I need to fill in the hole, creating a completely smooth and seamless ‘hammock section’, just like this, but ideally with absolutely no join visible at all…
I’ve managed this a couple of times by extracting isocurves from each of the sections and patching the resulting lines, but it takes a lot of trial and error and I have very little control over the finished shape, so when the casts come back ever so slightly not right, I have no idea where to go from here. I also need to be able to achieve the same effect on an oval-shaped setting, which I find even harder… Does anyone have any ideas!?
Hello - just before you get too involved with the surfacing problem - for a jewelry sized part, and the process of making and finishing… how clean does it really need to be?
It needs to be pretty much flawless - tricky client! The version above is not smooth enough and the shape of the inside is slightly the wrong shape for the particular needle file used to clean it up…
My main issue is that it took me so long to achieve this and it’s not a reliable enough method to replicate it on a variety of other settings
Hello - can you post the file with the pipes? My guess is this is not going to be super easy to get perfect in different cases but I’m thinking that maybe working backwards from an ellipsoid might be one way to think about it. i.e. the ellipsoid is the smooth surface and the pipes are made on that, trimming out most of the ellipsoid apart from the ‘web’ that fills the gap.
Here’s the file There’s an oval version of the setting on there too
We’re thinking along the same lines I think - I’ve done some experiments with booleaning out ellipsoid shapes with not much luck, but your take on starting with the smooth surface and building around it could be the way forward…
Thanks so much for your help on this.
So in your version above, am I right in thinking that you have created the setting with sweeps, taken an isocurve from the midpoint of the top of the claws, added an ellipsoid and then split it with the isocurve lines? Maybe I’ve got that totally wrong!
For reference, here is a similar piece which needs the same treatment - this time it’s oval, the profile changes as you follow the sweep and it’s flatter… Any thoughts?
Hello - I started with the ellipsoids, projected the 2d curves (red and blue) up to them and trimmed the spiky ‘fill’ surfaces. Then made sweeps between the edges.
