looks damn good! There are a few different variations of this material and your model looks pretty much exact to a # of them. If you scroll down this link you can see some of the ones that match.
http://www.interlam-design.com/Art_Product_Search.cfm
It's a pretty bada$$ product.
How did you do it?
btw...your sketchup file wasn't there before...I just opened it and it's awesome....although i still can't figure out exactly how you did it.
Thanks again.
It is pretty meandering lol, but I think I can do it right next time. Thanks for helping me. My next giant hurdle will be to make a box out of this stuff and have all of the grooves line up. It sort of makes my head hurt when i think about it.
I'm getting pretty close here. I tried taking the flat grooved edge and using the follow me too along a curved line. Then when I went to distort it with the FFD plug-in to get the grooves to expand and contract it worked fine.
Chris,
I don't know how they design this product and I have no knowledge about any xyz info. I will probably re-do the grooves to match the sample more closely, but I first wanted to see if I could do it at all. I don't think I am capable at this point to use the follow me tool trick you mentioned unless there is a way to make the grooves expand and reduce horizontally as I pull them along the paths, and match up somehow with the ones above and below it....But, I'm curious to see what you mean exactly.
Hello again, I'm hoping to get some of your opinions on which technique I should be using to model this material...as I am clearly failing to do so.
I tried creating the horizontal grooves and then using the FFD plug-in to distort the grooves vertically, but I think it may be to complex for the plug-in.
I also tried using the smoove tool and also had no luck....although I'm not very good with the sandbox tools.
I think I am going at this the wrong way...any suggestions?
Much quicker and much cleaner...
I used the FFD plug-in on a flat shape (some horizontal lines across the shape helped to make it a little smoother across the middle when distorting).
Although, it took a few tries to get it smoothed out right, it was much faster than my previous attempt. It's actually not a sail.... (air foil lol), but a piece that will be formed out of resin and attached to a larger display (to promote that "sailing feel")....hopefully.
I was going to try the Sub Devide and smooth tool (watched the tutorial on smustard.com...looked really cool) but it costs $22 bucks. Will check out the rest...
This is the second time I have asked for help in these forums and the second time i have been amazed at the response. Thanks to all....a lot.
awesomeness. I will post the results. thanks again.
The last step of the tutorial you posted has a call-out..."using FFD, shape according to needs"...
What is FFD?
Hello out there...
I created this sail by drawing the basic wire frame and then stitching it together... I'm sure there is an easier/cleaner way to do it.
Can someone let me know what that way is?
I had created a sail once before by using the follow me tool to wrap one edge of the sail around an outside curve and then intersected all of the parts on the bottom that I needed cut-out....then used the rotate tool to bring the top to a point. This way was also a little messy and a pain in the a$$. Any help would be appreciated, as I am going to be drawing a number of these sails in slightly different shapes.
works like magic. Thank you both very much. I can tell it's going to take a little while to be able to use it effectively, but I can already do some things that I couldn't do before. So, thanks again. I will make an effort to contribute time as well.
Do i need any special software to "unrar" it? I have downloaded it, but I am unfamiliar with .rar
I actually downloaded it a while back but was under the impression that I could just drop it in the plug-ins folder.... If you have already gone through this a million times with other geniuses, maybe you could just point me to a prior post.
I am desperately searching for the follow me rotate plug-in. I keep ending up http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=13014&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a <---here. and I still haven't found the download file.
Would someone please help me out?
If you are going to export your model as a 2D jpg image, try going into the options tab on your exporting window and set the image size to a width of 3000.
That way when you Resample to a higher resolution in photoshop or whatever your image looks cleaner.
ps: go to the help menu and watch every video tutorial you can!!!