I hope someone could help. I’m trying to create a terrain mound. I created myself some contours, then elevated them manually and then tried to loft them into one solid block, but with no joy. Then I tried lofting them separately, then using patch command, then drape… I must be doing something wrong. They are all closed curves, and should be drawn ok, without anything intersecting, it should be all quite simple - please could someone help?
It seems like you’re on the right track. How exactly did you create your linework? Using “Curve” and “BlendCrv” will create friendlier curves for later steps.
Playing around with the patch settings is also critical. I’ll post some settings just for reference. U/V spans will control how smooth things end up. Same with stiffness. Both will sacrifice detail of course.
Your pictures are both a little different: The second has more of a flat top. Both can be achieved of course but it depends on exactly what you’re going for.
I’m not 100% sure what the end goal is but at least you can see some possible workflows in the attached file. Note the one surface where I literally just edited the grips.
With patch you really have to play around with the settings. Stiffness might feel unintuitive at first.
If the final shape was to be accurate (and even if not) you’ll want to spend a bit more time on the input curves. Try to generate curves that are easier to work with and not segmented.
Thank you so much for your reply and time to do the tests! So kind of you. Your tests look almost exactly to what I’m looking for! E.g. this one is very plausible:
Please can I ask what was the exact process? And how do you ensure your input curves are the best?
When I was creating my original curves, I used "control point curve’ command → then offset and elevating them–> then I closed a few rouge ones–> then I think I did Simplify Curve and from memory I think I also Rebuilt them.
I did some experiments with patch upon your suggestion (see below), but the surface I’m getting doesn’t follow the original curves at all:
I might actually have to make a video - things would be way more clear I think.
In this file I did a few tricks include Quadremesh then patching again from that. The main thing to pay attention to is how I trim the surface with a plane and then BlendSrf - that’s the part I really want to make the video of because it’s a bit tricky if you haven’t don’t it much. Much of the rest of the file is getting carried away (kind of - really depends on the desired end result).
Your input curves are super critical. When I try to extrude yours it says they’re self intersecting… strange because for the most part they look fine. What I’m struggling with on my end actually is trying to maintain your original shape - it looks intentional and would look neat if incorporated into a landscape scene.
Your curves are not ideal for the various Nurbs operations and the bottom two contours have self intersecting regions. A better way to make the mounds is to use shrinkwrap to create a mesh surface.
Fix the self intersecting curves by running _CurveBoolean on them.
Use the curves as input to _PlanarSrf to create a series of stacked surfaces (you cannot shrinkwrap curves).
Copy the bottom surface downward by 0.2m (because shrinkwrap will curve under at the bottom edge, so you want to move it down and cut it flat at ground level).
Run _Shrinkwrap with the following settings (settings tend to be object specific).
Jeremy’s solution works really good - the final shape is really close to your original and it takes barely any time. After shrinkWrap you can trim the resulting mesh, run patch (it works on meshes) and you’re going to have a really good surface. I quadremesh’d and it resulted in a marginally better patch… barely… it’s a step you can skip. I can record these steps if you want because it went so quick.
Thank you so much for your suggestions! It never ceases to amaze me how lovely and generous with their time people are on this forum; it is such a massive help to be able to learn from knowledgeable people like you here.
I did an experiment with ShrinkWrap as per your instructions Jeremy, and the results are excellent! I’ve tested it on other mounds, and I will finesse if futher but it’s really neat (and mound-like looking) result. I would have never thought about using Shrink wrap for this! Brilliant!
@keithscadservices I’m still trying your steps (with blendSrf) regardless, because I have a feeling both solutions might be very useful. If it wasn’t too much trouble to record that short video, that would be really handy, but I don’t want to inconvenience you and take ALL your time! So please only record it if it’s not too much trouble.
Thank you both one more time, such a huge help, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your advise! <3
I got carried away but most the info you need is near the start of the video. Some more ‘advanced’ stuff later on… One important thing to note is that as long as the polysurface is closed you can QuadRemesh and patch again. At the end I was having a bit of trouble smoothing things out. It should be a 10 minute video but hopefully you can just navigate to the parts you need .
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