interest?...

I think he's been working on:
"KDSDESIGN -Designs And Other Stuff By Kevin Smith Of New York City"

I'm not saying anything bad, really,
cause I think, as he wrote, the site is actually his biggest W.I.P.
Just pointing out the existence of the site.

There are some 'interesting' pages ... comodita, gallery,
...

If there is anybody interested in modelling geometric sculptures, I wrote I brief tutorial that illustrates one of the possible methods to obtain this kind of models.

First. Choose a somewhat symmetrical polihedron as a basis for your model.
For instance: Platonic, Archimedean and Catalan Solids they all work fine.
They're quite easy to draw but you may of course download them from the 3DWH.
(Interestingly engough all those solids can be modelled without ever having to type in any measures for sides or angles! Sketchup is so powerful).

In this brief tutorial I'm going to choose the Truncated Icosahedron, that is:
the soccer ball:

Second. Choose two or more edges of your polyhedron. It is easier for the subsequent steps if the edges you choose are coplanar (that is, there is a plane that contains them all) but you can also choose non-coplanar edges.
In this example I'm going to choose the edges shown in the image:

Three. Create something that connects the edges you've choosen.
If you want a nice result, it is better to draw something symmetrical. In this example, we have to connect three edges, so I've drawn a component with three-fold simmetry.

Four. Copy the component that connects the edges in all possible positions,
until you've covered every edge of the polyhedron.
You may now want to modify the connecting component to avoid collisions.
Then erase the polyhedron and just keep the connecting components (skp file attached):

cagework_2.skp

Cool stuff, Arc

after seeing your drawings I decided I'm gonna have to give TopMod another try,
thanks for sharing.

guzman.

As Pav said:
this thread is addictive for all the wrong reasons and
it's gone way past parody and is now into the realms of the surreal.
I couldnt stop and read it all.

Pearls:

° i was tierd when i made this. law school is VERY hard
° my computer is 5 years old and SU crashes when i get something "nice"
° my best model was a house but its 33 megabytes
° i imported the light and it came out as stairs and then a stove wtf
° the thing that says front (40% done) means that i am 40% done
° Rear (20% done)
° i mod cars. my computer Sks and crashes a lot.
° another project that is about 20(ish)% done Falcon BA
° Back to topic.
° i cant model well with this XP my vista Sks my 98 wont run SU
° it crashes every time i get something good.
° gosh... noone belives im 22
° i hope to make cars in SU before switching to a $2000 car design program
° i deleted all my junk models (about uhh 20%) like the boxes i experimented with when i first started
° Progress (about ¼% done)
° Progress: 20(ish)%
° well. let me try it my way first and then try your way, im 20% into it allready

Progress: this is only 20%, I guess, of all the pearls.

guzman.

[sorry I coudnt resist]

@hfm said:

hope you don't mind

Really cool, I like it

I didnt recognize it when I first saw it,
nice work HFM.

What did you use to render it ?

Back to the topic,

Here's one more,
this one it's only inspired by Hart's sculptures
but I invented it. "Giraffe".
whatever you want to say about or do with them is greatly appreciated.

(I attached also a variation of "Knot Structured", I changed the colors to make it a bit more similar to the original).

As usual: images and skp files ...

giraffe2.skp

giraffe.skp

knot structured.skp

I've been reading some of your posts,
I dont understand much (also beacause I dont know the meaning of many words you use),
but I think there's some
GENIUS
in there,

great models,

Guz "More Math?" T

Try renaming (at least temporarily) the sketchup executable,
then set it as a default. I tried and it worked. Hope this helps.

Really nice image Ross, great.

@unknownuser said:

TopMod permit to create topologic surfaces that will be very difficult to make with another progs!

Topological surfaces was actually my field of interest ...
So

merci beacoup Pilou !!!

Edit:
I've been using TopMod (or trying to use it) for one hour or so. My impressions:

• Too buggy, crashes really too much
• Difficult to use (It took me a lot of time to understand the user interface and how the commands work)
• Too difficult to obtain what you want (you end up making what the program wants, that's how I felt)
• I dont understand how they choose the commands, they seem to me too random
  It has of course some new ideas, but needs to be improved a lot imo.

@unknownuser said:

Seems curious that you don't know TopMod

I actually didnt know it. Thank you.

@unknownuser said:

It's the crazzy must prog that I have never seen!

It actually looks really impressive, I'm downloading it and I'll be soon
experimenting.

I have to say however that I enjoy drawing structures in SU, I think its fun and it gives you the possibility to understand what you do. I'll be back on this after using TopMod.

Thanks for the interesting links,
guzman

@ross macintosh said:

I had fun playing with the 'anorexic cube' one. Attached is a Podium render postprocessed by adding noise, texture & sharpening.

That's really cool Ross !

@ross macintosh said:

In the model itself I had beveled all the edges of the shapes but I doubt that shows up in this render.

It does, it shows up in the render,
I should have smoothened the edges, thanks,

I really like also the holes in the components, it becomes more dynamic,

nice work,

regards, guzman.

@honoluludesktop said:

Renders not as slick as others by with spirit!

Nice !!

spirit is important,
thank you,

@tim said:

You might enjoy making models of some of Bathsheba's work too -http://www.bathsheba.com.

Thanks,

that's actually interesting,

(some of the sculptures are pretty similar,
for instance: [url=http://www.georgehart.com/sculpture/mermaids-delight.html:3a22axhl]Hart[/url:3a22axhl], [url=http://www.bathsheba.com/sculpt/quintrino/:3a22axhl]Bathsheba[/url:3a22axhl])

@sketch3d.de said:

run XP in safe mode

Here I am,

I tried XP in safe mode:

by doing so I was actually able to reach sketchup menu bar and turn off hardware accelerations,

BUT:

when I use Sketchup it only works for 10 secs or so,
after that it seems that the options "hardware acceleration" is turned on automatically and
SU crashes,
restarting it I find the "hardware acceleration" option is turned on.

I tried many times, to set the option off, quit the program, etc ...
It automatically retruns to ON.

I tried SU 6 and SU 7, same result.

Any ideas ??

(ps: I dont know why, but new files start withount Sang ...)

Here's another one
"Anorexic Cube"

and a variation of the bathysphere, with holes,

Ideas, renderings, modification are alwawys wellcome ...

anorexic cube.skp

bathysphere-with-holes.skp

So far ...
(click to enlarge images)

Solo - Bathysphere
RustyShack - Cagework 1
Cosycat - Cagework 1
Solo - Pencils

fantastically done..

perhaps it takes a little too much to load images when flipping pages,
I would like the possibility to zoom in more,

I only write this because you're testing,
but the interface is really well done,