Best approach to creating solid 3d texture, please help

[Annie]

I want to end up with the organic yellow gold shape as a solid piece with smooth and textured areas, to export as stl file to print- with a solid 3 dimensional texture as opposed to an image texture map.

The current solid texture was created from 2 surfaces (top and bottom), using texture tool in rhino gold, there are 2 seams. As I want to create one seamless 3d texture, I am trying to create the shape as one surface, from a network of curves. I am having hard time getting surface smooth.

I’m thinking there must be a better way? Should I be creating the base piece differently; using Brazil analytic displacement; using other plugins or software? Please advise…

I find myself using this texture/smooth organic combination frequently, and in addition to a solution for this piece, I am looking for advice on a good solid workflow to use creating similar work.

[John_Brock]

It looks like this was answered back at the end of September:

Need Render Assistance with gold textured snake material

I need help to make the applied snake material a better match to the render of the wireframe, what settings should I be looking at? The wireframe file is the actual rendered texture of a few links of a necklace. There are 60 links and it is way beyond my computers ability to render the actual textured necklace. So I am applying it as a material instead. Attached are: Render of the link with actual wireframe texture structure Render of the link with snake material supplied 3 Screen capture…

[Annie]

Thanks for your reply, sorry if unclear- this is a question on creating geometry (as opposed to rendering) with desired end result of seamless solid textured geometry.

1-Do I need to start with a single surface to create this seamless texture, or can the seamless texture be built on a polysurface across several surfaces?
2-In building this single surface shape from network of curves, I am having hard time getting it smooth, is there a better tool than network to use to create, or trick to smooth the surface?
3-Best recommendation on tool to apply texture- used rhino gold texture tool (which only works on one surface at a time), would Brazil analytic displacement or another rhino tool or plugin, or even other software for texture work better?

The Sept post on rendering refers to Brazil’s analytic displacement feature to create actual bumps geometric bumps - not just “bump mapping” tricks. And while in brazil 2.0.3 the downloaded file rendered perfectly, it did not create geometric bumps. Maybe there is a setting I am missing on Brazil for the analytic displacement to create geometry? Under displacement settings I checked displacement.

Thanks so much!

[pascal (Pascal Golay)]

Hi Annie- my guess is that you can make the bit that gets the texture of one link as a single trimmed surface - think of it as a tapered wiggly tube that has the deep cuts in the sides- the monster’s mouth, so to speak, trimmed out.

-Pascal

[Micha]

If I would get this challenge with my tools than I would:

• create an organic modell with T-Spline
• create a clean mesh with T-Spline or MoI3D (I hope to get a cleaner mesh)
• export the mesh as OBJ
• unfold it per Unfold3D and creation of a texture based on the flattened UV
• import the mesh with the new UV and the new texture to Rhino
• displacement per Rhino displacement or Rhino|AIR (sitexgraphics.com)

I never used the displacement mesh output of AIR for a final project, but it’s done by Marcus Liebich some years before.
http://www.sitexgraphics.com/html/rapid_prototyping.html

[carvecream]

Annie, have you checked out ZBrush by Pixologic? Some amazing sculpting tools in there I think you would find invaluable for your work. I’m not familiar enough with Rhinogold to know what the overlaps are in functionality.

[Annie]

Yes, thanks… I have been looking at ZBrush, do you use it?
In applying an even texture over the mesh, it looks like you need to get
involved with the UV’s, and I am not familiar with that?
The sculptural part does look very cool.
There is not a trial version available to play with… is it difficult to
learn? good easy to understand tutorials?
It looks like once you have the basics, it would be a quick intuitive way
to work?
I welcome any advice!

Thanks again.

[carvecream]

Annie, I have only fiddled with zbrush so far but would like to get into it more seriously someday soon.
However after rereading your original post above, it seems that maybe you have actually solved the complex modeling of the texture part of it, and are just hampered now by rhinogold’s inability to apply that geometry to separate/seamed surfaces. Is this correct? If so, then it seems you are really just looking for another or better way to model the ‘base’ surface cleanly. Can you share a rhino file with appropriate geometry in it and maybe we can help with that?